EP 135 The Hot Take: climbing the Pyramids and smoking on planes, we chat lost travel experiences & keeping e-docs safe on the road

This week, we’re launching our new segment, Hot Take! Kirstie and Belle are hacking out lost travel experiences - things you may have done in a former travelling life but are now no longer possible. Let’s wallow in the nostalgia!

Think climbing the Pyramids, or smoking on planes; just how golden was the Golden Age of Travel? What about animal interactions such as elephant rides, or scrambling up the metal poles that led to the top of Uluru. Some travel experiences are lost because they were simply bad, others because we’ve thought twice about them and realised that we may just be treading all over someone else’s beliefs and culture. 

Also, let’s talk about Virtual Packing – how you pack your electronic documents so they’re safe when you're on the road. And don’t forget to enter our competition to win a crime novel by Andrea Barton – enter on our instagram or facebook page; just like, follow and tag. 

Transcript

Belle Jackson  0:53  
Hi everyone, welcome back to the World Away. If you are new to our travel podcast, I'm Belle Jackson, and I'm here with my co-host Kirsty Bedford. So, we hope you've had a great week. What have you been up to, Kirsty?

Kirstie Bedford  1:07  
So, as this goes to air, I will be at the International Media Marketplace in Sydney, which is the biggest event on the calendar for travel writers to meet PRs and members of the travel industry. So, we have a conference day, and then we do sort of a speed dating scenario, and the reason this is of relevance and interest to you as a travel avid traveler, it's because we come back with a bunch of great story ideas and great learnings about what's happening within the industry, which we can then pass on to you. So, yeah, for us, this is just generally obviously a really good way to see colleagues face to face, and like I said, get new insights and learnings about what's happening in the industry. So, yeah, so what about you, Belle?

Belle Jackson  3:02  
Oh, I'm having FOMO because I'm missing out on IMM, but it is so cool to see this is actually a really solitary occupation, you know? Like, I'm, I'm a, I'm, I'm like a social Labrador, I'm shocking, but I do spend long time periods at home, and then when I go to IMN, which is see everybody from all over Australia and internationally. Oh gosh, I'm not looking at my instance, but this week I skipped up to Melloa in the heart of Victoria's high country to present at the at the regional tourism board. I was talking about the role of travel journalism, which is interesting, and we're talking about trends and things that we talk about here all the time, like wild swimming and public nudity, cropped up because I think that's always a bit of a seller, and, and who doesn't like to make a crowd laugh as well, and who doesn't like to talk about themselves too, but I'm also celebrating my cover story with the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age newspapers last weekend, which was about the changing face of travel in Central Australia, and we talked about it here on the podcast in the past as well, because in years past people travel to Uluru by road, taking weeks to discover such icons as Uluru and Kings Canyon, and the road trip is massive, but the flip side of that is you can now just do it in a weekend, so jump a Jet Star flight to Ayers Rock Airport for a weekend of desert, and then you're back in time for work on Monday morning,

Kirstie Bedford  4:21  
yeah, and what a remarkable experience that is. I mean, I was so fortunate to say it longitude 131 and do a story about about the region, then, and that was actually right before Covid hit, and gosh, that was just such an incredible experience. I don't think you can really explain the emotional feeling, the emotive feeling of being there, and that such a powerful place, until you do it well. For today's episode, we're actually launching a new segment called The Hot Take, where we are going to thrash out a travel issue, so it might be a hot trend, something that's topical, or something concerning, but we are just going to take some of the many topics that are of interest to travelers. And we sort of felt like they needed their own space, so we thought we'd just have a chat about them, so we do hope you like it.

Belle Jackson  5:07  
And the topic for our first hot take is lost travel experiences, things that you may have done in a former traveling life but are now no longer possible. So let's all wallow in the nostalgia, and you know the funny thing about this is that it's not just like, oh, you know, when I was in my 20s and backpacking and doing stuff, the world has changed. The travel world has changed so dramatically in the last five years, so you know, even if you were traveling only a couple of years ago, you can still get that nostalgia. And I've got, I'm going to kick off with one of the things that I don't miss the most, which is smoking on planes, and look, even in, I've got to confess, even in my university years, I did smoke cigarettes. I have vivid memories as a kid in regional Queensland, sitting with my dad, who was a very, very heavy smoker, and he would chuff all the way down to Tasmania to see family, and these were tiny, tiny planes, and actually, in hindsight, Christie, I think he might have been a nervous flyer, yeah, I didn't even think about it until I was thinking about this script, yeah, but that could have been a

