Niall Mackay Interviewed on NowOrNhi - Podcasts And Comedy (in Saigon) | Bonus Episode

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In Season 5 we spoke to Nhi Mai a Swiss born and raised Viet Kieu who decided to live in Saigon to discover more about her roots and gave her another perspective of her motherland.

She decided to create a YouTube channel about it, called Now Or Nhi to give insight into her life as a Viet Kieu / Expat in Saigon.

I was lucky enough to be a guest on her show and this was the first YouTube interview I had done before. Nhi wanted to talk to me about how I ended up in Vietnam after living in different countries, the journey of his podcast and how Seven Million Bikes started hosting comedy shows.

Thanks Nhi, come back soon, and enjoy hearing me be the interviewee!
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https://www.youtube.com/c/NowOrNhi

Seven Million Bikes is one of the top English-speaking podcasts in Vietnam. And I was so lucky to be the first YouTuber who got Niall Mackay, the founder of Seven Million Bikes, in front of the camera for an interview! We talked about how he ended up in Vietnam after living in different countries, the journey of his podcast and how Seven Million Bikes now also hosts comedy shows. If you are not really convinced by podcasts (or comedy shows) yet, give this one a try! Niall gave me an insight into the world of podcasts and comedy, one that I didn’t know about before. And even more of a surprise: All this is happening in Saigon / Vietnam!

Nhi

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Thank you for listening to, uh, Vietnam podcast by Seven Million Bikes. We share the stories of people with a love for Vietnam. My name is Niall Mackay. And I'm your host. I've lived in Vietnam since 2016. And first started this podcast to know more about this crazy puzzling energetic city. I was living in coats. I gone, and the people that live down. 

[00:00:23] As the shoe is grown. We now talk to people from all over the world who have a Vietnam story tissue. Whether they are locals, foreigners, Vietnamese, overseas, or VQ. In season five, we spoke to NEMA Swiss, born and raised VQ who decided to live in Saigon to discover more about heart roots. And give her another perspective of her motherland. 

[00:00:47] He created a YouTube channel code now on me. To give insight into her life as a VQ slash ex-pat in Saigon. 

[00:00:57] I was lucky enough to be a guest on her show. And this was the first YouTube interview I had ever done. Ni wanted to talk to me about how I ended up in Vietnam after living in different countries, across the world. The journey of my podcast and how Seven Million Bikes started hosting comedy shows. Ni has become a good friend and is an amazing person who at the moment has sadly gone back to Switzerland, but we look forward to welcoming her back to Vietnam soon. Why are we are between seasons at the moment? Me has allowed us to share with you the audio from that interview. So for the first time on a Vietnam podcast ever, you will hear me being interviewed. 

[00:01:39] Thanks ne come back soon and enjoy the episode taken from the now on the YouTube channel. Make sure you subscribe. There's a link in the show notes

[00:01:49] Uh, we announced, so I left and I moved to town again.

[00:02:16] A little diva here. You ready? Yep. It's Niall meal.

[00:02:26] It's. Kai. It's Neil MCI. Okay. Again. Hi everyone. And welcome back to my channel now or need today. I have another interview for you guys. It is Neil MCI. Hello? Hello? Good. How are you? Good. Very glad we could make it today. We are sitting in this quite new coffee in Italian, right? This is your friend's coffee ladies drinker in south African cafe.

[00:02:55] It's really nice. And it's really quiet also until we got here until we got here. I hope that the audio today is going to be perfect. We ordered, uh, our coffee, ice latte and a cappuccino cappuccino injury special. If you want to ask for the Avery special. So before we go into the main topic, which is your passion, um, podcasts and comedy, I want to know who is Neil. 

[00:03:24] Niall Mackay: so I'm from Glasgow in Scotland originally. Uh, I left when I was like 20 years old and went to America. Then I went to Australia and New Zealand and ended up in Vietnam. So being all over the world, Jen, so it's been a crazy, crazy 

[00:03:41] Nhi Mai: 20 years. It sounds like a very interesting life that you are living. How did you end up in Vietnam?

[00:03:47] Niall Mackay: We came here on vacation actually, first of all, and then we wanted to do like a year long trip around Europe, my wife and I, we wanted to do a year long trip around Asia. And so we did Thailand. We did Malaysia. Then we came to Vietnam and we were going to, well, we did our teacher training here in Vietnam, and then we were gonna move on to the next country.

[00:04:07] Traveling and then go back to New Zealand. And, uh, like most of people will, like many people came to Vietnam for about six weeks and five years later, it was still here. 

[00:04:17] Nhi Mai: Some of you might know or might not know. I did an episode with Seven Million Bikes, which is Neil's podcast. How does that actually go?

[00:04:27] Someone listens to the box. 

