Emerging Voices - Travelling

Zimona 0:02
You just heard Baiyini, by Gurrumul. You're listening to Emerging Voices on SYN. I'm here with RJ, [?Teo], Adam, and I'm Zimona. In this segment, we will be talking about our past travel experiences. The first topic we will discuss is, where have you traveled to? What about you? Adam, where have you travelled to?

Adam 0:23
I travelled... my most prominent one is probably because I've been a very Australian based travel traveler. So my most noteworthy one is when I went up to the Northern Territory when I was 10 now. So that's about it, over 10 years ago now, but yeah, went up for my 10th birthday. Went all up on the Ghan through Alice Springs, Catherine and Darwin. Oh, amazing. And yeah, went to say the Catherine gorge, obviously Uluru throughout as well. And yeah, I mean, I loved... the warm weather, the rustic, rugged surroundings of the red dust, and obviously seeing it slowly, slowly transitioned from the more city life as as you departed Adelaide. I think, yeah, Adelaide is where that again starts from, yeah, and it slowly transitions into the red, red dust, the Red Center of of the heart of Australian outback. So, yeah, that was, that was probably my most memorable time. That's

Zimona 1:48
That's so great. And what about you, Teo, where have you travelled to?

Teo 1:51
I have travelled to Japan, actually. Oh, amazing. Japan was actually really interesting. It was very fun. I was mostly on a school trip. It was one of the most fun times ever for two weeks. It was just great. Seeing a lot of hers, uh, seeing a lot of the temples were really interesting. Like, the design of them were really nice. The food was fantastic. Going to Disneyland was not too bad, in Tokyo.

Zimona 2:16
What about the food? Like, you said that you really enjoyed the food.

Teo 2:21
The food was fantastic, like, it was really good. I had a lot of ramen. I had a lot of other great Japanese flavor food. I can't remember how many have had. Because of so many choices, I had the most, weirdest one out of everyone that had. I was the only one to try eel. Oh, wow. What did you think of it? It was the most gosh. How did I How did I describe it correctly to people who haven't tried it electric. I wish it was electric. I was, you know, if it was electric, I would have been dead.

Zimona 2:56
What about you? RJ, where have you traveled to?

RJ 2:58
Oh, I've traveled to two magnificent places. First, I traveled up to my hometown in Queensland, which was absolutely amazing, somewhere in the Gold Coast. So I've I went to some of the theme parks there, which were absolutely amazing, probably the best, probably the best few days of my life.

Zimona 3:20
Oh wow. That sounds really great.

RJ 3:23
It is.

Zimona 3:23
What was your favourite part of it?

RJ 3:26
Well, just being able to unwind and just enjoy myself.

Zimona 3:31
Sounds great. Well, to finish off this part of the question, I've been to the Netherlands because I'm was born in the Netherlands, been to Belgium, France, Germany, New York, England, Turkey and, of course, Australia. Now we're jetting off to the next question. Like Adam said, What is a core travel memory that sticks with you till this day? What about you, Teo?

Teo 3:58
That's a very tough question, I would say, for me, [?] I probably would say, going to.... Disneyland for the first time was very fun for everyone - doing it in Japan, it was very interesting. I really enjoyed it. I also enjoyed looking at all the temples there, because there's so many of them. It was so much fun.

Zimona 4:26
Okay, great. What did you do, Adam?

Adam 4:29
I'm probably gonna go to a different location for this one. Sounds good, Magnetic Island, which is just after off Townsville. And, yeah, there was quite a lot of memories from that. But the fact is that you could rent one of those mini Mokes, which is, like, you know, a buggy version of the little mini cooper with with its roof off and all that. So just going around. Sunny, magnetic garland with the mini Mokes and and we also came across this sea biscuit, right? I don't know if you've ever been on a sea biscuit before. What's the sea biscuit? So interesting? So it's so you're on the back of you basically trailed on the back of a boat, and it's going around while you're in this little floating device.

Zimona 5:28
Oh, yeah, that's amazing. I've been on one of those. I didn't realise it was called a sea biscuit.

Adam 5:32
Yeah, that might be the Australian term for it, or something similar. But yeah, it's obviously... because it looks like a biscuit, or like a cookie, or however, but yeah, just getting flying around on the back there. And it was, it was quite choppy. Actually, the more you more I think about it like, and I think, I think the driver was deliberately throwing, throwing us around a little bit more. But yeah, I enjoyed that lot. So yeah.

