 Good morning or good evening, depending on where you are joining us from. My name's Habiba from The Trekking Pals and I'm joined today by Candy and John T. King. I'm so excited today because they will be sharing with us a lot of great travel stories. We will get to know them today and we'll also talk about travel in East Africa and Tanzania in particular. All right, you wanna go ahead, introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about what you do. My name is Candy King and I'm actually a website developer, which is so crazy. I got into website development because I wanted the perfect website and there was no template for me. So I was like, well, then I'm just gonna have to learn to code. So I learned how to code and now we help a lot of other creators just like you start online portfolios or put the online portfolio together, work with brands. That's what we really specialise in and creating websites for creators. John T., what do you, oh, my god. My name is Jonathan Charles Ponal King, John T. King and I am the person behind the camera and I do photography, videography and... You're also in the camera. Yeah, sometimes in the camera and I like taking pictures. Nailed it. I have to say, I love, love the accent and whenever you guys are talking in your videos I'm just sitting there just listening to you speak, oh, it's gonna be fun. So tell me, what's your story with travel? Where did you grew up? How did you start travelling? I know you're travelling full time right now. You just moved to Thailand, which is amazing. What's your story with travel? Where did it start? You can go ahead. She's gonna interrupt me like one minute and then start the story. Okay, so seven years ago, seven years ago, we decided to go to China because we wanted to leave our hometown. We brought up in Durban, South Africa and we decided we wanted to go somewhere else. Yeah, and that somewhere else led us to China and it was a wonderful journey. We were actually teaching because we had no money and we were like, well, we want to travel but we have no money, so what can we do? And it was to teach abroad so that we would have a salary, get a long-term visa in an exotic country. And yeah, it was amazing. Teaching was such a good thing to do because we got holidays and so while we talked full-time, made a salary, we practiced a lot of our skills that we needed to manage and, you know, the skills that we needed to pursue the career that we're in now. Does that make sense? On full-time work but part-time practice in what we're doing now. Yeah. Yeah, and we moved to Northeast China and then after that, we went back to South Africa and then we moved. And then we realized that we didn't want to be there. And then we went to Laos and we stayed in Laos. Yeah, we've always had a base and then so when we were in China, we traveled around Israel, New Zealand, Australia, all sorts of places. And then we went to Laos and traveled from Laos. And so we've always had a base somewhere and then moved around from there. And right now you are in Thailand. That's going to be home for the next... Yeah, so we've moved to Phuket. Yeah, we have. Phuket will be our base for a while. Because Junty was talking about sending our kids to some schools and I was like, whoa, whoa! Exciting! Yeah. Do you guys feel like you prefer, you know, Asia or that part of the world? Or do you feel like you lean towards the culture there? I saw that you guys speak a lot of languages. Your experience living in Laos just feels like you guys, you know, you fit in that part of the world great. You enjoy it. And I think that there's so many things that make a place livable. And there's a lot of that for us in Asia. You know, I think it's really helpful. And for us, I guess a lot of people want to go to Africa. But because we're from there, we're like, oh, it's just like normal for us. It's not really exotic or adventurous anymore because we're so used to the way of life. We're so used to the culture there. So when we came here, it was like, everything was exciting and new. And so for us to live here is way more exciting than to be in Africa. Even though for a very, very long time, I had like, we both had like one foot in Asia and one foot in Africa and we're like, we don't know, we don't know. Yeah. But now we know. Awesome. And how many languages do you guys speak? We speak nothing fluently. We speak nothing, not even English. So we can speak English, Chinese, Lao, learning Lao and Thai. Lao, Thai. We practice Burmese, Kiswa, Hili. But yeah, like we said, nothing fluently, like we can say a few words. And then the moment we start practicing another language, we forget. And then we use the other one there. But we can also speak some languages like Africa, some Afrikaans, some Zulu. We can speak a very broad variety of languages that we practice. But I love languages. It's just so exciting. Because when you learn another language, it's like a door opening to another world. And I really mean it, like you miss so much. When you don't learn a language, you just miss a whole bunch of stuff when you travel to a place. Because language shapes your perspective of the world. I just, it's so exciting. It's a description. Isn't it? Don't know a little, not really. No, I like the uh, then. It's always nice when you're traveling to a new country. I think I appreciate it when I see people putting time and effort into learning the new language. It just helps you connect better with the locals too. They get excited. Even if you know three to four words, they go, wow, you speak our language. Like, yeah, I'm trying. People really, really, especially in Asia and even like in East Africa, really, really in East Africa and Asia. People appreciate it so much when you and I think so many times people visit countries and just expect everyone to speak their language. So many people are like, why don't you speak English? And I'm like, why don't you speak anything else other than English? I see that we have a lot of people joining us today. Thank you guys for joining. We have some nice comments. Love their energy and passion. I also love your passion and energy. Can you read that? You must read the Burmese sentence below that. We're not that good at Burmese. We can't read those characters. Yeah, if you speak Burmese, you'll have to read in Pinyin. I like that. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway. Awesome. So let's talk about East Africa. I know you grew up and you spent a good amount of time in South Africa. I've never been to South Africa. I don't know how different it is. I'm sure that it's pretty different. But what was your experience traveling to Tanzania for the first time? I know that you spent a good amount of time there working, collaborating with hotels, which we will get to in a little bit here. But what was your first time in Tanzania like? And if you have any tips that you'd like to share with people who are watching us, who plan to do that? You were in Tanzania to the question, how long were you there for? We spent about one month in Tanzania. That's awesome. And did you go across to Kenya or you just were in Tanzania? Most of the time in Tanzania, when we were during the safari, we kind of stood at the border. Yeah. Tanzania very was just for photos. We didn't really explore in Kenya. You guys had your retreat around the same time and I was so bummed. I wish we had the time to join you. We like literally just missed each other. So we were in, we went to Zanzibar and we were in Zanzibar for around two months. Yeah, really was it that long? Yes, and then we went to Pemba Island, which is like a less-known island in the Zanzibar archipelago. But it's the same. We were there for a Pemba, like three days, four days. A week. Okay. I thought we were there for so long. I didn't feel like that. It felt like one day. We went to Pemba Island, which is a less-known island, but it's the same size as Zanzibar. But it's a way more underdeveloped. Yes, but it's very exciting because like there's like dirt. The main road is like a dirt beach road. Not even dirt, it's like a beach sand road. In a jungle, it's very surreal. And at night, there's little bush babies which are like a squirrel and a monkey had a baby and they're little bush babies that just sit on your porch in the middle of the night, which is really cool. Because back home in South Africa, we only used to monkeys, but bush babies are like, are very like scarce. Thank you. So yeah, so it's crazy to see that. And we're in Pemba. And then from Pemba, we went to Dar es Salaam. From Dar es Salaam. And Dar es Salaam was kind of scary. We spent three days there. And then shame. So then while we were in Dar es Salaam, we were having breakfast and then the receptionist approached us and she said, hey, could you make a video for us? And she didn't know that we were very familiar with Hotel Colab. So we were like, the first thing we thought is, oh, maybe she's seen us from TikTok or maybe she's seen our Instagram. That was the first thing that came to my mind. And I was like, yes, you know, sure, no problem. And then it got like a little bit sticky because they didn't really know how to collaborate. And we were like, well, we're not going to do it for, you know, this is our last day here. And we're going to relax. So if you need a video, we're going to have to stay another night to create it. Oh, and it got so messy. And then eventually they understood like how much content is worth. Anyway, so we ended up staying in Dar es Salaam for longer than we expected to. Didn't love Dar es Salaam because it was a bit spooky, like scary. And then after Dar es Salaam. You can tell the story of what happened, why it was a bit scary. Okay, because we got out of a van in Tuttuk in Dar es Salaam. And as we got out, I had my phone out looking at maps because we were going to rush on. It's like five seconds. We got out of Tuttuk. And one of the guys like, hey, Zungu, put your phone away. And I was like, and I was like, what? And then he said, put your phone away. It's going to get stolen now. So I was like, oh, so I was a little bit scared. It was like our first experience of Dar es Salaam. So yeah, so it was a little bit scary. But nothing bad happened to us. It was just kind of scary. Someone's saying like, hey, you better put your stuff away. It's going to get stolen. And we're like, we're staying in the lights and it's like, we're in public, oh. Then after Dar es Salaam, we went up to Arusha and we stayed in Arusha for a while. I don't know. And we made friends with this really nice, a hostel actually, like called the White House. White House, sounds familiar. And yeah, and we stayed around Arusha area. After Arusha, we took a bus up to the Kenyan border and we crossed the land border because we wanted to get my drone across into Kenya and if we flew it would have got confiscated in Kenya. So we decided to take the land border crossing, which was a great experience. And your safaris, the safaris that you went on that was not in Tanzania, it was Kenya. No, we did two, right? We did one in Tanzania. Oh, we did one in Tanzania? No, no, we didn't. Okay, sorry. We went on. So just on the other side of the border of Tanzania is, what's it called? Surangeti and then you get the Masamora. Surangeti is on the Tanzania side. Masamora. No, and what should we go to first one, which has the view of Kilimanjaro? 10 seconds. Yeah, the third one was like my absolute favorite and I must say that East African safaris are so much better than the ones in South Africa. I think I lost you there. Did you say the safaris in East Africa a lot better than South Africa? Yeah, it was the Ambassili Park, just on the border of Tanzania and Kenya. And that was the first safari we had been on outside of South Africa. I've been in Zimbabwe, but it's still isn't as better as nice as great as East African safari. Yeah, it's just that picture perfect. The tree with, oh yes. You know what it's like, I mean. It was amazing. Sometimes we sit and watch, because it was our first safari ever, Alex and I. And when we look at photos, we just can't believe even right now that it was real and we were right there. It's incredible. Yes. Wow. Awesome. So any tips for someone who's going to East Africa for the first time? Like what are some of the tips? I know you guys are very well traveled. You've been to so many countries around the world, but let's say someone who's kind of new to the travel world, going to Africa for the first time, what are some of the things that you should pay attention to? I would definitely