[00:04:28] Niall Mackay: That's going really well. And feedback's been really good. Yeah. People love it. I really enjoyed it as well. They're talking about, you have a very pleasant voice, which is helpful for your YouTube channel speaking in one of your five languages, which is very impressive. So you're not actually had an email from a listener saying they very much enjoyed listening to your episode.

[00:04:46] Nhi Mai: Very well. Thank you very much. If you haven't listened to that episode yet, I will link it down below. You should check it out. So today it's my turn. So host you. Um, how has a bit about Seven Million? 

[00:04:59] Niall Mackay: Whoa. So it started off as just a hobby. So were coming up nearly two years ago. My wave worked on Sundays and I had Sundays off.

[00:05:09] I was getting to the point where I was so bored. I would just go out on my bait, motivate for a drive and drive all the way to in yabby in back, just because I had nothing else to do, which makes me sound like a loser and had no friends. And I really enjoyed podcasts. I've always liked. Since like way back in university, wreckage of S was one of the first podcasts I listened to with Karl Pilkington and Stephen Machin.

[00:05:31] A lot of people will know those podcasts. And one day I was doing the dishes and I was like, I should just do a podcast. Like how hard can it be thing with. It's quite a little barrier to entry, right? Like you really just need a microphone. Depends how good you want to make it. So some people will go full out and get a studio and all of this stuff.

[00:05:50] But in the beginning I was like, I just need to buy a microphone and then set up. And so then, and that same kind of thought process. I was like, well, what would the name be? And then I think I just read something. Yeah. Seven and a half million motel bakes in Saigon. And so I was like, ah, Seven Million Bikes that will do I'm one of these people that don't really think too much about things.

[00:06:09] Like I just like, so I had the name, I looked up on microphone on Lazada, which broke after like six months. So that wasn't great, but, uh, and then just started making episodes and went from there. So you just 

[00:06:22] Nhi Mai: started from scratch? 

[00:06:25] Niall Mackay: Yeah. Well had to do a lot of research, so. Satan things. And that was, I'm actually been hired to help a company meet them in podcasts.

[00:06:33] So I'm not producing podcasts for other people. And I didn't realize that all the things I've been learning over the last couple of years as a hobby was actually like a skew. Yes. How do you get uploaded to all the different websites? What, what horse do you use? Just all these kind of like logistical things.

[00:06:51] Like it isn't as simple as you would just think. Like I just make a recording and then proof it's like it's in the internet, a lot of work to visit. I guess between a perfectionist. So I don't like to do it like perfectly, but I like to do it as best I can in the time limit with the resources that I have.

[00:07:07] So that's maybe not going to be healthy, but it will be as good as it can be. So I started off, um, doing them at home. It's a really nice story. And I shared this on my podcast recently, so my, my friend Louis who's. Basically the producer of the podcast and his wife, Kim came over to my house and he was showing me how to set up the microphone and do all the sound and things like that.

[00:07:27] And two, I recall that his wife, just in my living room, just to test the sound of the room and things like that. And she, she studied in the UK for seven years. She's been to me's, but she's just been really interesting point of view on life, about being an overseas Vietnamese student. What would that, what was that late?

[00:07:44] The challenges, things like this. She ended up having about half an hour conversation, which was really interesting. Then we moved to the bedroom. I interviewed Louis because we were just testing the sun again. So interesting. So funny. Yeah. Funny stories about he went to a mess is still one of the funniest stories I've ever held.

[00:07:59] He went to an art exhibit like installation performance, and it was microphones. These super sensitive microphone set up and they were recording the sound of the plant growing. 

[00:08:12] Nhi Mai: Can you hear 

[00:08:13] Niall Mackay: that apartment, these microphones, but that you just said. So these were just meant to be tests. And that was so interesting.

[00:08:24] I was like, so let's use these as episode. I wanted to interview people who had a story to share, regardless of who you are, expat, all locals. Wherever you're from in the world, everyone's got another layer. Right. But I was beginning to realize that so many people in Saigon had that extra layer, but no one knew about it.

[00:08:42] Yes. So that was kind of the idea as well. So I was interviewing people like Jakey Hobson, who was the first person on the shore. He's a comedian, he's a teacher, he's a Fulbright scholar, but he'd also been in a, as he calls it habits. What the freezer. Moderately famous band from the nineties into the two thousands, because if the knee is 40 guests, so we've interviewed people from all over the world, people in Ireland, people in, um, New York and then just the main thread is of the, they have a connection to Vietnam.

[00:09:12] Maybe the next big step is trying to interview more well-known guests and I enjoy interviewing anyone. So it's not like I want to interview famous people, but I really think that. Probably going to be the next, the weird to take it up to the next level. I'm so sorry. I'm not famous enough yet to meet this blew up one day.