Kirstie Bedford  6:10  
good point, good point. Well, I mustn't be as old as you. Oh, because I don't remember smoking in planes, but actually clearly there was smoking planes on my first international flight, because I was only six when I boarded my very first flight, international flight to Hawaii, and, but, yeah, I just don't remember it, and obviously, as a very young child, the excitement just overrode the, the smoking. Also, my dad was also a smoker, as well, so probably you know it wasn't, it wasn't something that was shocking or surprising to me, but and I also hate to admit that I was, I was also a smoker, and back in the Juno days, when I worked in newsrooms, radio newsrooms, the only break we got was to have a fag, so we would all go down to the the the the car park underneath the building, and to have a cigarette, because that was the only break you got, and then, and so it was. Yes, I'm actually a terrible reform smoker now, because I now hate the smell of smoking, but, but yes, smoking was actually officially banned on all Australian domestic flights in 1987 so I, yeah, so admittedly, yes, I obviously back then in 1987 I was well over six years old. Australia was the first country to implement such a ban, so the restriction was later extended to international flights operated by Australian characters, and that was not until 1996 although smoking was prohibited with an Australian airspace on international flights as early as 1990 That's so interesting, isn't it?

Belle Jackson  7:48  
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I look incredibly the first country to ban in flight smoking, amazing, probably because of my dad. He was shocking, he was absolutely shocking. But I remember my first international flight, I did it much later than you was to the US, and by then you could still smoke, but only in the last few rows of the plane. And I remember this, this couple, they were ordering cocktails, they were smoking, and they were dancing, they literally danced the whole way to LA. It was, and I just thought, oh, how glamorous they are with their cigarettes and then cocktails, and, and also, there was a really, really good-looking guy. It's funny how this has burned in my mind. There was a really, really good-looking guy in one of those last rows where he could smoke, and there was an empty seat beside him. The whole flight, women would just sit down, going, "Oh, hi, and start flirting with them, and then they'd be smoking cigarettes, and in hindsight, again, I think, oh, that poor bugger, he has just done, however, been like 13 hours or something insane with women, a trying to chat him up and be smoking all over him, like,

Kirstie Bedford  8:53  
yeah, but interestingly, like, we were saying, like, everyone loved it back then, it wasn't a big deal, like, I remember going into job interviews, I have friends who were saying they used to go into job interviews in the UK, and they would sit there, and that they would have to share a cigarette with the person that was interviewing them. That might happen to me, but

Belle Jackson  9:08  
no. Although I did quite a few job interviews in pubs, like literally in Ireland, like it's in, you know, journal interviews. Yeah, we'll go down the pub and have a chat. Okay. All right, let's do that. Contract written on the back of a barmat.

Kirstie Bedford  9:23  
Well, they talk about the golden age of travel, but was it actually that golden? So, flights actually did cost more, really. Flights cost more. I don't know about that.

Belle Jackson  9:33  
Yeah, per earnings, definitely.

Kirstie Bedford  9:36  
Yes, per earnings. Yeah, and they also were smelling bad. But on a positive note about travel experiences, we've come such a long way when it comes to this. Is something really close to my heart. So, wildlife care and conservation, and there, but there are still some people who just don't get it. So, I was actually in a cafe the other day, and I heard a woman who was, I was just picking up coffee, and I heard a woman who was rang to her for. End, about you know, this incredible sounded like a great holiday they'd had in Thailand with their family, but they were talking about how they were riding elephants, and I would just wanted to turn around and scream to her, what the hell, like what, like no, you like why, and you've obviously shared this all over socials, if you've done this, and yeah, I just thought now, and you know, 2026 are we really still at the point where people think it's okay to ride elephants? So I just, I just found that really deeply concerning and disappointing.

Belle Jackson  10:33  
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, I'd be interested to see what people are saying on socials. I mean, look, I've ridden elephants a few times. Again, this is just going to be a confessional of all of the crap things we've done traveling in our former lives before we were enlightened. I have ridden elephants a few times, but I do remember a turning point. I was in Jaipur in India quite a few years ago now, seeing elephants carrying people up the long ramp to the Ammar fort, and even then it was notorious for having some pretty vicious control techniques. It was also super hot, you know, no water in sight. There was no shade. The elephants were just standing, waiting for tourists to come and, and use them. And the company I was with, which was Abercrombie and Kent, which is a high-end provider, said, "Look, even a decade ago, the guide said to me, "No, we're not booking Ellie rides for guests because we can't guarantee that the animals are being treated well enough. And I, you know, I remember thinking, you know, they're even saying to the high-end clientele, with all of the money, "Going, no, not doing it, you have to walk, get on your two feet, or don't have the experience. I thought that was quite fascinating.