say, whatever you think you need to, like your budget, double it. Because you think Africa is cheap, but it's really not as affordable as it should be. Don't be afraid to say no, because you do get a lot of people haggling and hassling and bullying you into buying. And don't think it's wrong to be like, no, like I'm not going to buy because it's just intimidation and bullying. And you don't need to be bullied on your holiday. You don't need to be bullied on a trip. You've paid so much money to have this great experience and you don't need that being ruined by someone forcing you to buy something that is way overpriced. So don't be afraid to say no. That's what I'd say. And I would also say that, what did I say? I'd say fly Safari Airlines. They're really cheap. There's an airline called Safari, Safari Airlines, and they offer really cheap flights. They're Tanzanian. We should definitely get commissioners. Yes, none of them are really cheap. We got their flight all over. We didn't get a flight domestically for more than $50, like around the whole of Tanzania. And we could pay on PayPal, which was easy. Please read my post. I'm from Myanmar and you don't. I read your post, mate. I'll tell you. So I would also say definitely spend some time on the beach and if you can, go to Africa City. And go to Pemba Island. Really, really, really unique African experience. How much time do you guys spend in Zanzibar? Two months. Two months we spend in Zanzibar and then a week in Pemba Island. So about a month and a half, month and one week in Zanzibar, at Capilago. Yes, and we're collaborating with quite a few hotels. Actually our whole trip. Except for Pemba. We were collaborating with hotels, which was really nice. And yeah, really cool. Let's talk, since we're talking about hotel collapse, you guys have been creating content for very long time, full-time content creators. You have a lot of things going on. What are your tips for people who are kind of just getting started in content creation? A few people watching us here, myself. Just kind of some tips to get started. I know you guys have some courses that you put out there to help people. Do you want to talk a little bit about those? Yeah, the best tip I could give is that don't think that your following number is what gets you collapse. It has nothing to do with your influence, because that's just one aspect of hotel collaborations. Hotels need a whole bunch of services, and influencer marketing is just one service that you can provide a hotel, whereas there's thousands of services that hotels need, and they don't need them the whole year, but they need them for segments of time. So if you do the proper analysis of the needs of the hotel, you can pitch to them the right thing that they need at the right time that they will say yes no matter what. I think that's what's made our pitchers stand out, and that's why we've been so successful in hotel collabs, is realizing very early on in our career as hotel creators that influence marketing isn't necessarily key. It's a burst of exposure for them, but very quickly it ends. We also started the majority of our collaborations just before COVID hit, and with international travels closing up, hotels didn't need influencer marketing, so we had to get very creative in our pitches and our offers, and doing that is what made us much stronger. We honestly... I mean, we only... The first time we got turned down for a hotel collab is when we started taking advice from a creative coach, and that was the first time we got turned down, was listening to advice from other people and we knew how to do it all along. Yeah, we... And I would definitely say people have so much experience outside of Instagram. Bring that life into your creation, and bring that life into your pitches. For example, there... We know this travel nurse, and I said to her, like, what is your dream? I want to be an influencer. I want to collab with hotels, and I said, okay, cool. The hard pain for truth is hotels see a number, and if you're going to pitch influencer marketing, and you've got 200 followers, like what kind of exposure can you get them that they can't get themselves? So I said, you've got to be creative. Like, you're a nurse. It's a pandemic. What can you offer a hotel? You can offer them a first aid course to their staff and tell them, like, this is the price. This is how much you're going to pay. Give it to three staff, and then say if they want more, they pay. And it's going to take two weeks to do. Hotel collab landed right there two weeks and possibly paid. It's interesting because a lot of people, especially people who are new content creation, they just think about content creator, goes alongside with the number of followers, how many people you can influence, but that's not the reality. Because when I was following you guys, you were talking about even, I think when you were still in age, you were talking about teaching English to staff in hotels, and that's how you are bringing value to the hotel. So it goes beyond just taking photos or videos. Yeah, and we learned as well with our experience in China. We were teaching English, but a lot of our colleagues were not native English speakers. A lot of countries are so desperate for English that they don't care if you're native or not. They just need someone who's better than them. And it's not necessarily just teaching English. It's also like there's plenty of other languages. Russian, Zanzibar, Arabic. A lot of countries want to, their target audience is these people from these countries, and it doesn't matter what language you can speak. They need to communicate with their target audience because this is who they're attracting. And if they can't communicate with them, like, yes. So I was just talking about White House of Tanzania, and they just hopped on, which is really, really cool. Like we're just saying, if you want to work with hotels, offer them a service that, one, they can't afford and one, they can't provide for themselves. So especially during the pandemic, a lot of hotels, they couldn't afford to pay photographers because they retrenched half their star. So now you get influencers trying to ask for payment for photography when they've got nothing left to give. So it's like... Yeah, and I think also