[00:09:29] Sorry, 

[00:09:31] Nhi Mai: but you know what? Maybe one day you'll get famous. Maybe 

[00:09:36] Niall Mackay: you get like a, an email in five years. That'd be like your video just hit 1 million. I'm never going to be famous though. 

[00:09:42] Nhi Mai: Seven Million Bikes first was, uh, Saigon 

[00:09:44] Niall Mackay: podcast. Yeah. So that was that because I was just based in Saigon, it was, it was name was Seven Million Bates Saigon podcast, but then it started to grow.

[00:09:54] And as I said, it was interviewing guests from overseas and even people based in the name. And then I looked at where the listeners were coming from and they were from all over Vietnam and all over the world as well, actually. And so the beginning of this year in January, we decided to change the name to a Vietnam podcast, which seems to be.

[00:10:12] Yeah. 

[00:10:13] Nhi Mai: It's the content that you create on your podcast, always Vietnam related, or how do you choose the people on your podcast? 

[00:10:20] Niall Mackay: Um, I get asked that question a lot recently and I don't have like a strict criteria. It's just basically, can you talk and are you connected to Vietnam in somewhere 

[00:10:30] Nhi Mai: speaking about podcasts in Vietnam, based in Vietnam?

[00:10:33] How is the scene like, are there many you competitors or do you have. I don't know how, how how's the podcast, 

[00:10:41] Niall Mackay: one of the best ways to promote your podcast. Apparently what I read is that, um, that someone comes on your channel and then you promote them and vice versa like we're doing right now, collaboration.

[00:10:52] The analogy that really stuck in my head was it said the rising tide floats all ships, all the podcasts. Well, they'll all do better. So it's not about like trying to compete for listeners because chances are, if someone likes my point. I mean, they listen to podcasts, so they'll make more than likely to listen to someone else's I did look her own test Healey, who else is doing a podcast.

[00:11:15] And thankfully that day, I think there was only one in English language. January. There may have been more in Vietnamese, but I'm not sure. So there's maybe roundabout 10, less than 10 English language ones. There's quite a lot of Vietnamese language ones, but I don't know what they talking about. 

[00:11:30] Nhi Mai: I don't know what it was exactly.

[00:11:32] It was a statistic or something that you posted on your Facebook about a ranking or something. What was that 

[00:11:39] Niall Mackay: exactly? There's two things I found out recently. One was that. I peaked at number six in Vietnam on the apple podcast charts. Wow. Which is pretty awesome. Number six in Vietnam, not every week, but that was my top top chart.

[00:11:57] I picked the number six, but then the one that like blew my mind was I phoned some website called listen notes.com, which I'd never had a dog. And it said Seven Million baby. 10% of podcasts in the world. What? Yeah. Wow. So the 2 million podcast in the world. So that means I'm one of 200,000, which sounds less impressive.

[00:12:19] Nhi Mai: What do you think make your podcasts so popular? 

[00:12:23] Niall Mackay: I'm a shameless promoter. 

[00:12:26] Nhi Mai: So you like a spammer on every Facebook group. And do you think that 

[00:12:30] Niall Mackay: helps? I don't know. I asked myself that question all the time, some people, and again, I read this on the group. So how do you promote your podcast? I'm skilled to like share and skill to put myself out there.

[00:12:41] And I'm just kind of one of these people that's like. Yeah. So I just like, we talking 

[00:12:45] Nhi Mai: about podcasts a lot now. Um, and you know what, like, I'm not really a podcast listener unless I know the person or it is like something that really interests me. I'm just more, I guess, on other. Media and YouTube and Instagram, what do you think are the advantages or, or why should someone listen to podcasts?

[00:13:07] Niall Mackay: Well, it's funny because I think it was in my, my grandpa was talking to that last week about my podcast and he said to me, what time is it on it?

[00:13:19] I think

[00:13:23] the radio on the internet and you can listen to it anytime you want. So, but John, to your question. So for me, I never watched YouTube. I never watch Instagram TV, and I know those was a massive mediums and I know there's so many people over there who would watch that for much, hence why we're making a YouTube video right now.

[00:13:40] Right. But from, that's just not me because I never had the time to. And watch a video, but I have time to like, like I mentioned, do the dishes. I can listen to a podcast. I can be working on the computer. Wasn't a podcast. My sister has like, um, what do you call them? Waterproof headphones. So you could, you could win.

[00:14:00] I've never done that. You could swim and listen to our podcast. What I mostly would do is when I'm driving. So I don't listen to music generally because I find it distracting and I, I, to hear what's going on around. I can listen to a podcast while I'm driving as well. So I just, that's the main thing for me is the difference.

[00:14:15] You can do it while you're doing other things, 

[00:14:18] Nhi Mai: besides being a podcast host, I know that you also do comedy. I do. Where does this come from? It has, it's always been a passion of 

[00:14:28] Niall Mackay: yours, always. I mean, we've got. Comedic history in Scotland, you know, comedy and standup comedy is just ingrained in our DNA and our nature.

