The World Nomads Podcast: Portugal

Speaker 1: Welcome to the World Nomads podcast delivered by World Nomads. The travel lifestyle and insurance brand. It's not your usual travel podcast. It's everything for the adventurous independent traveler.

Kim: Hey, thanks for hitting play on this episode of the World Nomads podcast in which we're off to Portugal. I am Kim and Phil is about to fill you in on why. (did you get that?) On why it's a destination a nomad will love.

Phil: Sunny summers and mild winter streets filled with tiled facades. Portugal is just a few hours flight from most European cities. Whether your visit to hit the beaches or cycle through the parks and reserves. It's the perfect destination for getting outdoors. It's also got perfect tubular waves, surfing is hugely popular and the country hosts some of the biggest surfing events on the calendar, including the Rip Curl Pro and it's famous for its ports to jamon.

Phil: Yes, I've tried to help out there.

Kim: Yeah.

Phil: Piri Piri chicken, yeah I helped out there too, and football!

Kim: Oh, yeah. If you're into football, just think, Christiano Ronaldo.

Phil: One of the things that travelers noticed most is the hospitality and friendliness of the Portuguese people.

Kim: Well in this episode we will explore the Azores, take a walk into a volcano, and get some tips on experiencing Portugal from a local, including Sandra. Now she runs a blog called tripper. It was on her side that I came across an entry titled Traveling to Lisbon, Read these 10 things first. Now Sandra writes that Lisbon, Phil, has become so popular and trendy that things may have gotten a little out of hand.

Sandra: I think there's this big difference between what we local feel and there are three perspectives. We have the locals, we have the tourist, and of course, we have the government who obviously runs everything and the perspectives are completely different. For locals it's starting to be a bit too much, for the government and we still have lots of room to grow, and for tourists, obviously Lisbon it was wonderful and sunny and an affordable and whatnot. I don't think we're at that level, like in Barcelona for example, Not yet. I don't think we've reached that a danger level, but we should actually do something now before we get to that.

Kim: I feel quite guilty then sharing it with the rest of the world. But why hasn't Lisbon becomes so popular?

Sandra: I actually, I don't know. There was a time during the economic recession, let's see, 2011, 2013, around those two years people lost their jobs, companies were closing down. We have a massive amount of, of people immigrating to London and other cities in Europe, and those who were left behind, the only things they had was actually tourism. So we in a way, tourism saved the Portuguese economy. Everyone says this and I also believe that because we already have the product, we don't have to think too hard. We have wine, we have food, we have the weather, and Everything else followed it. It was like all of the online publications where discovering Lisbon, they were writing about Lisbon, And it just blew up completely.

Sandra: Then we have a massive event, which was the web summit, which is Europe's largest internet conference, if you will, on all the startups. It brought more people and for Lisbon to have between 30,000 and 50,000 people in five days. It's a lot. I remember everything was chaotic. Metro was chaotic, like hotels and restaurants, bars, everything was too much. And I don't think people were given enough time to prepare. That is the issue. Things have to be done a little bit more, well sustainably. But why do you feel guilty? You were saying you felt guilty for sharing?

Kim: Well, yeah, you're telling everybody that, okay here's this special place in the world that hasn't quite been loved to death, but it's fabulous, it's popular.

Sandra: It hasn't yet.

Kim: Yeah, go along and love it to death. That's where I'm feeling some guilt from.

Sandra: No, I don't think you should. I think I actually, once I started to be very open and vocal about it on the blog, because the first intention with Trooper was not at all to write about a sustainable tourism. That wasn't my focus in the beginning. It was just a general generic travel blog and then suddenly I started seeing all the misinformation about Lisbon, you know, all the same articles over and over and over about the same things, people giving wrong information. I started writing a few blog posts and I realized people actually wanted that local connection. They wanted to feel, okay, we are traveling there, but are we adding to the problem instead of the solution? I actually get emails from readers asking me, how can I be more responsible when traveling to Lisbon? How can I be more conscious? What should I do? Which businesses should I support? So there is a concern.