Kirstie Bedford  11:42  
Yeah, well, I've ridden a camel, not an elephant, but I have fed elephants, but I am glad I haven't written one. But look, I was interviewing Neil Rogers just the other day from Adventure World, and he's long been an advocate, really strong advocate for wildlife conservation and protection, and he was saying to me that because I explained, well, I told him about the story in the cafe, and he was saying to me that, you know, that the unfortunate part about even washing an elephant is that people, people might not realize that that elephant may have been washed 10 times that day, and its skin is red raw underneath, and it's being forced to stand there and be rubbed repeatedly by tourists, so something as simple as you think, oh, you're just standing there, and you know what, touching and washing the elephant, it's really, you know, there's really serious consequences to the well-being of that animal, so it's about that. Another really interesting thing he said, which, which I'll point out, was he was saying that they heard that there was a tour operator who was removing sloths from the tree so that people could hold them, and he said the minute they heard that, they just stopped using them. So he's got, they've got a really hard line policy, which is incredible, and it really has a flow on impact, because once people realize that they're not going to get the business from these major, these major tourism operators, if they, you know, businesses, if they continue to do things like pulling sloths off trees, so that people can, people can hold them.

Belle Jackson  13:16  
Wow, we've done that with koalas for so many years. So, I noticed just as recently as last month the Mason Elephant Safari Park in Ubud in Bali has now finally stopped rides on its elephants. I thought this was a really interesting story, because the owner, Nigel Mason, who's a British Australian, years ago rescued all of these Sumatran elephants that were from abandoned logging camps, so when the logging camps were closed, the elephants were just let loose, or I think that they were even some that just weren't even unchained from the parks, so he, he went in, built these giant rafts, and literally sailed them back to Bali. He made a film about it. It was actually incredibly emotional that they were giving these elephants somewhere to somewhere to live, because there was, there was all of this human animal conflict, because, of course, the elephants are hungry, they're going into villages, vegetable park, you know, the vegetable gardens, and they're subsistent farmers, and stuff like that. So they were starting this conflict between animals and humans. So he founded this elephant park, and one of the ways that he could fund the park, he told me, was, you know, he built accommodation in these lush parks, and to pay for it all, you know, to try to earn money to, to feed the elephants, because they do consume an enormous amount of food, of course, so he had rides and washing elephants in there, so they are all, yeah, so they, so they've, they've stopped all of that interaction, and just talking about it being a much more natural experience,

Kirstie Bedford  14:45  
and even though they've just continued the elephant rides, you can still stay at the Elephant Park and experience its conservation and ethical animal practices, and you can see that at MasonElephantlodge.com and we will put links in the show notes too. Um, another one, like Belle, you sort of touched on earlier, which was koalas visiting koalas, so in the Koala Conservation Hospital in Port Macquarie, the whole cuddler koala thing is now off the menu as well, and because we realized that the koalas don't actually like being cuddled, I'm sure by discussing sexually transmitted diseases, or whatever koalas get have that, that you think that that would have put a lot of people off, but apparently not, so and they need to sleep like 22 hours a day, so that's why that's why that's happened, is what is that sexually, what is that disease that koalas,

Belle Jackson  15:33  
chlamydia, chlamydia, I always say, I always say this to people overseas, when they go, like koalas, they're so cute, and I'm like, they're riddled with chlamydia, and you've got their little bottoms. Yeah,

Kirstie Bedford  15:47  
so I actually, the very first time my husband, who was my boyfriend then, our first trip together as a couple, when we were very young, was to come to Burley Head, and we're from New Zealand. It was actually cheaper to travel to Australia than it was to travel around New Zealand at the time, and because flights internally is so expensive, they still are in New Zealand, unfortunately, because of the monopoly of Air New Zealand. But so we, we travel, we came to Australia, and I did cut a little koala when we were in Australia, because back then, you know, it was the thing, it was the main thing we wanted to do, come and see wallabies and kangaroos and koalas, and you know what, I've lived in Australia for more than 20 years, and I still do not tire of seeing a wallaby, and at Phillip Island, which our regular listeners would know that I consistently rant on about, because it's my happy place, the wallabies everywhere down there, and every time I see one, even though I'm consistently on hikes down there, seeing them every time, I have the same reaction. I'm like a little kid seeing it, seeing it for the first time, and I just love it. So, yeah, so anyway, so wildlife experiences aren't off the cards, you can still have ethical experiences, but just make sure you do your research, so, and use people, think about the sorts of people that you're traveling with, so, for example, people like Intrepid and Adventure World, and Abercrombie, and Kent, as Belle mentioned earlier, they all have really responsible experiences all over the world, that, that you know, but it's just important to do your research.