[00:14:36] And then we've got Billy Connolly who most people will know. I would imagine who Billy Connolly is. He's from Glasgow like me. He's just literally like a God in Scotland. He's just the most talented, funny person in the world. And so just growing up from a young age stand-up comedy is just something that's really natural.

[00:14:57] Grew older and listened to things like bill Hicks and George Carlin and Lenny Bruce people who use comedy to, to make a social message. Yeah. That was when it really got me hooked was like, oh, these guys can like talk about some really deep topics that really resonate with you. I have not become the comedian.

[00:15:14] I thought I would become, but I think I've no become more like Billy Connolly. Who's my hero. He just, he just. Stories and silly jokes, or I'm not comparing myself to Billy Connolly cause that's in comparable buttons, stale of comedy. I didn't know. 

[00:15:30] Nhi Mai: Before I knew you that there was such a big comedy scene in, in Vietnam, like, uh, I saw your performance two weeks ago, the lineup was impressive and it was 

[00:15:44] Niall Mackay: so much fun.

[00:15:46] Used to what, for a charity I put on a charity comedy or a couple of them, because one, I love comedy and one or two, I knew how to put on events and three years of good way to raise money. But then from then I was like, well, why don't I just put on my own choice? So I started putting on my own chores and now I argued and Seven Million Bikes grew from just being a.

[00:16:07] Being comedy shoes 

[00:16:09] Nhi Mai: as well. What kind of people are coming to the shows or is it mostly, um, 

[00:16:14] Niall Mackay: mostly, yeah, I'd say probably 80 to 90%. Ex-pat the shoe that you came to? We did some advertising in Vietnamese. Um, obviously making it clear that comment who's going to be in English, but there's obviously so many people here that speak English and also are exposed to Western culture leaks or Netflix comedies and YouTube comedies, whatnot.

[00:16:34] They'd love to have Vietnamese. Comedians perform. Yeah. But they've all gone to perform in Vietnamese. 

[00:16:41] Nhi Mai: Is there anything that you kind of wish more off in the podcast or in the comedy scene from Vietnam? 

[00:16:50] Niall Mackay: You are the prime example. When you said I never knew that this comedy scene existed. It's the most common feedback we get.

[00:16:56] So for me, obviously, like I'm surrounded by day and night. I could tell you what show is on tonight. Tomorrow, every night. There's basically a comedy show in nearly every night. Every districts. What about the 

[00:17:06] Nhi Mai: future of Seven Million Bikes as you have any upcoming projects or your dream with Seven Million Bikes?

[00:17:15] Niall Mackay: Um, well, we've got season six coming up soon, so we'll start recording that in an Ellie Mae comedy shows. Now we got, I've got four a month that I do in Saigon. Just get more people to know about comedy. Come out to shores. You honestly you'll have such a great time if you come out. I think the thing is.

[00:17:31] Which maybe people would assume, which I would assume as well, that it's going to be amateur comedy. If you come out to any show in Saigon, it wouldn't be like that. It's going to be the standard of comedy here. We'll, we'll absolutely shock you this week. No flying up to the Nang and high-end so got three shows in central Vietnam, which that was really exciting.

[00:17:48] I got invited to go up there and do shores 

[00:17:51] Nhi Mai: so much, Neil for taking your time to join me today. It was very active. To know more about why you're laughing 

[00:17:59] Niall Mackay: because you can't get my name. Right. Thank you for having me on. It's been awesome. It's my first YouTube interview. Thank you for listening. Hope you enjoyed that.

[00:18:06] Check out Seven Million Bikes. Can you 

[00:18:08] Nhi Mai: tell the viewers where they can find 

[00:18:10] Niall Mackay: you so you can Facebook, Instagram, there's some comedy videos on YouTube, so you can check them out, but I'm not a YouTuber like yourself. Um, we've got a website as well as Seven Million Bikes dot com and you're playing all the events on there.

[00:18:24] All the events on Facebook and. It'd be awesome to see you, that you have a 

[00:18:27] Nhi Mai: good team. Yeah. I will link everything down with all. Thank you so much for watching and see you. Next time 

[00:18:34] Niall Mackay: you come back to the beginning of this video, get a bottle of booze. And every time we say the word podcast, you have to take it.

[00:18:41] And that will be, yeah. Cause it'll be smashed by now. You know how many things we've seen that we've sent out 100 times.

[00:18:48] 

[00:19:06] Niall Mackay: Thank you again to ne my, for letting us share this episode, it was so much fun. Like I said, make sure you subscribe to the channel now. Only on YouTube. The links are in the show notes. , enjoy these bonus episodes where we get ready for season eight, starting in January, 2022. 

[00:19:23] Jails. 

[00:19:24]