the best thing to do is when you see a hotel or a hostel, whatever you want to work with, you need to see where they're lacking and how you can fill that lack. And I think that that's where you become so successful with hotel collaborations is filling a need rather than just saying, this is what I offer. If you don't like it, then go black out. Like appeal to their need. And that's when you get good responses and they're happy because it's sustainable. Your impact lasts far longer than your actual stay at the hotel. I mean, since we've got a hotel and White House obtains any right here online with us, I'm pretty sure he will agree that if someone approaches the hotel with a service that they actually need, for example, maybe a social media marketing course where they teach the staff how to take photos for their Instagram so that they don't have to keep buying content or sourcing. I'm sure the hotel will say, that sounds like a great idea or teaching what else can... Teaching someone we've done at other places they can't afford to have a full-time social media manager. So obviously we'll teach how to manage your social media but also how to create content for your socials because it's a certain... It's offering it for like, yeah, here's three photos, ten photos. Yeah, instead of giving like ten photos we've taught people how to create their own content. So it's not just something that they get for ten photos and then like, what do I do after these ten photos? We've taught hotels how to in-house take their own content for their restaurants, their room photography for bookings, for GONA, for social media, all sorts of things. But they can do it in-house which is so much better, especially during this time for hotels to be trying to do stuff in-house. Well, this is interesting because I bet you they're probably the majority of hotels, they get the same spiel from a lot of content creators. Pay us to make content for you but you're coming with something different and probably that's what helps you to be outstanding in whatever offer you're coming up with. I'm going to instead show you how to take photos or I'm going to train your staff. This is incredible. And obviously, when you get to the hotel you just become really good friends with the staff, you become good friends with the general manager and every time we go to a place they start talking about influences as if we're not and I'm like, you don't know that this is what we're kind of doing here. And they always tell us the same thing that they get emailed two, three, four, five, ten times, a hundred times a day with people wanting free stays. And that's the problem. It's trying to get a free stay instead of trying to give free value to somebody. Trying to get rather than give. Yeah, I think the best thing is to make yourself so valuable that places want you to just be there to provide your value and obviously that includes remuneration or night's accommodation. So right now you are in Thailand. How much of your time do you spend collaborating with hotels and creating content for hotels or adding value to the hotels you're working with? We decided not to pitch. We are not pitching to any hotels. We just want to be on holiday and on holiday properly. And then we kind of got itchy feet and we're like, let's just pitch to... Yeah, we decided to do some really, really big brands and we just actually pitched to Ritz Colton and Ritz Colton just got back to us and said, yeah, we would like you guys to come over. Which is probably our biggest one. Yeah, so it'll be a good one, yeah. But this month we've just been basically like let's just go around Thailand. And the cool thing is, what we were just talking about was building your portfolio, getting that confidence to pitch to bigger brands. We would never, ever have had the courage to approach Ritz Colton, a thousand dollar... Like that's wild with influencer marketing because influencer marketing is much easier than giving a course or something. We wouldn't have had that courage to do that if it wasn't for those minor things like having more experience with hotels, knowing how to talk to hotels, building relationships with general managers and giving way more than receiving. You know, just, yeah. That's a great accomplishment with the call-up with the Ritz, congrats. Yeah, so cool. We're still talking about when. Yeah, we're just talking minor details now but yeah, it's pretty cemented. Yeah, that's pretty exciting. Okay, until January when we go back to the kids, we've just kept our holiday. Yeah. Awesome. There's a comment on the point that you guys talked about earlier. It's kind of like the code, if you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day, or if you teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime about what we said on hotels. We have a lot of your friends guys joining us here, people from Kenya saying that they miss you. Aww. That's really sweet. No, we have quite a few followers from East Africa on TikTok and they're asking when we're coming back and I'm like, we can't, we literally, Yeah, it's very hard, we need Thailand now, we can't come back. We actually, we had another social media retreat for February and we had to postpone it because of Omnicron, this new variant, oh my God. So we can't leave Thailand. Yes, we're actually in the last, one of the last flights out of South Africa before it got locked up again. So yeah, that was lucky. So what has it been like for you guys traveling still during the pandemic? I know that you were kind of stuck in Laos for a long time and you had to work around it and make changes to your lifestyle. How is it going for you guys? A lot of, a lot of COVID tests. Yeah, my nose is like no more. Now for a while because we're going to be, we'll be based here. Yeah, sometimes it's, to leave Laos was very, very expensive. So that was the most. And so stressful because, you know, when you have to spend that much money on a flight that doesn't cost that much, you just, when you spending so much money on things, it's really horrible. But besides that, I think the only difference in traveling is you just need, like nowadays, you just need to make sure that you have everything in order, everything. So if you need that, just make sure you have it. You just need to have