Belle Jackson  17:18  
Other experiences that are now lost are not moving on from animals, are about monuments around the world, so there's, you know, some experiences that we've, that some people have had, like climbing Uluru. Although I've got to say, every time I put this on my socials, I still get somebody saying it's Australian land, and it's my right to climb it, and it's called Ayers Rock. Look, I'm going to make a stand on this and just set the record straight, legally, because it's actually not your land. It was handed back to the Ananoo 40 years ago, and we don't climb cathedrals and dump rubbish or wee on them either. So, the climb up over Uluru was closed permanently in October 2019 It's now a $10,000 fine if you do climb it, and they have - I was there just recently - they've taken down the chains and the poles that were dug into the rock to help people get up there because people were still trying to climb up it when that infrastructure was in place. The rust has it's actually left a trail of rust down the side of the Uluru, and it's called the Scar, and the indigenous people that live around Uluru have asked that people don't photograph it. So, look, I've interviewed rangers who've been up there to do rescues. They've been at least 3037 people have died, at least 37 people have died on Umaru. That's the official figure. And the rangers told me the amount of poo, nappy wipes, rubbish up there was always shocking. So that's another one to put into the let's not do that bucket, and I know it's not quite insanely, but I mean it is a tomb instead of a temple. The climbing the pyramids was banned in the 1980s although let me tell you, any day that you do go to the pyramids, you will see people trying to sneak a selfie, like they just sort of edging themselves up onto the bottom row of the stones, pretending that they're halfway at the top, the tourism police aren't always so quick, they're like having a fag and a cup of tea and looking at the pretty Russian girls, but these buildings are four and a half 1000 years old, isn't it better to protect them? We've got all of the, you know, we've got all of the changing climate and that it's got to contend with and a growing. City around it, and you can still go inside them, which is really, but you face a huge fine if you caught on to the top. So, what else have you got, Kirsty?

Belle Jackson  17:19  
Yeah, and one other thing I'll mention is when we were in Cambodia at Angkor Wat, you know, there were just people everywhere, and those remarkable.. that's like the largest archeological site in the world, and such an important place, and I agree with you, it's, it's a shame, you know, that really there are just so many people allowed, really, you want numbers limited, at least, and then you know consideration around restrictions of where you can go and what you can do, because how else are we going to preserve these ancient places for future generations. If we just continue to trample all over them, some other traditions that are dying out that are a bit sad are postcards. I mean, gosh, I just.. I used to love postcards, and when Dave and I went.. when we got married for a honeymoon, we did like five weeks around Europe, and back then there was no, there were no, we didn't have phone, mobile phones, and you know, the only way we could get contact home was was on a pay phone, and and I used to send postcards, and I love them, I love them so much. So, yeah, it's a shame that, that, that, that, that's been lost.

Belle Jackson  17:19  
Yeah, oh, look, I still try to write them. I am dreadful at sending them, though. I'm in a postcard group. There's a bunch of us travel writers and journalists who send postcards to each other. I've got to say, Rod Image, special shout out to him, because he always, always gets them out on time, whereas I'm like, I come up, I've got so many postcards unsent, or I'll send them from Australia, and I lose brownie points for that, but sometimes it just takes forever to find a post box or stamps. It's just not convenient anymore. Look, when I was in Saudi Arabia, I was actually told they don't have posts, they've got parcels, but there's no postal delivery. I don't know how it works. Nobody could explain it to me. It was most bizarre. And look, I'm going to divert away from the lost art of postcard writing to another place that tourism has changed, and I think this, I mean, this is a bit icky to admit publicly, but the first time I went to southern Chile, we took a boat out onto the Great Glacier in Patagonia, and the boat pulled up to the glacier, and the captain insisted that everybody chip a piece of ice off and drop it into their fiscal sour, so can you imagine doing that now? In fact, in fact, I was, I was there a couple of years ago, I went back a couple of years ago, and the glacier has receded so far back from global warming, it was a completely, it was completely different, and I had the photo, I put the photo side by side to compare them, and it was so shrunken from that changing environment, and possibly from people like me who were encouraged to treat glaciers as totally renewable. So I am so glad that one has gone. Let us not drink 1000 year old ice in our, in our pisco sours.