Kim: How do you be a responsible or conscious traveler to Lisbon?

Sandra: Very hard question. First of all, figure out why are you traveling to Lisbon. Because if you're here for the food, maybe you are not interested in visiting museums. If you're here for the art, maybe you're not interested in going on a food tour. What I think is people don't have that much time to travel and they tried to just pack everything into three or four days, sometimes less, and tried to do as much as they can. It's not sustainable for us. It's not sustainable for those who weren't visiting. It's like that rule, do you know the rule that you should never look for a restaurant when you're starving because you might fall into a tourist trap? That's the same with traveling. If you're to be eager to see everything and go to everything, you'll end up probably seeing nothing that you came here for.

Sandra: Then maybe leave with an idea like, oh you know no, it wasn't that, Lisbon was okay, but it was not what people told me about. I think that's very important. I think we many times we don't stop to think like, why are we traveling to this specific location? Is it because it looks good on Instagram? Is it because you actually enjoy the history of the city or the local culture? You have to ask that question first and then obviously try to see you with a business that support the kind of traveling you want.

Kim: Well, in your blog you do say that there are a number of places that you can skip in Lisbon, but sometimes it's hard for a traveler for example, to go to Paris and not see the Eiffel Tower.

Sandra: I know that was a very, very difficult those to write. It also brought me a lot of the hate mail. Well not hate mail, but if email lots of people telling me, I know is it's a very controversial post. Obviously, if you go to Paris you have to see the Eiffel Tower. If you come to Lisbon, you have to see the Santa Justa Lift for example. With what I do say is that I listed six places that you can skip visiting inside, Most of them because most people don't know this. Then they join those large queues and they stay in queue for hours. Then they get inside, it's nothing what they expected just because the guide told them to or trip advisor told them to, to travel there. Those six places I mentioned to skip are actually those that you can actually skip visiting inside, not going to them to be clear.

Kim: You also saying, you mentioned food earlier, that's one of the first thing that pops into your mind might be sardines in Lisbon, But keep in mind they're not fresh the whole year round.

Sandra: They're not, that's the biggest tourist trap in Lisbon. Sometimes I noticed this, usually the I think fresh sardines, I don't want to get the dates wrong, but it's specially in the summer. So between June and September, let's say, those would be fresh, like guaranteed fresh sardines. But I've seen this happening in restaurants. Seeing restaurants serving frozen sardines and telling tourists they are fresh and because they don't know the difference, sometimes they're good. I've eaten grilled sardines that are frozen. It's fine. I just don't like the way they sell them to tourists, trying to convince them that they're having some authentic local dish when it's not.

Kim: I'm curious as to why you would get some negative feedback about this particular blog. It's actually really good advice.

Sandra: Most of the negative feedback came from locals. They mentioned I was going against what Lisbon had, the best things that Lisbon had. I don't think those are the best things that Lisbon has, but those are the same people that probably will complain about how there are many tourists on the places they used to go to. You cannot please everyone. It's impossible.

Kim: Well, it's a very thorough article, even down to recommendations on where to buy sustainable and local souvenirs in Lisbon, which again, is an issue that's topical?

Sandra: Especially for tiles. I've seen so many blog posts and articles telling people to only volcano in the world where you can actually walk inside and that's the last thing you should do; because most of the times are actually taken off historical buildings and sold and broken. It's very, very, very complicated. You're not actually helping because they only sell them because there are people buying it. If you stop buying they will obviously stop selling them. I hope that that's the goal, At least.

Kim: World Nomads has a great article share and show notes, the ethical traveler's guide to souvenir shopping because we all want to be conscious consumers and that was a great tip from Sandra when visiting Portugal to end there.

Phil: Okay. Speaking of articles, Sam Bedford, who's joined us on the podcast before, has written a story for us on his journey inside of a dormant volcano in the Azores.