everything, all the paperwork, everything done. There's so much paperwork traveling. So it's just more paperwork, but it is very possible to travel now but lots and lots of paperwork. I had like a, to go to Thailand, like a piece of, like wads of paper, like this and all. There was loads of like double copies because you didn't want to lose anything. Yeah. Well, now to make sure Candy had, because if she gets in another queue and we can't be together, so she has her set of documents on her mind. So he's got my set of documents and I've got my set of documents. Yeah. Yeah. Because now, like nowadays, the worst thing that can happen is you're missing something and you can't go through and they're very strict. So if you are missing something, they'll just send you back and then you lose a lot of money. So yeah. Yeah. I know it's a, things can get a little bit complicated, but like he said, with good organization, just planning things ahead of time, it's still possible to travel and we've seen it. We've seen a lot of people still traveling around the world just incredible. Yeah. And where exactly are you guys right now? We are at home in Arizona. Okay. Yeah. So we've been living in Arizona for a while and we traveled part time. Do you have any plans coming up? We are talking about Russia, probably for 2020. That's exciting. We've been wanting to go to Russia for about seven years. A long time. Yeah. Even longer. Ever since they became visa free for South Africans, we get a six month free visa. Before then you wanted to go. And then they became visa free and you were like, oh. Yeah. But it just hasn't fit properly. So yeah. So maybe soon. I wanted to do, when we were in China, I wanted to do the trans-Siberian railway where you leave from Beijing. You go through Mongolia, Ulaanbaatar, and then go up through Siberia and in St. Petersburg. Karen is not your father. Hello. Can't you say hello? Hello. Can you say hello? Can't. I can't say hello at all. Awesome. So all the tips that you guys shared with us today about content creations, you have this available for people to go to your profiles and purchase the hotel collabs. Do you want to talk a little bit about the plans? We have a really cool special on just for Christmas, ending on the 26th of December, but it's 50% of all of our products. Yeah, and the thing with it is it did take us a long time to perfect all our pictures, the way we pitch and stuff like that. A lot of trial and error and all of that is basically we just put it into a book. We honestly learned the era from other creators giving us that advice. Yeah. So all that information, just yeah, you don't have to go through all that or those issues that we did and just the final product for you to do what we do now. So it's basically like a jump start. So don't do what we did at the start. Jump to where we are now. Yeah. And then so there's two books. I would definitely recommend reading the personal branding one first because hotels always want to work with like corporates. That's why we also created King Code. So not just to help creators build a portfolio, but because corporates want to work with corporates. So when we present ourselves as a corporate, it's like a no brainer for a lot of them. Yeah. I think also the thing is that so in the book, so we talk about personal branding and how to build a brand. I would read that first because you kind of need a brand before you can work with hotels. And that's where a lot of creators get it wrong. They just start pitching. They want to work with brands. They want brand co-labs, but they don't even have a brand himself. How are you going to get a brand co-labs if you don't have a brand? You know? Yeah. It's very, very, very important because the hotel that you're pitching to is going to have a brand manager. They're going to have a marketing director and they can smell straight away if someone pitches to them that it's very, very wavy and flaky. You've got to be a strong brand to be able to communicate with another strong brand. And like all your letterheads, all your agreements, all your negotiations, your emails, signature, all these, some sort of branding on it. So if you don't have the branding, then your pitches are going to be a bit flaky. So I would suggest getting the branding book, reading that, and then reading the hotel co-labs, even though everyone just wants to jump to the hotel co-labs, but quit. Yeah, because that's the fun part, right? And that's cool. It took us a lot of other stuff to step up to where we are with hotel co-labs. Hello, Cuban. Hey, Cuban. Hey, Cuban. I know Cuban. Cuban, we went to church with Cuban. Awesome. And it probably, it took you many years to get to this point where you have the confidence, you have a strong pitch, you know how to approach all of these hotels. So I feel like as a new content creator, you could do it yourself and learn as you go, but it's going to probably take a long time. But rather you can learn from someone who's done it many times, many years and then just save time. And your confidence is going to be squashed by the end, you know, as a new creator and you keep getting turned down. You have like... Yeah, it's very hard like when you start and you get turned down and you don't know why and you don't know, don't know what you did wrong because it could be one thing, it could be a thousand things, but yeah. Yeah. I have a question for you. So how many hotels did you have to pitch to until you got your first hotel co-lab? If you guys remember. One. Our first one. Yeah, we got our first one. Yay! Yeah. And our second one and our third one and our fourth. We had all of them. We hadn't got to, we didn't get turned down. And we never had to, because of our services and what we're contributing, we never actually had to pay to stay until we, like I said, we worked with someone and we actually paid to stay at this hotel and that was like, I've never paid to work for any, that's just... So yeah. The thing is, I think because we were so nervous when we started that we are like, we're going to do this so right. So we did so much research, so much, found out so much information. And I mean, it was great that we, we never, we had never been turned down by hotels, but there were other things that we didn't have in place to