Kirstie Bedford  17:19  
No, oh my god. And there are some places here in Australia that are changing even now, like London Bridge on the Great Ocean Road, which broke its connection to the mainland in 1990 and incredibly, two people were stranded on the far part of the bridge at the time. I mean, do you know people used to drive out onto the edge of the limestone formation? That's pretty crazy to think about. And what about Belle? Let's talk about some of the places that you can't visit, but you wish you had, you could, and I am going to say Ukraine would be it for me, because I was reading this really sad statistic the other day that 152 UNESCO sites in Ukraine have been partially, and a lot of them completely destroyed since the beginning of the war, and that's just devastating.

Belle Jackson  17:19  
Oh my goodness, that is amazing. I mean, I look.. I backpacked around Ukraine, I was hiking in the mountains there, and spent about months, but three weeks, a month hiking through Ukraine, and it's such a beautiful country, and so diverse, but already, you know, I mean, there was always those historical schisms, but yeah, that is, that is a devastating statistic to have. I mean, look, I harbor a lot of regret about a lot of replaces. No, I'm supposed to let it go and not hang on to it, but Syria, it breaks my heart. When I was living in Egypt, I always thought it would be like they're kind of like New Zealand to Australia, you know? I did not think it'd be destroyed by war, and I am always, always glad that I visited Palestine when I did. I, you know, I went on this incredible walking tour before Covid with Australian tour company Crooked Compass, and it was incredible. The tour after ours was fully booked, but on my trip there was just one other woman, Judy. Hi, Judy, we're still in touch. Love, Judy, and there was just the two of us and our guide, Anwar, and we walked the Masr el Ibram, which is the Abraham's way through the desert canyons and olive groves into these incredible Coptic monasteries, and finally we walked into the city of Bethlehem, and it was just magical and. Gave me a far deeper understanding of the political situation between Palestine and Israel, and I will always treasure it, because I mean that for the meantime is completely lost, and it's just heartbreaking, the amount of the same thing, the amount of distraction of, you know, people and society, but also the cultural, historical sites that you see throughout the throughout the country.

Kirstie Bedford  25:26  
Thanks so much, thanks so much for tuning in to our hot take. We'd love to hear your thoughts. Drop us a note on our social search for at The World Awaits Podcast on Facebook or Instagram, and share your lost travel experiences with us. They can be good or bad. We would love to hear them, and we'll read them out next time. Have you entered our last giveaway? We've got two crime novels up for grabs by crime writer Andrea Barton, the books are from her Jade Riley series, The Godfather of Dance, which is based in New Orleans, and A Killer Among Friends, which is based in Melbourne.

Belle Jackson  26:30  
To enter, simply follow the podcast on Instagram or Facebook, you'll find us at The World Awaits podcast on both platforms, like the competition post, and for our bonus entry, tag a friend.

Belle Jackson  26:41  
And for more about Andrea, jump on back to last week's episode, and you can take a listen to her interview. 

Belle Jackson  26:48  
this week our tip is about virtual packing. You pack your clothes, you pack your toothbrush, but how do you pack your electronic documents so they are safe and secure?

Kirstie Bedford  26:57  
So we know it's sensible to keep hot copies of your passport, driver's license, credit cards, both sides of it, travel insurance policy, and tickets to hand, but electronic versions can fall into the hands of others.

Belle Jackson  27:10  
So the key is to use secure cloud storage through such apps as Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, or my favorite, Dropbox. I literally shove everything into Dropbox, so I can access it wherever I am in the world.

Kirstie Bedford  27:22  
Yeah, I have to say I am a little bit old school, and besides email, I do tend to print things out and take them in a little folder with me. Call me a boomer, but it is far more sensible to put them in an electronic drive. So, while you can store your itinerary with apps as TripIt or online Apple or Google Wallet, the security cloud storage gives that additional protection when it's locked with solid passwords and biometrics like fingerprints and face IDs.

Belle Jackson  27:48  
Yeah, the key takeaways are to remember to use strong, unique passwords, use multi-factor authentication, and security pundits recommend using an app such as an authentic authenticator, not SMF. So that's our hot tip.

Kirstie Bedford  28:02  
And if you don't have Wi-Fi or don't like jumping onto the hotel or airport Wi-Fi services, you can select the documents to be available offline, but the kicker is, if your phone's stolen, then obviously those are going to be available. So, yes, food for thought there. Promo here next week, I'm chatting to Dee Eta and Yael of the Hotel History Podcast, who cover off all the sordid and scandalous details of famous hotels.

Belle Jackson  28:28  
Oh, I cannot wait for that one. And we'd love it if you followed us on socials. Look for us on Instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn. Just search for The World Awaits Podcast, and feel free to drop us a line at hello at The World awaits.au and give us your hot take on lost travel experiences, and if you're enjoying this episode, please give us a rating or a review.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai