Vern Flaig (Maple to Mandalay)-500 Photos, 4 Years, and the Ultimate Motorcycle Adventure

SPEAKER_03 0:00

In the author's spotlight where the stories collide. Twenty authors waiting. Let curiosity guide. All genres invited. From horror to sweep. Unravel the tales at our podcast heartbeat.

SPEAKER_00 0:24

Welcome to the Author Spotlight series. This is where we step behind the pages to meet the people who create the stories we love. We'll talk about their latest book, their writing journey, and the story behind the story. And probably a few things neither of us plan to talk about. Because around here, the best conversations have a way of taking us somewhere unexpected.

SPEAKER_01 0:46

And today we're putting Vern Fleg in the spotlight. Vern, welcome to Travel Time Stories. We are so glad to have you here today.

SPEAKER_06 0:54

Well, thanks for having me. It's wonderful to be on. This is my first uh interview. So that's kind of cool.

SPEAKER_01 1:00

That's exciting. I'm glad it's with us.

SPEAKER_06 1:02

Yeah, I did my I did my first book fair uh two weeks ago, so I'm all new at this.

SPEAKER_01 1:10

Yeah. I love it. I love it. Okay, well, before we dive into your book, we'd love for you to introduce yourself and to our audience and tell us a little bit about who you are.

SPEAKER_06 1:22

Well, my name is Bern Flag and I wrote a book called Maple the Mandalay. When I was a young man, uh just turned 18, I left home for a little quick trip down to Australia and New Zealand and um took some pictures and ended up being away for four years. So that was kind of something that defined my entire life. And when I got back to Canada, I became an electrician. I've been in the trade for 50 years, still have my own business. I've got horses, dogs, used to have cats, but the last one just passed away a little while ago. Live on a live on a small ranch in uh north central Alberta, up by Edmonton.

SPEAKER_00 1:56

So wonderful. I love it. Well, we're excited to get to know you more and to talk about your memoir, Maple to Mandalay. And Vern, I think your hook gives us a pretty good idea of the scale of this adventure. The hook is 500 photographs, four years on the road in the 70s, three motorcycles, and one extraordinary journey from Canada to Mandalay and beyond. This was only supposed to be a quick trip to New Zealand when it started out.

SPEAKER_06 2:30

Kind of funny how the travel bug can get you when you're that age, you know. I don't know. It was it was just for example, Australia was uh easy to get to get into at that time, and you didn't even need visas or anything. They didn't even stamp my passport. And it was pretty easy to find work. So when I ran out of the money in Australia, I was able to fill the coffers back up further quickly. So that was good.

SPEAKER_00 2:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 2:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:53

So when you first left Canada, it was because you had a heartbreak and you wanted to get away for a bit, correct?

SPEAKER_06 3:02

That's right. Yeah. Yeah. I was yeah, I was pretty cut up about getting uh having my girlfriend leave me. I it was understandable. She got her good opportunity to go on this thing called Canada World Youth, and they would go for a year, leave away. And I was like, I just graduated from high school, and I says, No, oh man. There was no way I was sitting around home on my butt. Well, she's out checking out the world, so I saved every nickel I could, man. I in about three or four months I had a thousand bucks and a return ticket to Australia and away I went, and I was gone.

SPEAKER_00 3:35

I love it.

SPEAKER_06 3:36

Yeah. Yeah, my parents are sitting there. What the heck was that all about?

SPEAKER_01 3:41

Right? I'm sure they were. Your description says you left Canada in 1972, and what kept driving you was this insatiable curiosity to see what was around the next bend. I love that phrase, by the way.

SPEAKER_06 3:57

I still have that. Makes my wife crazy.

SPEAKER_01 3:59

At what point did you realize I'm not going home anytime soon?

SPEAKER_06 4:04

That's a good question. I have no idea there ever actually was a point where I re when I did I realized that. Um I think I got over to Perth and then I was, what was I doing with the work and then I forget. But I sent my girlfriend, she was in Malaysia, I sent her money to come down to Australia. Unfortunately, she had the good good chance not to do that. Thank heavens. And I think at that point was like, okay, I'm just gonna keep on going. So it was two and a half years in Australia, zipping around the continent there on motorcycles and stuff, and before I went up through Middle East, Asia, and Europe. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:35

Yeah, so let let's talk about the motorcycles because motorcycles are my thing, have been since I was a kid. I had I got my first one when I was seven years old. I got a Honda, a little Honda 50. I love motorcycles. So when I got to that point in the book, I was like so excited uh to find out that you gained a love for motorcycles yourself. Oh man, did I ever live in Hawaii, correct? Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 5:01

Hawaii. My first ride. Oh yeah. That got me hooked. That's right. Yeah. We were uh can I tell you about that story? Yeah, I guess I can. I left Canada with a friend of mine who's a year older than me, called his name was Sean, and he was already into motorcycles, but I hadn't really been on them before. Somebody says we should go rent some motorcycles and drive around the island of Hawaii. We flew over there on 747, which is kind of another story. And I'd never been on one, so no big deal. Those bikes were cheap. A couple Honda 90s, and had my backpack on my back, got on this bike, grabbed up the motor, dumped the clutch, and front wheel came right off the ground. I'm running behind down the street on my on my legs with the bike up in the air, my back slapping on my back, and I hit the brake and fell over the front of it and got my feet on the pegs, and we were off. And I've never looked back. Yeah, that was really something. Yeah, that I got a taste of that motorcycle, and I knew I was in love. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:57

Yeah, it's it's a sense of freedom that a car just does not give you.

SPEAKER_06 6:02

No, not even close. That's right. Yeah. No, they're they've been a passion of mine all my life. I just sold my latest motorcycle, it was the Honda Goldwing, so that was the biggest one I've owned. Beautiful bite.

SPEAKER_00 6:14

Yeah, those are very nice.

SPEAKER_06 6:15

You're probably a Harley Harley girl, I imagine.

SPEAKER_00 6:18

That's actually what I grew up on, is uh, well, I personally always had Hondas. Um my brother-in-law was the Harley man, and he only would own Harley Davidson. So if you didn't have a Harley in his book, you know, you weren't really a motorcycle rider.

SPEAKER_06 6:34

Yeah. We used to go down the sturgis pretty regularly, and that was always fun. I always had the the jab bikes and and sturges, but nobody cared. It was fun.

SPEAKER_00 6:43

Yeah, exactly. So one of the other things that was so funny is your stories of riding around Australia on the motorcycle and the bugs hitting you in the face before you got your full face mask.

SPEAKER_06 6:56

Oh man. That uh yeah, I got that. Well, that was yeah, that was a 750. I bought the 750 Suzuki, that's right. It was a that was a nice bike. A water bucket, like water buffalo, they called them down there, a water bucket. Water bucket, I think they're called in Australia. Water buffalo here in North America. Anyway, that thing has so much more power than my little Suzuki or the Triumph I went before, so I'm zipping down the highway, open face helmet, and it's locust about six inches long. It was huge. Got me right between the eyes. It just embedded themselves right into my brain. Every time I drove by a patch of corn after that, I got hungry. Anyway, I went right down. I and I burnt the crap out of my face too. Just fried it that day, and I had that big scar from that locust. And I went down and got a full full-face helmet, and I was a full face rider for the rest of my life, and always have the after that one. That just about knocked me off the back on the out the back door on that bike, I'll tell you. Holy smokes, that hurt. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:56

Yeah, I I don't blame you there. I I always use the full face helmet. I I don't like to eat bugs, so yeah.

SPEAKER_06 8:04

Yeah. Yeah. And there was one time going across the nullabor, was it had my girlfriend on the back. I've changed the names of all the girls there for privacy reasons. Anyway, she was on the back and she was from New Zealand. She wanted to go back home, so we went from Perth to Sydney. And but across the Nullabor, that's this massive, huge desert in Australia. We were going across that. And some was a sand road at the time, and some pavement, but this particular stretch was pavement. Now we used to go everywhere 80 miles an hour, it was miles an hour back then, uh, down in Australia. Now it's all kilometers. But we were zipping along, and I saw this cloud on the on the road. I was like, what? Is it a sandstorm? I couldn't figure out what it was. And we plowed into this swarm of locusts at 80 miles an hour, and it was just like being pelted with a shotgun. All these bugs I couldn't see out of my visor. We were just bug guts from head to toe. It was unbelievable, and the road was slippery too. Anyway, we didn't crash or anything, but we couldn't see. We had to stop and dry out because we were soaked from the bug guts. And of course, it was probably close to 100 degrees Fahrenheit down there, so we dried off pretty quickly, and then the bugs just flaked off in like pieces of pancakes. That was something.

SPEAKER_01 9:14

So bad. Yeah, bugs are a lot bigger down there.

SPEAKER_06 9:18

Yeah, they got big bugs. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:22

Yeah, exactly. So did traveling that way on the motorcycle versus in a car force you to interact with places and people differently?

SPEAKER_06 9:31

Oh, yeah, yeah, of course. Yeah, if you're on a bike, people come over to talk all the time, especially other people on motorcycles. And other people are often curious if you're on a motorcycle. Well, in those days, especially, because there weren't as many around as there are now, but people would always come over and talk. Yeah. It's like having a cat dog. You can always meet people with something like that, you know?

SPEAKER_00 9:51

Yeah, exactly. So of the three motorcycles, which one was your favorite?

SPEAKER_06 9:56

The Suzuki was nice, but the Triumph had just that thing.

SPEAKER_01 10:00

I was gonna say in the book, you really love that Triumph. I mean I love that. I really, really love that Triumph.

SPEAKER_06 10:07

I love that Triumph. Yeah, it had that neat rumble and it uh it had so much more power than my Suzuki. It was really comfortable to ride, and the shock, the suspension was good because it was all an adventure motorcycle, one of the very first ones ever made. It was 500cc twin triumph TR5T, beautiful bike, but it had a very small gas tank. That was unfortunate. But um, it was comfortable to ride, and it just had this super cool factor about it, but it didn't last very long, it didn't couldn't take the dust. So the dust didn't have good air filters on it. It wasn't made for the Australian O bag. Not a chance. You need a you need a an air filter the size of a bass drum to keep the sand out of something in that country, I'll tell you. So it ate the engine up apart pretty quick. But it when I had it, it was wonderful to ride, I'll tell you. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:57

One of the pictures that tickled me in your book was a picture of the triumph. And I thank one of the girls that attached to the triumph was a like a yellow plastic jug of gasoline. Yeah. And because the motor was so small, I remembered you saying you had to take one with you, and I'm like, there they are. That thing just riding around on the back of the bike, you know. Yeah. And that was a that was a common thing back then. It was not a big deal for us to to do that.

SPEAKER_06 11:27

No, it wasn't. The the gas tank was only good for a hundred miles, and lots of times the gas stations were farther apart than that in those days. So you had to strap on a plastic jug of gas on the back, a little plastic bomb, and hopefully, nobody rear-ended you.

SPEAKER_04 11:43

Exactly. Right.

SPEAKER_06 11:45

No, it's just the way it was. Nobody even thought twice about it. It was like riding in the back of a pickup truck these days, you know.

SPEAKER_04 11:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 11:53

Yeah. We did it all, everybody did it. It was a common way of travel. Now it's like the horror.

SPEAKER_00 11:58

Yeah, it was no horror. It was no big deal, but now, gosh, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 12:01

That's right. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 12:03

Well, just like we didn't have seat belts, you know, our seatbelt was our mom's arm that she stuck out, you know. Yeah. That's right. Exactly.

SPEAKER_06 12:11

Things have changed a little bit over the years. There is no doubt about that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:15

Yeah, exactly. Just a bit, just a bit. So, Vern, your book description ends with forget Survivor, what could go wrong? Which tells me the answers probably quite a lot. So Vern, what went wrong? Give me one story from this four years that you when you gingerly just thought, oh my gosh, I have just a terrible decision.

SPEAKER_06 12:43

The one where I broke my leg was the was the worst, yeah. That that still bothers me today. I had a nice little girlfriend in place called Kananara, which is way up north in Australia. But I mean it's stinking hot up there. And I felt we got to some temperatures that were, well, 52 degrees Celsius. That's what's that about 125 degrees Fahrenheit. It's really hot, as hot as Texas, I guess.

unknown 13:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 13:08

Maybe a little warmer.

SPEAKER_00 13:10

About like where I'm at.

SPEAKER_06 13:11

Yeah, maybe a little warmer than that, but it was really smoking hot. And we decided to go ride some horses. She had these uh racetrack thoroughbreds. So that was being from Alberta, Canada. That's a cowboy country. Of course, I'd ridden some horses. My one of my girlfriends there, the girl that broke my heart, actually had a big old horse. We used to ride that thing around all over the place to all her friends. But I just stole rides off those things. I didn't really know anything about horses, not like I do now because I've had horses for 40 years. Anyway, we decided to race the horses home. One of my friends and myself. That's just something anybody who knows anything about horses knows just that's just something you should never ever do because they got lots of speed, but their brakes suck.

SPEAKER_04 13:51

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_06 13:52

Especially if they're running home. Especially if you're giving them the wrong cues. So I'm on this horse and we're going the fastest. I've never gone so fast in a horse. We're coming up to the barnyard, and there's all this old equipment laying around everywhere. Hunks of old caterpillar tractors and combines and cotton harvesters and big heavy chunks of steel laying everywhere on this trail that we're on. And we're flying down there at a hard gallop, and I'm telling the horse to stop. So you do that by pulling on the reins, of course. But no one told me that you weren't supposed to stick your your heels into the horse to hang on. You're supposed to put your heels out, which at that time I didn't know. So I've got the I've got the brakes on, and then I've got the heels in, with the heels are meant as a signal to go, and the reins tight. This is make the horse stop. Well, the horse is confused, and he chose to go with the signal of let's go. So we ran around the corner of this bar, and I knew the gate was closed. We hit that gate, uh, probably 35-40 miles an hour, just slammed right into it, and I went face first into the dirt and the lights out for me. And the horse slipped over and landed on top of me, and I ended up with a broken leg. So I was hoping it wasn't broken, but it was kind of sticking sideways with the clue. So that was probably the worst thing that happened to me. There were other scary things, but that was probably the worst. And I had to get flown around Australia, I had to get screws, a big old wood screw stuck on my leg to hold it back together again, and then I was um shipped back down to Perth and to recover. Anyway, that was that was the biggest screw-up.

SPEAKER_01 15:26

You were pretty cool about it in the book when it happened, though. So I have to ask, weren't you scared? I mean, you're not home. You just figured out you broke your leg and yeah.

SPEAKER_06 15:37

Well, uh I sent a letter home to my parents. Yeah, as you were aware, those dark girls aerograms they took about two weeks to get home and two weeks to reply. So you're probably looking at a five weeks turnaround time for this. So I sent a letter home saying, gee, do I have any medical coverage? Because this is gonna cost me about 200 bucks in medical bills, like stay in the hospital for a few days and flying all over the country. It's gonna cost me about 200 bucks, so serious amount of cash, too young kid back in those days. Of course, I didn't have any insurance because I'd been over away from Canada for over a year at that time. So I was on the hook for the bill. So, of course, I didn't know this until I got home, but my mom lost her marbles, and dad, the same thing, he was all upset about this. Oh my god, my son's laying in a crock-infested ditch somewhere, dying, and he caught swarmed by flies. That's that that's what I would think. If my kids told me that.

SPEAKER_00 16:33

Exactly.

SPEAKER_06 16:34

They uh got Canada's uh Foreign Service on that. Now, I don't know how they tracked me down because I was pretty much untraceable then. I was living in some sleeping on the floor in an apartment on a place called Scarborough Beach in Perth, which is an amazing place. And they tracked me down and said your parents were worried about you and they sent you a check for a thousand bucks. And I said, Well, I'm okay financially, I don't need their money, so send it back. And the guy was there for about five minutes. I found out about this when I got home. My my mother, uh, when they found she filed that I didn't need a thousand bucks, she said, Oh my god, he's okay. She was so relieved. That was the communication I used, oh boy. Yeah, I was I was a bad kid. Anyway.

SPEAKER_01 17:17

Did you really know how I mean, did you realize how serious the situation was, though? I mean you had a broken leg, you were in another country, and or is this one of those experiences that just seems crazier looking back 50 years later?

SPEAKER_06 17:32

I wasn't really worried at all, to tell you the truth. I uh you know, like I said when we were growing up, we had a different upbringing than a lot of kids do nowadays. We're not walking around across traffic with our looking at our phone. We spent lots of time out in the bush out in the Rocky Mountains, just living like wild kids, you know. We were very self-sufficient and and independent. You know, we were ready, a lot of us uh at that age were very capable at 15 years of age. And uh at at I would have been 19 then, and this was just something I took in stride. It wasn't that big a deal. It was unfortunate, but I just knew that I'd have to deal with this. I had enough money to deal with it and get the cast off and find another job. This is exactly what I did. Yeah. I mean, no one was gonna do it for me, so that's what it was.

SPEAKER_00 18:21

Yeah, that's true. This is very true, very true.

SPEAKER_01 18:24

Determination, determination. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:27

I think one of the scariest uh stories for me in the book was when you learned about how you shouldn't be talking to Afghan women.

SPEAKER_05 18:35

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:36

When y'all got off the bus and you said those guys swarmed around y'all, I was my heart dropped. I was like, oh my god, what's gonna happen to you?

SPEAKER_06 18:44

Oh, I thought we were goners, honestly. Yeah, that was the guy I was traveling with. I just connected with Brian again, too. This is uh I was traveling with the guy from New Zealand and his name Brian, and I just found him again online. He doesn't have much of an online president, so we I sent him a copy of the book, which is pretty cool. That's awesome. I love that. He wouldn't back down from a herd of wild lions, a tried of wild lions. He was that kind of guy. He had no fear whatsoever. He's a mountain climber, and he was ready to take on that gang of 50 uh upset Afghani guys uh in a heartbeat. Actually, I'll I'll go back a little bit. I met a girl on the bus from Peshawar, which is Pakistan, to Kabul. Oh my god, she was she was just beautiful, you know. She wanted to talk, she initially she initiated everything. So I sat with her on the bus and she said, When we get to uh Kabul, you can't let the guys there see that you're talking to me, they'll be upset. Well, of course they saw. So they lost their freaking marbles, and we got off the bus and um yeah, they were ready to eviscerate us. But I got in between Brian and the eviscerators. How about you just give us a room somewhere in town here? Because those are all the guys they meet, meet all the buses looking for tourists to take to these cheap flop house hotels, which is exactly what we're looking for. And eventually they thought that taking some money would be better than killing us, so that's what they did. And they took us to one of the hotels and everything settled down. But I learned a lesson there. Don't be looking at the Afghan girls in in Afghanistan. It was a different country, a very cool country, amazing country. I it's just really incredible. But they did have some different customs that I wasn't aware of. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:20

Yeah. That that had to have been scary. I mean.

unknown 20:24

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 20:24

Because it scared me. It scared me reading it. I think that was to me was more scary than your broken legs.

SPEAKER_06 20:31

That was a scary moment, yeah. There were there were other times. Well, other time in Afghanistan, I had some some guys sort of shake me down. They pulled a knife on me to take my camera gear, and there was it was just over my dead body, you're getting my camera. Like I I bought that Nikon in Singapore. You are you're just not getting this this thing off me. So they had their knife pulled out, and I when I was in Kabul, this they sell knives there. So I bought a big chancy switchblade, big heavy thing, and so I I was shitting bricks, but they were not getting my camera, and they were not getting my money, and that's because I knew that would be the end of me, right? That'd be I'd be screwed.

SPEAKER_00 21:07

Right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 21:08

So I pulled my knife out and uh hit the button for the switchblade, and it came out with a massive clunk. And I said in my shaky, scared voice, this is a noise. Way before Crocodile Dundee ever said that. And I think they were just as they were a couple of young kids, and they were just probably as scared as I was, so they turned tail and ran, and I breathed a great sigh of relief. That was that was that was that was pretty scary. Yeah, that was scary. Yeah. But they just weren't getting that from me. I mean, that was not happening. Yeah, I was in if if you if you look on the map and see where um her at is, that's a long freaking way from anywhere we could get help. You're on your own. So that was just I was fighting for my life from now. Probably probably.

SPEAKER_00 21:52

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_06 21:54

Yeah, I was just glad that they were uh about as brave as I was, and they turned tail and ran, so that was good. Yeah. Anyway, it was an experience. One I hope to never repeat.

SPEAKER_00 22:05

Yeah, I was gonna say that's one that you probably would put on the list of do not repeat.

SPEAKER_05 22:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:11

Yeah. So we've kind of touched on a little bit, but you did all of this traveling back in the 70s, which was pre-internet, pre-cell phone, pre-everything, pretty much. Except for maps. Yes.

SPEAKER_06 22:24

They had maps, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:26

They had maps. That's that's what you had. Yeah. So what was a what did it feel like to travel through the world back then versus how things are now?

SPEAKER_06 22:38

Well, when you look at a map, it shows you all the possibilities, the places you can go. So that was kind of cool. Because you look at your phone or your GPS and it shows you the point from A to B. So you would often look at a map and say, you know what? I'm gonna go there. And you would do that. And if you just look at your GPS, you would have decided on your location to go to beforehand and you would have gone there. But you wouldn't have made these side trips and stuff like that. I think it it was um it was very interesting. Um what what how could I say this? It's you know, that was all we knew at the time, so it wasn't different then. But looking looking back, I I don't think I go back. I think I prefer the GPSs. I mean, I use it on my motorbike, that's for sure. It's a little bit simpler now, I think, traveling with the GPS and things like that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:24

Yeah. So did you have a map back then? How did you find your way around? Just yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 23:32

The one place a map really came in handy was when I was trekking to Mount Ervis Base Camp. I walked from a place called Lamasangu to a base camp. The trip was about 180 miles, and it's just the hills. I mean, they're just incredibly, they're just straight up and straight down, straight up and straight down. I wanted to I cursed the person that designed these trails, but these porters are they're carrying 100-pound packs, and my pack was 45 pounds. I was just like, oh my god, who designed these trails? They were just dirt tracks, is all they were, and rocks and and hills and stuff like this. So you're going up and down, up and down, and these up to 10,000 feet down to almost sea level, straight back up to 10,000 feet back down. Brutal trip for the first part of it. And then once you get up in uh Everest region, the Kumbu region, it uh levels out a little bit. But that first part was really hard. And uh, I had a paper map, it was hand-drawn and and photocopied, but it was amazingly accurate. But you had to ask questions. It had the name of the next town, which was basically just a two or three huts where you could buy some potatoes and some leafy greens and maybe get a place to sleep for a few rupees. And this map basically showed you the way, but but it had the name in Nepalese written and also in Arabic script, but English. So you could read the name, and if you would stop somebody and said as you came to a fork in the road, you'd wait there because you wouldn't know which fork to take, there's no signs, nothing like that. There was just absolutely no directions. You're out there in the wilderness, and I was by myself because my partner packed it in on me on the first day. But you'd ask a person what where this town was, and they would point you that way or this way, and that's the way you would go until the next fork in the road, then you'd wait for the next someone to come along and ask them the direction of the next town. It's pretty amazing. That was I've got the map sitting right here somewhere. I should have dug it out. It was really cool. I saved it. Now it's all covered in plastic. Yeah. Here's uh rocks from Mount Everest. Proof I went there. That's cool. Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_00 25:29

I love that. I love that too. That was the other thing in the book that really got me is that you like collecting rocks from different places. Uh, that's what my son is a huge rock enthusiast. And so anytime that we travel anywhere, um, especially when Ann and I are traveling together, we make a point at every place that we go, we find him a special rock from somewhere and bring it back to him. So he has a ton of rocks from all over the place. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 25:57

That's cool. We're in a glacier, glacial moraine here. My house is surrounded by these great big boulders that I pushed over with my skids here to decorate the area. So it's really cool. Oh, nice. They're big, big round rocks, you know. They're and they probably weigh a thousand pounds apiece and push these things around with that thing. That's cool. Amazing.

SPEAKER_01 26:16

I would love it.

SPEAKER_06 26:16

Yeah, I love rocks. Rocks are really neat.

SPEAKER_00 26:19

Yes, when I read that in the book that you brought back a rock from Everest, I was like, oh my god, my son would be so jealous.

SPEAKER_06 26:26

It's one of my prized possessions.

SPEAKER_00 26:28

I bet, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 26:30

That and the emu egg here that I drug back from Australia that said six people one day.

SPEAKER_01 26:35

Oh, that's cool. Still got it. Yeah. Yeah, that's pretty neat. Do you still have the bowl? The what? The handmade bowl.

SPEAKER_06 26:42

Oh yeah, yeah, it's downstairs. Yeah. I love it. Yeah, I've got that. And the the boomerang. Settle down there late.

SPEAKER_00 26:51

Oh, awesome.

SPEAKER_06 26:54

A First Nations person made this for me. You can see there's a Gowana on there and a turtle and a few things he's carved in there. But this this is the boomerang they wrote about that won't come back. It's just the boomerang they use for throwing and and the bonking uh lizard on the head, so it this one wasn't meant to come back at all. It's just basically a a throw stick. That's kind of cool.

SPEAKER_01 27:17

It's real really cool that it's carved and handy.

SPEAKER_06 27:20

Yeah, it was a First Nations guy, and that was up on northwestern Australia. Pretty cool. Anyway, I digress.

SPEAKER_00 27:26

I also love the fact that some of the gems that you got that you thought may not have been real actually turned out to be real.

SPEAKER_06 27:35

Yeah, that's right. Yeah. My daughter owes me a picture of the engagement ring I made my wife, my first wife's passed away, but I made her a beautiful, uh, beautiful ring out of the giant blue sapphire that I picked up in Burma. Which was really cool. Yeah, it's it's the most beautiful ring. You know what the Lady Die Ring? You remember that? Yeah, it's like that. But before before Charles made it for her, I made it for my wife. But the it was kind of cool.

SPEAKER_00 28:01

So he copied you. He copied me, that's what it is. Charles copied. Yeah, I that doesn't surprise me.

SPEAKER_06 28:07

Anyway, I was in in Burma, actually in Mandalay, but the title of the book. And there's a hill there, and there's all these people selling stuff. And I had smuggled $20 into Burma because you're you're supposed to account for all your US money or US currency when you're in there, but I stuck $20 in my pocket, which is worth a king's ransom to uh the Burmese people because they wanted US dollars because their their money was almost worthless. So I was going up this one little hill, and a couple guys looked at me, and I didn't speak any Burmese, they didn't speak English, but he said, Here, look at these things. So I bought uh this large white sapphire and this blue sapphire and a bunch of other stuff. Some moon stones. I still have some of them kicking around here, and a whole bunch of gemstones like that. And I thought, oh, that'd be fake. I took them back to Canada. There, every single one was real. Couldn't believe it.

SPEAKER_00 28:59

That's incredible.

SPEAKER_06 29:00

Yeah, several thousand dollars worth of stones that I thought they were just junk jewelry. But boy, that no, that was the funny part about that. I had the $20 bill, so I just pulled it out, was gonna give it to these guys, and a couple guys from the army were walking by at the same time. Well, uh the two guys selling the stones just jumped on me and covered that up because all three of us would have been in trouble had the army guys seen that uh that $20 US bill. Because that was illegal. Uh the sale of gemstones at the time was strictly controlled by the government in Burma. It's special stores you bought those things from. So anyway, I broke the occasional rule.

SPEAKER_00 29:40

Yeah, just just a little bit. There were a few stories throughout the book of rules to be brought up.

SPEAKER_06 29:48

Yeah. There were a few like that, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:51

You're a rule breaker.

SPEAKER_06 29:53

The stupid things I've done in my life. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:59

I think we all have done stupid things like that in our teenage years. So, you know.

SPEAKER_04 30:03

Oh yeah. Yeah. I hope so. I hope we did.

SPEAKER_00 30:07

I mean that yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:09

That's part of life and learning it. So, you know, today we can research a destination so thoroughly that we almost know what it's gonna look like when we get there. But back then, I mean, you had nothing. So do you think we've gained something through technology, but also lost something from travel?

SPEAKER_06 30:28

Yeah, uh, we really have. I know I know that um any place I want to go now, and even when I was writing this book, I I would look up online the places I'd been. And something has changed a little, something has changed a lot. A lot a lot of places now are all inclusive resources, and the beaches are all hotel. Back then you're sleeping on the beach, getting eaten by crabs. Um one thing we did have uh back in those days was an incredible network of other travelers that you would meet staying at youth hostels, and they would tell you uh by word of mouth the cool places to go, the things to do, and people and and places to eat and stuff like that, places to stay. So it it's easier now, but we've lost that that personal touch. Where I suppose it still goes on. But I think most people now just do destination travel by and large, and uh you miss out on that. And you know, you're never really sure what you're gonna run into when you when you got somewhere, because just for example, uh when I got to Singapore, I was told there was a pretty safe place to stay there, and it was probably one of the other scary moments of my life there on that one the the night I arrived in Singapore by myself. Yeah. So that was it didn't always work out the best. I think now when you go see a place, you've lost some of the surprise because you've you've looked at, you've seen all the pictures, you know. And might be even a bit of a letdown because they the the camera hides a lot of things. You know, you can take a picture of a beach and what a beautiful beach, but on the other end there's a petrochemical plant sort of thing nowadays, you know, that that you can hide from the cameras. We've lost a little a little bit by doing this. It's not gonna change, so we're uh you're not gonna go backwards.

SPEAKER_01 32:02

Exactly.

SPEAKER_06 32:02

It was more of an adventurous time in those days, that's for sure.

SPEAKER_01 32:05

Do you think the uncertainty though made you more curious or just more resourceful? Both.

SPEAKER_06 32:10

Yeah. Yeah, both. Uh certainly the curiosity was there. Just for example, going up into Law's just days after the war was over was I was so curious to see what was going on there. And of course I wasn't allowed in because I was a Canadian. I couldn't get a stamp for Canadian passport in there, but fortunately the French girls I was traveling with didn't have that problem, so they were able to get my passport stamped at the French embassy, which got me in there.

SPEAKER_01 32:34

Again, network of people, other jobs. Network of people. If you were carrying a smartphone back then, do you think it would have made your trip better? That's a good question.

SPEAKER_06 32:42

If they were available, I would have taken it. Yeah. Without a doubt. I would have felt a lot safer, you know. Yeah, it's a pretty good safety net to have something like that. And also directions and getting from place A to B, it would be easier. If I'd had them and then I would have used it. Yeah, I wouldn't have thrown it away. It's a pretty good tool.

unknown 33:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 33:02

Although I do do think you do lose uh have lost a little bit of a sense of adventure of what's around the next bend because you already knew it was there. In many cases. I know.

SPEAKER_01 33:14

True. I think your mom would have felt better if you had had one.

SPEAKER_06 33:18

I often wonder what they thought when I when I left Canada, if they thought that thank God he's gone and got enough trouble with their kids there, or as uh, you know, or like, oh my son, he's leaving. Uh I didn't hear any saying, you know what, you're sure you got his money, it's just like, okay, you're ready to go. It's we'll drive you up to Calgary and get on that plane. I don't know. I don't think they expected I'd be gone for four years.

SPEAKER_00 33:39

Yeah, probably not. Otherwise, there probably would have been a different thing happening at your departure versus what what went down if they knew you were gonna be gone that long. I think so, yes. Yeah. So did those four years influence the decisions that you made afterwards?

SPEAKER_06 33:57

Uh uh it changed me in every every way possible. Yeah. I really grew up on those years, you know, and I've always been good at fending for myself, and nothing really phases me too much. Sometimes when I was going through my apprenticeship as an electrician, I'd be working for people that it felt like they had two brain cells and they were my boss. So listen, it's kind of hard. You know, you'd been all around the world, seen many things, and these guys had maybe been to Calgary one day, and that was about it, kind of thing. So I'd seen so much and done so many things. Um sometimes it was hard to take hard to shut up and not say anything when people were telling you what to do sometimes, you know. Just okay. Yeah, yeah, that would be hard sometimes. Yeah, I started my own business about 12 years ago and it was a real it's been wonderful ever since, you know, because you're just you're your own boss and you make your own mistakes, your own decisions, so it's been good. It does keep you awake a little bit more at night, but that that's a good thing.

SPEAKER_00 34:51

Yeah, exactly. So do you think the biggest souvenir that we bring home from a journey is sometimes the person that we become because of the journey?

SPEAKER_06 35:02

Yes, indeed. There's that and all the memories you you brought back. Like I I will still just sit down and start laughing, and people wonder, well, what are you thinking about? And it's just something stupid or something that happened 50 years ago. That's it's just they're such strong memories.

unknown 35:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 35:18

They're just pounded into my brain, you know, that they'll just never go away. Like the book was very easy to write because I had all these stories in my head. I just needed to put them down on the paper. I told lots of them, you know, especially to my kids when they were growing up. I showed that slideshow, which is pretty much in the book. And so I had all these stories that I would tell people, but I could never really dig deep into them like I did in the book. Because in a slideshow, you'll get it for about an hour and a half, and people get bored, so you have to make it quick. But with this book, I had all the latitude to dig as deep as I could or deep as I wanted to in the stories. Uh I actually started writing it off with a bit more of a what the hell they call it now, spice in the books. And like my kids and my wife and the other two are like, get that crap out of there.

SPEAKER_01 36:02

That's great. I uh really liked the way that your book was written. I loved it because you're not just telling another travel story, but you're literally looking back across more than half a century at the young man that lived it. And how do you feel about that version of yourself now?

SPEAKER_06 36:21

I think I turned out pretty good. I'm a little bit disappointed in myself. I didn't do much traveling after that. I kind of always wanted to, but you know, I got uh went through my apprenticeship until I was 26, and I got married when I was 30 after we had a child, and uh did raise your kids, sold my motorbike, and got horses and did family stuff, and and then life got harder for a little bit of a time there. And I've never done much traveling apart from a few trips down to the Caribbean over the years, and I think that uh as a younger person, I thought I always thought I would do more. So that's kind of disappointed me a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 37:00

I think that happens to a lot of people, though, birds.

SPEAKER_06 37:04

Yeah, you know. I've tied myself down here on this beautiful piece of property with uh a beautiful wife and wonderful children, and I have horses and animals, and I mean moose walk by my house on a daily basis, and there's deer all over the place, and I've got pictures of fox uh uh stealing the crab apples off my tree, and we're both fighting over them because I'm making crab apple jelly. So, you know, I've got a good really good life here. I I can't complain about that, but I do wish kind of I'm not dead yet. I'd love to go to South America yet. That's really high on my wish list. And I think the younger me thought I would have done more traveling. So there's that. But it is what it is, right? I mean, life happens.

SPEAKER_01 37:43

Yeah, uh you're raising a family, and you're right, life happens, and it's yeah, really hard when you're raising kids, and especially as they get older and more involved in things to make it happen.

SPEAKER_06 37:55

I tell young kids, travel while you're young. And you know what's the the one of the coolest things about this book is I've had several kids take off at a young age before they're 20 or or just in their early 20s and go traveling and seeing the world. And and as they're going, they're sending me texts and pictures and stuff of where they're being. I think that's just that's just amazing. I am so and and I can talk to those guys and those people when they're doing it now, whereas before it was uh you wouldn't have had to stand in airground. But we can talk like we are right now. I could have never gone for four years at any other point in my life, you know, it just couldn't happen. Yeah. So that's that's the coolest thing about this book and about that trip, you know, just yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:34

When you're young is a really great time to get out and do that, really. Before you start your family, before life happens.

SPEAKER_06 38:40

Get going before life happens. That's right. And you're you're you're fearless in those days, and you're gonna live forever, right? You don't do it immoral in those ages. It does those days. Yeah, I was.

SPEAKER_00 38:52

I'm so much anymore. So yeah, I love to tell people that especially the people that say I'm gonna travel when I retire. I'm like, are you though? I mean, you're not guaranteed anything. And are you still gonna be healthy and able to travel when you retire? Are you even gonna be able to retire? I mean, you know, so why not do it now while you can?

SPEAKER_06 39:15

Yeah, that's right. Go see the world now when you're young and you can get around and you can stay on your youth hoster rate. Um a lot of people are going on river cruits and stuff like that. That's kind of the the traveling you're gonna do now at my age kind of thing. I mean, of course, people are backpacking at my age as well. You know, that that but they're more of the rarity than every place you go to now is crowded all year round. Like you saw the pictures of Greece there with of the Parthenon in the book.

SPEAKER_04 39:39

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_06 39:40

Right. There's maybe two other people there. And we were walking around the place until a machine gun totem guard said, you know, get off our Parthenon. I couldn't read the sign. No one told me I wasn't supposed to walk around there anyway. But uh now there's thousands of people everywhere. Uh, the everything's crowded, and the the world population has doubled in that time. There's a lot more people.

SPEAKER_00 40:05

And I love the fact that back when you traveled, like you said in the book, you could walk right up and touch the Mona Lisa. You you're not getting nowhere near that thing now.

SPEAKER_06 40:15

No, that's right. You could, it was right there. Like I thought it'd have armed guards around it even back then, but no, just go have a look. It's two feet away from you. Yeah, it was weird.

SPEAKER_00 40:25

Yeah, that's wild to imagine. On the news nowadays, you hear so much bad stuff. And if you don't actually get out from your little bubble and go check it out for yourself, then you believe the bad stuff that you're hearing on the news.

SPEAKER_01 40:40

That's right.

SPEAKER_00 40:41

But once you get out of your bubble and actually start it, it's not as bad as what the news makes it out to be. They're really just trying to scare you. And because Ann and I just went a few months ago, we went to Europe and my brother found out we were going, and he was like, What? Why are you flying over there? You do realize there's a war going on, don't you? I'm like, but where we're going ain't even nowhere near the quote unquote war. And why wouldn't I go if I had the opportunity?

SPEAKER_06 41:14

That's for sure. Yeah, that's for sure. Uh, right now there's all these riots in France, you know, the students are rioting. Well, and it's all over the TV news. Well, it's one little postage stamp area where that's happening, and the rest of France is wine and grapes and and uh roasted boar meat on a stick and crap like that, eh? And cross laws, you know. So it's yeah, you know, it's the news is so good. Uh that's one thing that's happened that's really changed things, I think, is the news is so immediate now. Back in the 70s, uh, news was not immediate. I mean, it was happening. I think it was more factual in those days, is now a lot of it is is uh made up. But the the news wasn't blown out of proportion as much as it is now. Like one little uh firecracker goes off somewhere and people are hitting the deck. Yeah, so things are things have really changed in in that respect.

SPEAKER_01 42:04

Yeah, so hype.

SPEAKER_06 42:05

The news is so immediate that the news sells, much like romance books. So the news is a marketed item nowadays, and they like it to be as spectacular as they can. But in actual fact, you know, you can walk around most places and be quite safe on this planet. And there are some hot spots, but they're you know, you'll know about them long before you're there.

SPEAKER_01 42:29

Exactly, yeah. And you have to be safe anywhere that you go, even in your own hometown. So Yeah, that's right. Use your head.

SPEAKER_06 42:38

Yeah, yeah. You don't go down the the dark alley just just because. I mean, use your common sense and play a little bit safe. And it was always something like that since time began for humans.

SPEAKER_00 42:49

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 42:50

But it doesn't have to be you don't have to have be afraid of the world because the TV stations are telling you that you they should be.

SPEAKER_00 42:56

Exactly. Yeah. And don't be in fear that the rest of the world hates you because you're an American or Canadian or whatever, because that's not reality either.

SPEAKER_06 43:07

It's not. All over the world people love everybody.

SPEAKER_00 43:11

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_06 43:12

I think on that whole trip that I was on over four years, I could kind of one hand the number of unfriendly people I met. Almost none. Almost none. I mean, there were some, but it was very unusual to meet someone who wasn't curious as uh about you as you were about them.

SPEAKER_00 43:28

Right.

SPEAKER_06 43:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 43:30

Yeah, exactly. So, Vern, if you could go back to the age that you were then, but retain all the knowledge that you have now and do this trip again, would you in a heartbeat.

SPEAKER_06 43:42

That's a that's a a dream of mine, you know, and write another book about how it's different this time around.

SPEAKER_00 43:49

Yeah, the the before and after of the trip. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 43:52

In a heartbeat, I would do that in this uh millisecond. But you know what? I don't think you could beat the food. Back then, the whole the whole trip was a a foodie experience from one end to the other. It was just wonderful, you know, especially places like India, which were months delight, you know.

SPEAKER_00 44:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 44:11

Don't you guys find that you remember places based on what you ate there? I'm a huge foodie, so is Shannon. And yeah, I sometimes I just remember the food at different places that we've been to. Yeah. Wish I could have that again tonight.

SPEAKER_00 44:26

So, Bern, after spending all this time revisiting such an extraordinary chapter of your life, what's next?

SPEAKER_06 44:33

What's next? Well, my wife and I are planning to do some more traveling here. My birthday is in a couple days, so maybe 72. Leaving things a little bit late to travel, but you know, we're both still really in good shape and fit. So um, the big thing was finding a good babysitter for our dog, because we found someone who looks like they could look after for a few weeks, and we'll do some traveling and stuff like that. I still have my business going, but I'm I guess you'd call me semi-retired. I think next spring we're gonna maybe head over to Europe and see some sights. She's always wanted to go over there. She hasn't really been a big traveler, so uh maybe we'll show her what some of the world is like.

SPEAKER_01 45:10

Yeah. So you're gonna you're gonna take your own advice and you're gonna travel while you can, right?

SPEAKER_06 45:15

Oh, yeah, you have to, yeah. That's right. Yeah.

unknown 45:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 45:20

Yeah, because 72 is still young, Vern. So very much so. Oh, yeah, 100%.

SPEAKER_06 45:26

Yeah, I'm not worried about it at all. You know, we're we work out on a regular basis. We're both in really good shape, and it's it's really not a problem. Hey.

SPEAKER_01 45:34

We're youngins.

SPEAKER_06 45:35

You know, the years are catching up to me, but I do have a few miles left in these old bones, so we're good.

SPEAKER_00 45:41

So, where can people find maple to mandalae and follow your work, Vern?

SPEAKER_06 45:46

Amazon, of course. Yeah, it's on indigo, cobo, apple books.

SPEAKER_00 45:52

Well, to everyone listening, thank you so much for joining us. And we will have all of Vern's information on our website, traveltimestories.com.

SPEAKER_02 46:02

So join us each week in the splendor the arts, in the office spotlight, we capture the hearts with every story shared. A new world takes flight. Dare to dream as we gather tonight.