Zimona 6:04
Sounds really great. And what about you, RJ, what's a core memory for you?

RJ 6:08
For me, being being able to swim in the sea at Phillip Island, another holiday place I went to that was, that's a cool...memory that will never, ever go away.

Zimona 6:20
For me, I have a few interesting memories, so I'll just describe them briefly, parasailing and wild water rafting in Turkey was one that I really enjoyed, volunteering at a castle 30 minutes outside of Paris for three months, being in a pine forest in Belgium, smelling the pine trees. So that was probably, yeah, a couple of my favourite memories.

Imogen 6:44
So anyway, after all our travelling stories, we may as well go to our next song, which coincidentally is about flying and flying airports and, yeah, all the experiences there. So our next song is Upgraded by Great Array.

You're listening to Emerging Voices on SYN. I'm Imogen. Today, we are talking about travel and disability. We're going to share our tips, our experiences and the change we would like to see. I'm Imogen, and we're joined by Sise and Amir. Amir, would you like to start us off?

Amere 7:27
Oh, yeah. So first we could have a look at the what. What do you wish people know about when you are travelling as a person with disability. So that's the question. So who would like to go first? I can start it by saying, for me, the things important is just having people acting the same way towards me as they do it towards their family member, or towards their formal colleague or, you know, just having that same attitude doesn't matter about my disability.

Imogen 8:14
So being treated like a human, yes, treated absolutely,

Amere 8:17
that's, that's the best to mention. So it's

Imogen 8:22
a good starting point, isn't it? It seems like the bare minimum, but it's often not reached, isn't it? Yeah. Do you find that that's exacerbated when traveling like personally, I've had a lot of bad experiences in airports with airport staff, more so then taxi, yeah, or taxis, that's a minefield, isn't it?

RJ 8:46
When you're traveling by taxi and have a dog guide, which guiding you, they usually refer refuse, and when you try to explain, they either drive away or drive 100 meters away and stop and refuse to cancel your ride. And is full on situation,

Imogen 9:09
it's exhausting, isn't it? Absolutely sissy.

RJ 9:12
What do you think? What do you like people to know before? Or, what do you wish people to know before you're travelling somewhere?

Speaker 1 9:24
For myself as a disability person, I agree with you, for people to change and try to be have more kind to what other? It doesn't matter what GA have towards like a disability. We all human being and so other, I don't see it is a is a good thing, like they can treat us different than other people. With no disability, yeah, so that's would be good to try and to, like, take a look one of your sister or one of your brother her disability, and you they will be treated, especially, you know, toward others people. So for my for myself, I will be like, you know, I will never treat people different way.

Imogen 10:27
It's tricky, isn't it, because we often do have different access needs. So it's about that balance, isn't it, between having people recognize that we will need different treatments sometimes, yeah, but not fundamentally treating us differently.

Speaker 2 10:42
Absolutely, that's the case. Yes, I mean sort

Imogen 10:45
of contradiction myself there, haven't I? But treat us differently, but not too differently. Yeah,

Amere 10:52
like when I travel someone come and grab my cane instead of asking me, How can I help you

Imogen 11:00
that that is it's I see that as an almost violent act. Oh, it is.

Amere 11:04
And sometimes they push me to the wrong train and say, Oh, I thought you need this train. I'm sorry you didn't ask me and I didn't say, I need help. Why would you pushing me.

Imogen 11:20
So this is just someone unsolicited coming up to you and yeah, physically pushing, driving

Amere 11:26
you. I'm pushing you on so and when you answering, they almost come up with, I didn't know, or I and you, the expectation of society is you always have to be kind respectful, yes, but sometimes I just get over it. Yes, I don't need to be respectful all the time.

Imogen 11:50
I absolutely agree with you there. And it's, it's, it erodes, I think, at our patience and our energy, like I mentioned that airports, for a lot of us, can be really tricky. One of my recent experiences in the airport was with a flight attendant. So this was staff of the airline. I turn up at the check in counter and a flight attendant. So I'm a mobility aid user. I use a mobility scooter. The woman shouts at me across the terminal, what did you do to yourself? And I just sort of look at her, and I don't say anything for a moment. She repeats it, and I eventually said, don't ask that. You can't ask a stranger of personal medical information. And she just sort of stares at me for a moment in shock, because, you know, a lot of the time I will be a bit more patient, but in this case, I wasn't having any of it, because she's a representative of the airline. Her job is to ensure that I haven't safely checked in. It's hard enough dealing with Yes, yeah, all of the rigmarole of flying with mobility aids. And I actually thought she was going to get angry with me in response, and I was still holding my ground, she ended up just kind of like stopping herself and literally walking away and ignoring me. Luckily, somebody else jumped in, but that's just one like the Yeah,

Amere 13:09
the training, appropriate training for the staff member. It's absolutely necessary. One of the things I can talk about it, just my mind went blank. But the the things is that training the essential training. And earlier I mentioned, when we were sitting in the room together, about sunflower, uh, badger Yeah, lanyard or badgers. So

Imogen 13:37
for those listening, sunflower lanyards and badges are used quite widely to signify invisible disabilities, so people are able to wear it, so they're able to be identified as being disabled when they don't have any obvious physical identifiers. And people can find this useful to, you know, use accessible seating on public transport, for instance, where they can get quite, you know, dirty looks or pressured to move. If it's in members of the public can't visually identify them as being disabled. And it's also very useful in airports, where there are a number of different accessibility barriers.

Amere 14:14
This started from UK A while ago, and it's been spread around, and it's just really wonderful things to have it. Some people have it as allies, and some people carrying it as a person with disability, which invisible disability. About 90 to 95% of the people with disability, they have an invisible disability, and that's something they can choose to show this for, you know, in the airport, in a train station or somewhere, when you spot that, you can be a little bit more patient with the information and the stuff you give. Being to the person

Imogen 15:00
and aware that they may have access needs or sensory needs.

Amere 15:04
Yeah, on topic of traveling, so we got through the airport and accessibility, and also sometimes earlier we were mentioning about the wheelchair stuff, like, if they could, if you could elaborate on that a little bit, imagine for the I would have, like listeners,

Imogen 15:25
absolutely, I would have liked to be able to do some more preparation on this. But a topic, when we were discussing this earlier that came up, and it's a topic close to my heart, and I think close to the heart of most mobility aid users is the right to take your own wheelchair on an airplane. Now this, as far as I'm aware, this isn't currently an option on any commercial airlines in Australia. Now, for those listening who aren't as familiar with mobility aids, the situation for a lot of us is that our mobility aids, our wheelchairs, our mobility scooters, will be checked in, either at the check in counter or at the gate, and at that point, our specialized, our own mobility, A's are taken away from us, and we're put in an airline wheelchair, which often

Amere 16:17
not accessible, really, like just a basic

Imogen 16:22
it is very basic, and you actually can't self propel. So when you're in that, you're unable to independently move. So I've been left in one waiting for a flight, when I've been traveling by myself, then sitting there the flight's been delayed, 4555, minutes, unable to get myself to the toilet or go and buy a coffee, things that we take for granted. I'm sitting there sort of stranded at the the whim of the the airlines. And there was a, I think, quite well publicized case about 10 years ago with Kurt faunely, who is a fantastic athlete, Jetstar eventually issued a formal apology after he chose to actually drag himself on the ground to the plane rather than use the unsuitable wheelchair. And this is not an isolated incident. And then on top of this, we have so many instances of wheelchairs being damaged in transit. I couldn't find any stats for Australia, but the US Department of Transport estimated that around 11,000 wheelchairs were damaged by airlines last year. All right, thank you so much. This has been emerging voices on sin. We're now going to listen to Oh Katie Noonan, oh, I've got fantastic um, Australian artists, Katie Noonan, special ones coming up. Thanks so much. This has been Amere, Sise and Imogen on Emerging Voices.

Ryan 17:52
Welcome back to SYN radio, which you're now listening to. I'm joined by my very my very good friends Teo and Adam. Hello, hello... and Imogen. Hey there. So now we are, we are going to talk about our [?Fauci] our most favorite dream, dream holiday destinations

Adam 18:20
for sales, I'd just like to point out the song you just listened to was I drove all night by Celine Dion, and to get to a dream destination, in some cases, you do have to drive all night, so that that is quite appropriate. Yes,

Imogen 18:37
Yes, thank you, Adam, gotta watch out for the kangaroos. Room. So driving at night in Australia.