protect us. So we didn't have an agreement in place. We didn't have contracts in place. And this one hotel collab went so south, it went so bad that I said, John, I never, ever want to work with a hotel again. And I can't remember the details, but we got there and they just wanted so much stuff from us. The yoga instructor was a complete nutcase for lack of a better word. And she started asking us to please, the hotel owner had four other brands and she wanted us to go and do content at all four of these, no, three, we got to choose three. But the yoga instructor was like, oh no, you will do a yoga class and you will post it and you will make video content and you will pay to do my class as well. And I was like, girl, firstly, like, I'm not going to be doing your class because we're going to be like filming and like running around. So I don't understand why I'm as paid to photograph you. I went so south and we were going to stay there for 14 days, giving them a social media course and that we're like, I can't, for my mental health, I can't be here for 14 days. We squished that course those hours into three days. We're like, okay, all of you do the course, we're going to get this done in three days. You're going to finish the course, you'll get your certificates and then we're out of here. We just couldn't. That was the simple thing. But because we didn't have a contract agreement in place, so it's very important to have certain agreements and templates in place. Yeah, and like, our second hotel collab, which was amazing, we had like so much good food and good drinks, but again, we didn't have an agreement of how much content we would hand over and the owner of the hotel, he was amazing and we were able to get so much content needed for our portfolio. So we don't regret it at all because we got a lot, we were very versatile and we got photos of food and rooms and massage, like spas, everything you can imagine what content we got for them. But then he would message us and be like, oh, it's my daughter's birthday, can you come over and like photograph her birthday and there was no boundaries that were set. So we literally, by the end of the month, we had handed over about $6,000 to $10,000 worth of content. And I was like, this was hectic, a lot of running around. Yeah, so. That's the question that I was going to ask you when you are traveling and you know, you're pretty much working for these hotels. How do you strike a balance between the work that you have to do or deliver and at the same time enjoying yourself and enjoying your time at destination? Definitely putting the agreement and putting a contract agreement in place. So you know as a creator how long it takes you to do something and making sure, okay, I'm staying here three days. So I can, I can do three days. I'll do about, like I want like three hours of work, four hours of work and the rest of the time I have to enjoy myself, right? Yeah. And then also just having like strong and good work ethic. So when you get there you get that content if it's photography you get it done. You're like, okay. Yeah, because if you imagine you say this is what I've, this is what we're going to do. We get to shoot four rooms. Please can you make sure that the rooms are set as if there was a guest coming. They, I've looked at the lighting. The light comes in at this time. This is, this is what we want and tomorrow at 9 a.m. all four rooms and it'll be ready two hours. Yeah, this is the time but so you set times. Set that like you, because you're professional. So you, you want your professional photographer, videographer coming in and this is the time you're working. This is the time you want them there and they respect that. As like a general manager they have a general understanding of what needs to go on but they're not professional photographers. So they don't know how to set a room and they're not supposed to know that that's your job to go and it's like this, this, this, this let's get it done and, and they really appreciate it when you can, when you do that because they feel like they're confident in your ability to hand over professional content. That's awesome. So you plan everything ahead of time, you know, your timeline, you know how much time you spend in taking photos or videos or whatever. And I mean, if it's some days you, you know, it's going to rain and you've just got to make hey, what the sunshine's do with, do what you can with the time that you have as well. So folks, asking where in Thailand you guys are right now. We are in Koh Tao Island which is Turtle Island. Koh Tao. Koh Tao. Koh Tao, which Tao means turtle and Koh is island. So we're in Turtle Island. Koh Tao. So what's the, how do you say, how do you say hello? How do you greet in, in Thai? So different genders will greet differently. So for a woman I'll say and I'll say Sawadikap. Sawadikap. Sawadikap. Sawadikap. Sawadikap. Sawadikap. Sawadikap. Sawadikap. And I always, I see taking photos, when I was watching your TikToks, you, you do this time. What does this mean? This is a heart. A little heart. It's the bottom of the heart. No, I'd say it's the full heart. No, it's the bottom of the heart. No, look at that. That's like the top of the heart. Okay. So when Candy does it, it's a full heart. When I do it, it's the bottom of the heart. It's a heart. Oh, that's cute. Yeah. Yeah. Don't you see a heart, Candy? Yeah, I do. Like a whole heart. Yeah. I missed that. Yeah. I thought it was the bottom. You taught me this. And I just, Yeah. Sawadikap. Sawadikap. Sawadikap. Sawadikap. Sawadikap. Sawadikap. Sawadikap. Sawadikap. Sawadikap. Sabaydi Mai. Kon Sabaydi Mai, how are you? Please reply. Hello, Shin. Shin, where are you from? Cute. Yeah. What else could we teach you sometimes, I can teach you a song. I can sing a lot of Thai songs. Candy can sing a lot of Thai songs. She can sing Myanmar songs, Thai songs, Vietnamese songs, Cambodian songs. Vietnamese songs, Cambodian songs, Kenyan songs. Don't ask me to translate. Yeah. Oh for it. I love TikTok videos. You guys are very, I mean, you're popular on TikTok, obviously, but in Laos, super popular in Laos? Crazy. That was crazy. Yeah, in Laos, it was sick. In Laos, we'd go out to go like have like dinner and people would be taking photos of us and they would