Sam: Well, it's the only volcano in the world where you can actually walk inside and walk down the steps, walk through some of the lava chambers, and actually stand inside and look up out through the point where the lava once exploded a few thousand years ago.

Phil: This sounds like an episode of Scooby Doo. Seriously, to be inside a volcano.

Sam: Yeah, but it gets better.

Phil: Go on.

Sam: Inside there's there's a section that they call the cathedral, which is essentially a magma chamber, but because of the acoustics, the people on the island sometimes host a concert inside. You'd have an orchestra coming down inside this volcano, them playing whatever because of the acoustics and perfect, which makes it the only volcano in the world where you can watch a concert.

Phil: Wow.

Sam: Some people actually get married inside.

Phil: So whereabouts is this? Whereabouts in Portugal is this?

Sam: This is on to Terceira island, which is part of the Azores, out in the Atlantic Ocean.

Phil: Is it hard to get to this place or is it, you know, pretty easy and very popular once you're on the Azores?

Sam: Actually no, I found it very difficult to even find information on the place. Everything online's all in Portuguese, so you have to physically translate the pages to English and then try to get the information. To be honest with you, I don't think it gets the hype that it deserves. A lot of people just think them going into another cave and it's not, it's a dormant volcano. There's three ways that you can get there. Either you join a tour from the main town onto Terceira Island, which is Angra. A lot of people drive, they'd rent a car from the airport, drive around the island, see the sides, and they stopped by the volcano as you just one stop on many.

Phil: What about the people on the Azores? I mean it's so far from Portugal. I know it's Portuguese territory, but what are they like, are they a distinct sort of racial group or how does it work?

Sam: They identify as Azoreans. They don't like it if you classify them as Portuguese.

Phil: Okay.

Sam: The Azores, they're autonomous region of, of Portugal, a bit like Madeira. Ethnically they, they're Portuguese.

Kim: Now last time we spoke to you, you were in Portugal, but we were chatting about the Malaysia episode. So was it this experience you had at that time we spoke or is Portugal, a kind of go to destination for you?

Sam: When we spoke last time, we were just getting ready to go to the Azores. We came back to the UK for Christmas and we've decided to go around Europe for a couple of weeks and Portugal was for choice.

Phil: Fantastic. Nice rich in experience. Good to hear.

Sam: And also in Portugal in the winter, it's not too cold.

Kim: Now the article that you wrote for us on Malaysia, on the Maylay Basin is very, very popular so we're guessing the one that we'll share that you've written on this volcano will be just as popular and we haven't even, Phil, touched on the freshwater lake with Sam.

Phil: I want to know. Tell me about this lake.

Sam: From the top of the volcano to the bottom, is about a hundred meters. On the outside of the volcano you've got all of these moss and Lichens and all these spongy blind plants. When it rains and it rains a lot there, all of these plants, some of the top they absorb the water and this constantly drips down through the, through the rock. So when you're standing inside, it's always raining like a drizzle from all the water dripping constantly from the top. All these drains to bottom and it's made a little lake. When it rains a lot, it can get up to about 25 meters and during the drought it can completely dry up. There's no life in now you won't find any fish in there. Actually, the way the volcano was discovered is quite a funny story.

Sam: Essentially about 200 years back it was just a hole in the ground and the early farmers, they didn't know what it was, it was just a black hole in the ground, a bit like a sinkhole. It came to their attention when they started noticing the sheep were disappearing on the field.

Phil: But they were falling in the hole or what?

Sam: Exactly they were falling down the hole. The turn of the 19th century a few people went down on ropes, had to look inside, found it was a volcano, and so then the farmer started using it as a dump, because only in the 1960s that they started to turn into a bit of a tourist attraction. The geologists came and they started to actually studied.

Phil: Sam, thank you very much, mate. Good to talk to you again.

Sam: Thanks for having me on again.