Adam 18:48
So I guess I should start by asking Imogen over here, do you have a dream holiday, and has it changed over time, or is it the same that you've always dreamt of? I

Imogen 19:02
have a really strange approach to travel. No, it's not strange. It's just I've basically never sat down and said I want to go there and planned a specific trip there. I've always found excuses to go somewhere, whether it's being like someone's having a wedding and okay, we're going to be over in Europe anyway. So why don't we just, like, catch up with someone who lives there and go from there, or, you know, someone's planning a trip, so I'll go with them. I am. It's one of my goals at some point to actually decide on a location just because I want to go there and go there. Hasn't happened yet, but we'll get there. I think Uluru is really high on my list at the moment. Or, actually, I've just never been to the Northern Territory or Central Australia, and there are so many beautiful sites. Oh, absolutely, yeah, I would. I'm not sure exactly how I'm going to do it, because I think it would be not impossible, but it's challenging as I'm. Ability aid user. And I think also you just want a stretch of time, because there's, there's just so much to explore there. I think I would hate to do it in a hurry.

Adam 20:11
For sure. Yeah, and going to Teo, next dream holiday. And same question, Has it changed over over time?

Speaker 3 20:18
No, it has not changed over time. My dream holiday is always going to America. Yep, I always wanted to go to America because I always loved seeing the sport there. Yep, I always love seeing the ice hockey. I love seeing the NFL. I love watching on TV. So I was like, well, I won't really want to see it live, because that would be a dream for me. They're

Imogen 20:42
such intense stadiums, aren't they? I mean, we have huge stadiums here, but it just looks like a different type of energy with a lot of the American Games, doesn't it?

Teo 20:50
It's completely different. The stadiums are really well, you'll say stadiums overall are really good. Most of them are and then a couple of them are just underwhelming. And

Adam 21:03
now to Ryan, your dream destination, and has it changed over the years, or has it stayed the same?

Speaker 4 21:10
Well, my dream destination, or holiday destination, is to go to Disneyland. And no, it hasn't changed, not even now. The reason why I have heard so many good reviews about it, and it just makes me want to go there even more being able to see all the Disney characters go on the rides and have so much fun that has not changed at all. I think

Imogen 21:35
childhood dreams of travel destinations can be really powerful. Yeah, yeah. They hear about

Teo 21:40
Yeah. They can Yes, I agree. Also, which version Do you want to go to?

Speaker 4 21:45
Well, well, the well, the version I want to go to is in California. Can't, kind of wish it was here in Australia,

Teo 21:52
Anaheim, yeah, that makes sense.

Adam 21:55
Which it is rumor to come to Australia, but we'll see how that one goes.

Imogen 22:00
We'll believe it when we see it, yeah, yeah, yeah,

Adam 22:05
But, yeah. Disneyland has always been improving on itself for years and, I mean, there's, there's now how many different little hotels that they've got. They've now got themed hotels for, like, cars. They've got one for,

Imogen 22:22
you can, like, stay in the cars Hotel.

Adam 22:23
Yeah, you can stay in Radiator Springs itself. So it's the same for various other films as well. But I just can't remember off the top of my head which one

Teo 22:37
I think they didn't they built recently, a Star Wars one too,

Adam 22:41
I believe. So yes, since the Disney acquisition of the Star Wars franchise, yeah, so yeah,

Imogen 22:50
because they haven't made enough money from Star Wars already,

from that lagging product.

Adam 23:03
And yeah, for me, I mean, to be fair, that the thing that has kind of been on my mind for a while is, is the UK itself, yeah, because I've never been over over there myself, my my grandfather used to go over there a lot back in the day, because he used to work at Holden. And they travel for work, travel for work, to work with the Vauxhall employees over there. So basically, it's kind of and he tells these stories about, you know, the time, I know it's different time. It was 1970s and 80s Britain, but still that just that, that idea of, you know, going, going to the UK, has always been in the back of my head for a little while,

Imogen 23:52
And you have British heritage.

Adam 23:54
And, no, not, not, not, not recent British heritage.

Imogen 23:59
But ancestrally, yeah, that is your background.

Adam 24:02
Yeah, I've got, I mean, I'm Italian on one side, and then like, British and Irish, okay, on the other so, like, yeah.

Imogen 24:12
So that may be some, like, small amount of connection.

Adam 24:15
There could be, could be, that that's, that's probably part of it, and edge it. So coming up next. Thanks for the chat. By the way, that's been a lot of fun to chat to you all. Coming up next, we've got quite an interesting track, quite honestly, but it is still on the theme of it all. We've got Vacation by Alvin and the Chipmunks. You're listening to Emerging Voices on SYN.

Zimona 24:47
In this segment, we'll be talking about culture shock. So this is quite an interesting topic. What do you think Amir, what was the experience you had in regards to culture shock?

Speaker 2 24:58
Culture shock? Like, yeah. So culture shock is the time when you coming to a new environment, new culture, and the things they do, it's not the same as you've been growing up with. So for instance, when you go to holiday or go somewhere and you hear a different sound or a different environment, and you just not sure about that particular behavior or particular things, and that, we call it culture shock. One of the experience I had was about timing. So when you say or calendar in Australia, I came about 1015, years ago, and I learned about having a calendar, you know, they say, Oh, we're going to holiday 26 of, you know, July 2024 or something like that. In my culture, we didn't really make a plan in that in advance. We just instantly doing it and go

Zimona 26:22
So very spontaneous, yeah, most interesting, yeah.

Amere 26:26
most of the time it's like that. And another thing I still, you know, to today, I still love about we say I'll meet you tomorrow. We don't say I'll meet you tomorrow at 9am or 10am 4pm 3pm and surprisingly, most of the people understand tomorrow is a, you know, there is a, you know, they just turn up in a similar time.

Zimona 26:54
Oh, how interesting. Yeah, very in sync.

Speaker 2 26:58
There was a diplomat in Iran from France. He retired, and he wrote in his book, he said one of the hardest things I ever couldn't I, I still can't get over it. It's the aim of things. People say, I'll meet you tomorrow. I didn't know when they want to meet me tomorrow. So, yeah, that's timing and things. How about you sissy? Would you like to talk about culture shock? If you want to give an example?

Speaker 1 27:33
yeah, about the culture shock is, like the timing you were talking about, about timing and celebration as well. So it's like Christmas. People celebrated in summertime here Australia, but back home is like in winter time. So same here, yeah, yeah. But in in Christmas here in Australia, I see it a lot different. There is Christmas tree. You provide the gift for your kids. They open it in the morning for center. That's the only thing we're missing out back home, we don't have,

Zimona 28:13
yeah, exactly, barbecue usually as well. And barbecue don't

Speaker 1 28:19
go to the beach. We just said, celebrated with family and friends that going to other people visit them, and you will be carrying this small bag. So every house you go to give you loading cake, special cake for Christmas. So that's our more a child who, you know, grow up back home. That's our big, big excitement for Christmas. Yeah, exactly. And yeah, there is a lot of things, yeah, there is a lot of thing that is, is, like, Australia celebrate Christmas a lot, but as when, and yeah, on on Christmas Eve, there will be worship in the road, every choice they go around. So we just, it's like welcoming Christmas. No sleeping. We do overnight, pray and worship until morning, and then afterward, everyone go home and sleep in the morning, go to church after church, come home, you got visitor. Then, you know, provide lunch and everything amazing. That's our culture shock that, yeah, I see it different between back home in Australia.

Amere 29:43
And you know, we live in a multicultural country, which means we come across all sort of different culture, all sort of things. And sometimes I, when I arrived, people were asking me, do you celebrate this? Do you celebrate that? And of course, I do, because you are coming to a new country, it's quite exciting meeting lots of new people, lots of new cultures, and you never knew about them. And those kind of things sometimes can be overwhelming, or sometimes can be, you know, you get shock of, oh, what does this mean? And you feel shy to ask. Sometimes you just have to go and research about different things. Yes. Simona, what? What else do you think for me, you can give an example.

Zimona 30:33
Yeah, I grew up in the Netherlands, and my Mum's Australian, so when we moved to Australia, what I noticed really was time and distance. So the difference between the two cultures, growing up, it was considered normal and polite to be on time or even early to a meeting. You'd, you know, you'd say something like, let's meet at two o'clock, and you'd be there at two o'clock, or, you know, even earlier. But here it's like 215 or sometimes even later, and it's just seen as really quite normal.

Speaker 1 31:03
Thank you guys for listening to our radio. Coming up next is Our Goal with You Anyway. Bye, boy in Turkey. Bye guys, see you later. Thank you. Bye. You.