get home and then there'd be videos on social media for forming us across the street and eating and stuff. So it was a bit intense, but yeah. So what's the... Some days I would be like, I don't want to go out today because I don't want to. Felt like Britney Spears. That's crazy. How did it all happen? Just TikTok. I think yeah, it came like, I think what would you say is that people appreciate language and one of our main things, we travel, we love travel and that's what we show in all of our accounts. And TikTok was just a different medium for showing travel. I'm showing a different part of it. And just showing, like on Instagram, obviously we show the beautiful, like what's happening, the beautiful hotel, the beautiful sunset. The reason we go to those places. The reason we go to the places, but in TikTok, we show what we do at those places. We learn language, we eat good food, we do learn culture and that's what we show on TikTok. So we love TikTok because it shows that TikTok and Instagram together show the complete of how we travel. And then the cool thing is that we've learned so much more about the culture and language because of TikTok. I mean, we're learning trends and stuff that we would never, ever be able to do. Yeah, like we'll sit at markets and they'll be playing music and we'll be sitting with local people. And we know every song that they're playing and all the local trends. The reason why people are wearing... We don't feel like foreigners. Like foreigners, because we know the reason why people are wearing clothes, the reason why they're doing certain things is because it's a culture and we learn that from TikTok, which is awesome. That's why we really appreciate the app. Yeah. That's incredible. I love the TikTok video where can you change in outfits? Oh, yeah. That's what we're just showcasing and how you dress in Thailand and Laos, Canada. That's another thing that I just love about a lot of the Asian cultures is that they don't feel like, what are you, the cultural appropriation? Yeah, like... Please wear our clothes. I want to see what it looks like on you and then you wear it because... Yeah. And then you appreciate it. Back home in like Western culture, you embrace other cultures and sometimes it can be negative, seen as negative, but when in Asia they just love you, just like showing some sort of appreciation of their culture, showing it to the rest of the world. They really like it. When we started diving into Camilla, so Cambodia, some, actually one of our videos went viral in the States and people were like, this is so offensive, a white girl speaking Camilla, a white girl not speaking English. I was like, whoa, hold on. So it's offensive because you're not familiar with people. What? Yeah, it was very, yeah. So I think it's nice because it shows a lot like we love it because it shows that your culture means something and we can basically just, we feel like we honouring your culture, like in your language and your tradition when we're showing it off to the rest of the world here. Of course. It feels great when you see someone who doesn't speak your language and they're putting time to learn. It's funny for me, even with Alex in our relationship, every time he comes up with a new word in Arabic or Moroccan dialect, it's so exciting. Like, oh my God. I feel like, you know, you build that connection with them. That's so cool. Yeah. Oh, that's so special. I wish you needed to learn my language. I do, English. No, I don't think you can imagine that because I don't think it's such appreciation. Oh, sorry. No, no, you go ahead. I was saying, someone is asking you to sing a Burmese song. Oh, what's my favourite one? Hey, chatel mingar utengi, you know. Duriamudu saizabt baya. Udumal over. Kameka, kameka. Hey, hey, hey. That's a bit of a big start. And, Janti, do you have a good singing voice? No, my singing voice is terrible, which I think sometimes helps us because I think it's funny when I sing and try to sing in a, I don't have any any singing ability at all. You go viral in my house when you sing. Yes. Thanks, Pilo. Nice, sis. Oh, I love you. Kelly Henry is your girl. Hey, Kelly Henry. So sweet. Oh, yeah. A lot of sex. I know some Arabic words, obviously. I know, I know, Habibi. Habibi, that's a good one. Habibi and Yalla. Yalla, Yalla. I remember in Egypt, whenever we, like, honestly, we just get in a taxi, we'd be like, we're going there and then as we start going, Yalla. And I'd be like, cool. So I can chat Yalla with them and you're like, let's go. Like, yeah. So it's good. They liked it. I liked it. It was fun. Have you guys traveled in the Middle East or some areas? We've been to Israel, Palestine, and Egypt. Oh, I'd love to go to more. I've been dreaming of going to the Middle East because I just love the desert. I think it's such a fantastic place. And I like because we always go through United Arab Emirates and Doha. And I love how they save the numbers. And it always sounds so cool when they save the numbers in the airport. But yeah, that's what I've always wanted to. How do I count in Arabic? Like, one, two, three. Wahid. Wahid, yes. Itzan. Itzan. Salata. Salata. Wahid, itzan, salata. Yeah, itzan, salata. Itzan, salata. In Malay, it's salata as well, I think. Yeah, they have lots of Arabic in there. Yeah. We are learning Malay the other day, so that's just it. Fantastic. Yeah. Someone was asking earlier if you guys have plans to go to Morocco anytime soon. We want to go to Morocco. How cool is that? See, I think like Morocco is also like more Middle Eastern, I mean, yeah, than Africa. That's what it seems. I think from the architecture and especially the proximity to the Sahara desert, you get that unique experience, especially if you go and you spend the night in the Sahara desert. It feels more Middle Eastern, even though it's from Africa. Like, we got those vows from Egypt. We never, so we went from Israel into Egypt and I was like, this is total different to Southern Africa. This is nowhere of Africa I'm familiar with. This is much like across the border, across Israel, Palestine, like that's what that's. So I was like, Egypt has a lot more influence from that side than it does African side. So I can imagine just across the border. I don't know about Libya, but what I see of