Kim: Okay, what's travel news Phil?

Phil: I write quite a lot about travel safety and talk about it in the media and what have been, one of the things I tried to convey is that safety is relative. If you're a first time traveler and you've got no experience of the world outside of your hometown, you have a different risk profile, then you know Macgyver or James Bond, so you should choose your destinations accordingly. I'm not sure how I feel about this. A French tour company has began offering cultural trips to parts of Syria.

Kim: Ooh.

Phil: Yes, Syria.

Kim: Covered or not?

Phil: I'll get to that.

Kim: Okay.

Phil: All right. The tour goes to south Damascus, the Tekkiye and the Krak des Chevaliers, which is a preserved medieval castle. Clearly this is all a long way from the fighting in eastern Syria. Damascus is tucked away in the southwest corner of the country. It's only 50ks from the Lebanese border. It's probably perfectly fine or at least acceptably safe to go there, but I'm not sure how they're going to get travel insurance because again as you rightly ask it's a do not travel country. Most of the foreign governments around the world are advising their citizens that they don't go there or if you there, you should leave immediately because of the danger. Now that may be different in south Damascus, you would hope it would be.

Kim: Yeah.

Phil: But you're not going to get covered. You're not going to get travel insurance. We can't sell you a policy to a country against the advice of your governments.

Kim: Yeah

Phil: So that look, I wish them luck. I would love for, you know, the history of Syria to be available to people again, but I think this is probably a little bit early.

Phil: I liked the idea, but I'm not sure how practical it is.

Kim: We'll wait and see.

Phil: Gay travel site Spartacus has named it's most LGBT friendly destinations for 2019 Sweden, Canada and drum roll Portugal.

Kim: Yay!

Phil: Portugal is top of the list. It was in 27th position last year, but Spartacus, has decided that changes in legislation and greater protection for LGBT people deemed it worthy of moving to the top of the index. Another reason to go there.

Kim: Great.

Phil: Japanese trained physician, who now works in Australia, has called for more education about health risks for travelers to Japan, especially with the 2020 Olympics being held in Tokyo.

Kim: Do you know fun fact about that?

Phil: Go

Kim: Well, they were heaps of fun facts. The medals are going to be made from recycled mobile phones.

Phil: Seriously?

Kim: I'm serious.

Phil: Yeah. I suppose there's a lot of gold and silver and stuff in those.

Kim: Yeah. These games are going to be super, these are games you'd want to be on the ground for, not necessarily for the Olympics, but to see how they're doing it, the tick involved.

Phil: Okay. Better throw a spanner into this.

Kim: Alright, What are you going to tell me?

Phil: This Japanese trained doctor whose name is Dr Kobayashi, says that the medical system in Japan is not well understood by visitors and the Japanese physicians and not keen on examining foreigners because of the language barrier And she's also very concerned about the influx of visitors during the Olympics and that they'll exacerbate a problem the country has with syphilis.

Kim: That's a sexually transmitted disease.

Phil: It is an Std. Yeah. The doctor sees in Japan, syphilis has been significantly epidemic with the number of cases now 10 times higher than 10 years ago and she says the majority of the patients are in their late teens to early twenties.

Phil: Now we're talking about 7,000 people in the entire country. But that's still, Hey, my watch just wanted me to know if I wanted to fly to Japan. If you heard that in.

Kim: Is that the Google

Phil: Yeah, it's my apple watch just heard me say something about Japan and just told me the conversion rate for the dollar to the Yen.

Kim: I would have been more impressed if it told you

Phil: Something about syphilis.

Kim: Yeah! booked you a doctor's appointment.

Phil: Okay. Hey, what's the longest you've ever been delayed, Kim?

Kim: Oh. about six hours.

Phil: Spare a thought for the passengers on the Coast Starlight Amtrak service from Seattle to LA recently, which got caught in the Cascades mountains in those storms, snow storm that they had. The train was halted in position for 36 hours.

Kim: That's murder on the oriental express stuff isn't it?

Phil: Yeah. Look, the engines were still running so they got heat and light and power and what have you, but they were starting to get a bit peckish.

Kim: Now. Thank you.

Phil: Pleasure.

Kim: We've heard of the Azores, we've mentioned them, we've heard Sam talk about the volcano that he walked into. It's an archipelago of nine volcanic islands in the North Atlantic, west of Portugal. Let's find out a little more from James though, including why it is full of year round events.

James: That's a great question actually. Cause I did a blog post recently about all the different events and the Algarve and there was just so many small little ones. Especially the small little food festivals. There was one for snails, one for a certain type of sausage, there's one for sardines, and these are sort of dotted throughout the year. There was one really, really bizarre one that was the festival of the pine cone where people, they go on this big long walk to another town and shout long live the pine cone in Portuguese as they leave and ring the church bells and going to the next town and have lunch and come back. That seems to be the whole festival.

Phil: I'm in. That's my kind of festival.

Kim: Well, I think we've got our name for the podcast, Portugal long live the pine cone.

James: Yeah, I think that's definitely a good one.

Phil: A lot of people probably wonder how different Portugal might be from it's much larger neighbor Spain. Is there a lot of difference?

James: Yeah. Yes and no. I mean to us as a, you know, English speakers and non Mediterranean people it can feel like they're very, very similar. But you do, you don't want to say that to a Portuguese. The longer you spend here, the more you start to see the differences. Like the food is slightly different. The attitudes and way of life for different things , quite a sort of happy and noisy country. Portugal is a little bit more conservative and they tend to be a lot quieter, a lot more sort of introspective. They have this thing and it's very important to Portuguese culture called saudade, which is a difficult thing to explain, but it's a sort of wishing you were in another place basically, wishing you were in another place in your life somewhere in the past or sometimes even in the future, and just feeling a longing for that, which sounds a little bit like depression to the rest of us, but it's just a key part of Portuguese sort of mentality.

Kim: Quiet and introspective. Is that why it's, and I did not realize this, know for its yoga retreats.

James: Recently, there's been a lot of different types of tourism starting up and yoga is one of them and Surfing holidays is another. Often people come to Portugal to learn a new skill, to learn to paint or to go on a walking holiday. I think this type of tourism is quite good. It's quite small, but it's usually a lot more responsible along a greener. I think probably a very good thing.

Kim: Also, I'm interested in Ferragudo.

James: Ferragudo.

Kim: Ferragudo, okay, because we've had...

Phil: Your First attempt and an accent. And it's the one word that doesn't really have on.

Kim: We chatted to Sandra earlier who talked about Portugal being at risk of being loved to death. It was interesting with Ferragudo.

James: Yeah, very good.

Kim: Yeah it's great. Right up my alley, that it's the least developed. That's the way you describe it on your blog. Can you explain that, and is it therefore an attractive place to visit?

James: Yeah, I think so. Certainly for the sort of center of the Algarve it's developed, has got tourism, but they've done it very nicely. there's always the first towns where people came into places like Spain and Portugal and they just went a little crazy with the sort of the bit that's the construction, but very good too. It feels very nice. It's very attractive. It's one of the most picturesque towns on the Algarve I think along with Tavira and maybe Faro as well.

Phil: But this is the perfect place to go off and actually meet up with some locals. Go and maybe do a bit of Woofing on a farm or something like that.

James: Exactly. With Ferragudo you're starting to get into the western Algarve so the Algarve is kind of split into three sections, the eastern, the central and the western. Essential is where the majority of the tourism is. The western Algarve, which very good is right on the border with is a lot more rural. It tends to have the different type of accommodation and they're a lot more of the sort of yoga retreat type places. The beaches down there are stunning and usually not very busy. It's definitely a part of the Algarve that I would recommend going to.

Kim: Another thing I want to get, I'm just sort of trying to paint this picture I guess, and it may be incorrect of it being this fabulous place that you visit if you want this holistic experience. We've talked about the yoga and getting to somewhere where the crowds aren't, but then there's also a place where you can go with these spas that have healing properties. Am I trying too hard to create a picture of Portugal that is all about health and wellbeing?

James: It sort of exists. It exists in little patches. For example, the Monchique which you're talking about is this mountainous part of the Algo, which it has healing springs and it's a beautiful area for walking. Then maybe the next couple of towns along we'll be quite touristic, but then you had unto the western Algarve and you'll start to find more smaller, quieter towns and more of a what you're saying this sort of, holistic accommodation or holistic retreats. It's sort of dotted around at the Algarve, and dotted around the whole of Portugal.

Phil: Was Kim expressing, what's the word? Saudade. What was the word? Was she expressing a longing for a type of Portugal that doesn't really exist there?

James: Quite possibly.

Phil: I think she's nailed it.

Kim: After talking to Sandra and she sort of suggesting the places being loved to death. I just want to make sure, Phil, that everyone knows that there is a quiet corner where you can do a bit of oming. Okay?

Phil: Okay. All good.

James: There has been a lot of tourism to Portugal over the last few years. Is that what Sandra is talking about?

Kim: Yes and she says that Portugal is embracing it, but that, at the same time, a lot of the businesses get frustrated by the number of tourists.

James: In Lisbon in particular, and Portugal have had huge numbers of tourists over the past couple of years and the city is really, really quite small and not able to cope with it. Lisbon was very badly managed in terms of just the number of people that they allowed to rent out apartments on Airbnb. It's created this housing crisis where people are moving out, or the Portuguese people are moving out of cities, out of the city center, because landlords are renting their properties short term instead. Yeah, so that is definitely happening in parts of Portugal.

Kim: yeah, just on the public transport, I've read that they try and encourage tourists or travelers to stay away from it in the peak hours of the morning and the evenings so that workers can get to and from work without any hassle.

James: Yeah. Well, I mean, if you think of Lisbon, I don't know if you're familiar with it, but the quintessential type of public transport here is these tiny little wooden trams. They're really, really beautiful and entertaining if you're a tourist, but if you live here that for a lot of people, that's actually how you've got to get to work or go to the shops or whatever. The route near me, for example, tram 28 is probably one of the most beautiful tram routes, public transport routes in the world. But I've taken it once since I've been here because I'll would just never get on it. Like there will be queues of maybe 200 people at sort of the peak hour of the day. One thing on the blog that I'm working on at the moment is trying to encourage people to walk that route or to do you do it slightly differently. Both the sake of people living here, but also for themselves as well. You don't want to spend an hour or longer waiting just to get on a public transport.

Phil: Hopefully the city officials are addressing this though. I mean, it sounds like a pretty bad problem.

James: Yeah, they're starting to slowly, Portugal's very, very dependent on tourism and the things get done very, very slowly here in a lot of cases. They have stopped handing out licenses for Airbnb and things like that. But I lived in Lisbon in 2013 and I lived in Berlin in the same year and at the same time as I lived there, both of them sort of saw a big tourism boom in the sort of the next few years. Berlin, you don't actually really notice it that much because it's a city of 3 million people I think, and it already had loads of access accommodation and it's spread out. It's really, really spread out. Lisbon's are much, much smaller city and Portugal as well, it's a lot more compact.

James: I don't know, I think it's quite a unique situation for Lisbon and Portugal that the effects of tourism has been so noticeable. It's for whatever reason, people in all in one go and started coming and writing about it and sharing about it on social media and it just all took off at the same time.

Phil: And I'll take the moral of the story here of course, is that we've got to get outside of Lisbon and go and explore some of the other areas of Portugal.

James: Definitely, I think that's probably is the key to it.

Kim: Thanks James and we'll share a link to your blog, The Portugalist in show notes. It's absolutely full of information. Now do you want to win a trip to Portugal? And you know how to write? Then listen very, very carefully.