Morocco, is very like Turkish, Middle Eastern, kind of that like mixture of that. I'd really like to see what kind of African influence they have. Hey Amanda. Hey girl. Well, awesome guys. We have been going for 51 minutes, which is incredible. We talk a lot. I love it. Oh gosh. I was a little bit nervous earlier today. I was like, oh my God. I'm just like, I have to learn to contain my excitement a little bit because it's really great for me to see you and interact with you. I think the first time doing a live together, isn't it? We have a video called Before Have. I don't think we have. This is the first time. But we've been following each other for a while. Yeah. I really hope that we can join you in the future to one of your retreats. Yes. And we're hoping to have Villas and Paket that we're excited to invite people to come join us. Can you say that name for me? Cool Quest. Cool Quest. I'm just like, so my reading ability is really bad. But thank you so much personally. Just want to say thank you. Yeah, Cool Quest. You've been like hanging on. Very involved in the conversation. Yeah. Cool Quest are our new friends from YouTube. They are a couple from Canada and the U.S. and they make cool videos about the outdoors, hiking and backpacking. We have an interview with them later today. Oh, two interviews? Yeah. But they are interviewing us. Oh, wow. We actually just connect. Yeah. We're actually planning. Normally we do our YouTube. We've did a little bit of YouTube like six months ago. It's been a year. Okay, it's been a year. Oh, yeah. And we did very like, very cinematic drone cinematic videos. But now we're trying to do, we're probably going to try to go more on to a blog site. So that's going to probably. We did like blog with cinematic, but honestly cinematic is so hectic. Because for every one second, I'm not kidding. It can take like an hour of like editing. Editing. I can't say that word today. Editing. So yeah. So we're trying to, this is going to be a very blog style. So we're going to see how it works out. It could really, really, I don't know. No, it's not going to shank. Yeah. We'll see how it does. Yeah. Yeah. I watched the, I think I watched the video you're talking about. You guys are in the canoe and then you have drone footage. It looks really nice. Yeah. We did a lot of stuff like that. But now we're going to do some blog stuff. So we'll see how that ends up and we'll even like sharing a speak. You guys have great personalities and you just work very well together. It's always fun to watch. I'm sure you'll do great. That's so sweet. Thank you. I really appreciate that. Sometimes I feel like we can be, you know... Sometimes I feel like we're talking to ourselves. I think everyone, right? To this story, it feels like at some point you're just talking to yourself. Well, awesome guys. I just hope that we can, you know, meet in the future. Maybe we'll join one of you. Yes. Or if you come to the United States. I don't know if you've been to the ISIS before. I've been to North Carolina. Candy hasn't, but we've been to Canada together. I've been to Canada. I love Canada. I love Toronto. I love Canadians. They're the nicest down-to-earth people ever. So open-minded. So, yeah. Get along well with Canadians. Must say it. I don't know if you can hear the phrase. Yeah. We went to Canada Wonderland, or Toronto Wonderland, something like that. Canada Wonderland. John T. Drag so much pop that he puked. Yeah, I did. Popped. Thanks, babe. Yeah, and he was... He was even a kid. He was like... It was when he was 29. 30. Yeah, I was like... 32. Yeah, it was like three years ago. Boy, oh boy. And we've got our friend, Format, North Carolina right here. Awesome. Yeah. I was going to say... The best thing about North Carolina is... What's the chicken place? I always talk about it. Bojangles. Bojangles. Chicken. Best chicken place. Bojangles. We just met this guy who Brian, he told us that there's a nickname for Bojangles. What? Jangies. Okay, I don't remember that. But do I remember when I went to North Carolina? We were in New Bern, Atlantic Beach, and Raleigh. Yeah. Raleigh is a nice city. I used to live there for work sometime. Do people know... Kidogo. Kidogo. Jumbo. Kidogo's a little bit. We just sang that song. I think you might have logged on a little bit late, but we all... We three of us sang Jumbo's song. Yeah. We have to sing the song. Maybe we'll close the live stream by singing the song altogether. What do you guys think? I think that is... Are we going to finish with Tanzania or with like... To know what a really cool Kenyan singer that I like is a major. I don't know. Yeah, he sings Karibu Kenairo. Can you sing it? No. Okikuji genia shinwa wama tatu. Okikuji genia shinwa yama tatu. Toya tatu. A kenyan nani? Musi palisi gagonia wama tatu. Yes, I remember that. So it means when you come to Kenya, there's three people that you have to be... Careful of? Friends with, that you have to make allies with. It's the police, the robbers, and the taxi drivers. Good tip. Should we sing the Jumbo song? Yeah. Because you know that too. Oh, I feel so shy. I don't know it at all. So go straight on Kandy. Yeah, I don't know it. I don't know it. You know it. I feel like I'm blushing. Ok, let's just go. I think I'm going like ready. One, two, three. Jumbo. Jumbo bona. Abari gani. Are you really? Yeah. Ok, go again. Go again. I'll put it on. Look at how ugly that is. That one. Pick up. One, two, three. Jumbo. Abari gani. Jumbo. Jumbo. Abari gani. Jumbo. Jumbo. Jumbo. Jumbo. Jumbo. Jumbo. Jumbo. Jumbo. Jumbo. Jumbo. Jumbo. Jumbo. Jumbo. Jumbo. Jumbo. Jumbo. Jumbo. Jumbo. Rene. Owen. Ha, ha. Awesome, Candy. Great job. Oh, it's wonderful, OK. You did well, Candy. Thank you. Aw. I'm going to. I'm going to keep this one on. It's a good look. That's all of me. That's cool. Ok. Eσω hit. Guys, well, I thank you so much for making the time to to me and chat. I really had so much fun talking to you and thank you to all those who joined us today. If you're now following Candy and John T. King, be sure to check them out. They have amazing content, always, always inspiring. So I'm excited to see all of your upcoming adventures and I can't wait to meet you in person. We've got to meet in person. We can play around with some filters. Bye, guys. Bye.