Phil: All right, Because with us in the studio right now is Bec Day and Bec's the World Nomads programs and campaigns coordinator, which means you're organizing the prize for the writing scholarship. Where are we? Where are we sending people?

Bec: Believe it or not, we're sending three, lucky travel writers to Portugal.

Phil: What a surprise!

Kim: Who would have guessed?! Wow! The applications have opened. We've already mentioned that in previous podcasts.

Bec: Yes.

Kim: Open for how long? Who too? What are you looking for?

Bec: Head to www.worldnomads.com/writing.

Phil: Yep.

Bec: And what you have to do to apply is submit a 700 word story. Picking one of the three themes about a travel experience that you've had, yeah?

Kim: What are those three things?

Bec: First one's a leap into the unknown, or making a local connection, or I didn't expect to find.

Phil: There's a whole judging process that we go through as well. And then the prize, let's reiterate what we've got there.

Bec: Yes. So the prize is amazing, a round trip to Portugal. And then you'll also get a..

Phil: From anywhere? It doesn't matter where you are?

Bec: From anywhere in the world.

Phil: Okay.

Bec: You'll get a four day workshop with professional, New York Times contributor, Tim Neville.

Phil: Who we've had on the show a couple of years.

Bec: Yes. And then you'll get a 10 day trip around Portugal.

Kim: You have to write about Portugal?

Bec: Yeah. We'll give you a few assignments to do on the way, but pretty much you'll get to do whatever you like.

Phil: Real assignments, writing for World Nomads?

Bec: Yup. And also you write for one of our partners as well.

Phil: Oh, so you get published on both of them?

Bec: Yeah. So you'll get $1,000 spending money as well. And then you also get a rail pass thrown in from Eurail.

Kim: Okay. Awesome. So that's all we need to know.

Bec: Fantastic. Do you want to hear about the judges?

Phil: Oh yes.

Kim: Yeah.

Bec: So we've also got Norie Quintos who's editor at large at National Geographic magazine. We've also got Lola Akinmade, who writes for adventure.com and national geographic traveler.

Phil: What would they know about writing.

Kim: Have you read Tim's stuff?

Phil: I know.

Kim: Terrible. No, They're brilliant writers and fantastic opportunity. Look, this is all about turning your passion into a profession we've spoken before to not only winners of writing scholarships, but winners of the film scholarships and they go on to actually make money, careers out of these.

Phil: Ways to turn it into a career. Absolutely.

Kim: Thanks for that.

Phil: Thanks Beck.

Bec: No worries. So applications close 13th of March.

Phil: All right.

Kim: Good stuff. If you want to check out other episodes of the World Nomads podcast, yeah, you might want to check out the one on Argentina.

Speaker 8: We are very kind people. We like hugging and kissing. Whenever you arrive to a room, even if it's full of people, you will just kiss everyone. So saying high and bye, takes ages. But you have to kiss everyone, once you arrive and then before you go. But we only kiss once. I have so many funny stories when I was in Europe and I was trying to kiss my new friends in the cheek because we kiss like in the right cheek and they were like, oh, okay, this is unexpected.

Speaker 8: They will try to kiss me on the other side because you know, so many countries give two kisses.

Kim: You'll find that episode in show notes. You can get the World Nomads podcast on iTunes or download the Google podcast APP, ask Alexa and Google to play the world nomads podcast and Phil, to get into touch?

Phil: podcast@worldnomads.com and can I actually also say I've just, I know you can get the podcast through all those devices. Can you help out with word of mouth please? Listeners, can you tell your friends that you listened to the World Nomads podcast? That'd be great if you could do that for us.

Phil: Next week, We've got an amazing nomad. This is Susan Span, author and newly minted adventurer.

Kim: See you then.

Phil: Bye!

Speaker 1: The World Nomads podcast, explore your boundaries.