What the 762 Turns on the Road to Pai, Thailand Can Teach You About the Road of Life

Most people spend their entire life stressed without ever giving a single thought as to what it is they really want or what's important to them. See, I'm here to cut through all that noise connecting you to yourself and the life that you were meant to live. I used to slave away at a corporate job that I hated, but I broke through the social norms and pursued my passion. As a result, I own my own coffee company. I'm espresso sommelier, and I get to travel the world. You too can live a life that you love, but it starts with getting clear about what you want. It starts with a new decision. I'm your host, Donnie Rouse, and you are listening to the podcast One Life. What's going on, guys? Donnie Rouse here. And today I am going to share an adventure I went on that will teach you all you need to know about life. The adventure I'm talking about is a scooter ride I took from Chiang Mai, Thailand, in order to get to Pai. Pai is somewhere in the mountains of the Opium Triangle. And before I tell you about this adventure, I must first tell you what inspired the adventure. So I was on a plane ride. I came from Thailand to Chiang Mai and on that plane ride, I was sitting there, somewhere in the flight, I noticed that there was a beautiful girl sitting across the aisle. Blonde haired girl, I believe her name is Joanna from Germany. So how do I know that? So as we landed in Chiang Mai, I waited off the plane and as she got off, I said, hey, I saw you on the plane. I thought you were beautiful. I just wanted to say, hello, I'm Donnie. In that conversation, we started discussing what our travel plans were. And she told me that she was headed to PI. And I. I'd heard about PI before. On that trip, several people had spoken about PI and they were saying how they drove a scooter there and how it was just an amazing experience all around. So it was already like, it was already a spark. There was always like the seed planted in my mind. And then when I met someone who I thought was attractive and I wanted to get to know better, I was like, all right, well, I guess maybe I'll take the trip. So for those of you who are not familiar with PI, PI is located in the Opium Triangle. And in order to get to PI, you have to go through all these switchbacks in the mountains to be. It's 762 turns, steep, you know, steep, steep cliffs that you could possibly fall out. And not only that, you're on the road and there are like trucks that are flying that could literally run you off the road or run you into the side. The mountain. So it is extremely, extremely scary. But nothing motivates you like love, right? So I get to Chiang Mai and this thing I was. I asked her, I said, well, where are you staying? She's like, oh, I'm staying at the Tiger Hostel. I was like, okay, Tiger Hostel. Well, maybe I'll see you there. I go to Chiang Mai, and I immediately, I talked to a guy about renting a scooter, and he's giving me, you know, he's telling me all the details about the scooter rental. He goes, okay, well, you know, this is. You have the scooter here. You know, when you bring it back, just make sure it has this much gas. And the scooter rental was something like, stupid. It was like. I know, it was like $10 for, like, I don't even know how many days. It was ridiculously cheap. It may have even been less than that. And as he was telling me, he said, well, if you were to get stuck, he's like, this is the number you would call. And wherever you are in Chiang Mai, we'll come. We'll, you know, we'll pick up the scooter and. And you're good. But if you go outside of the city center and you were to break down, then there's nothing we can do. I mean, I don't even know if I would have service outside of the city center, right? So there. That already, like, that kind of. I was like, oh, boy. Okay, so there's some possibility that something could go wrong here and I may get stuck and I'm not going to have any way. But I was like, okay, all right. So, well, thank you. Oops, sorry. Knock my computer. So I said, thank you. I took the keys to the scooter and I said, well, you know, I don't want to. I don't want to cut Chiang Mai short. I'm in Chiang Mai for literally, I think it was like two or three days. Three days. It had to be. And I was, well, let me just see how much of the city I can see. So I got on my scooter and I literally started going around cities. I went to this temple at the top of the. On top of Chiang Mai that gave you this beautiful, beautiful panoramic view of the city. While I was there, I also had a monk do a caricature of me. I do not have that caricature, but I'm sure it's probably somewhere with all my travel documents. And when I felt that I had sufficiently seen everything that I could see, because Chiang Mai is not that big, it's an awesome city, but it's pretty small, I was, all right. Well, I think the next day I could probably. I could probably just go off on this journey. I can take the ride to Pie. Next day comes, I'm sit. I wake up in the middle in the morning. I can't remember. It might have been like 5 o' clock in the morning. The whole attention behind waking up early was to avoid the traffic. Because Pie, I think on a good day, if you're taking a, like a bus or like a little van, I think it's like three to three hours, three and a half hours to get there. And with me on my scooter, just to kind of give you a sneak peek, how long it took. It took me over six hours to get there because I was driving very, very cautious and I wanted to be more conservative in my riding than aggressive. Just because I wanted to make sure that one. I wasn't like, gonna get run off the road and that I was just kind of letting the bigger vehicles go to side. But nevertheless, I'm not. I'm jumping the gun here. Five o' clock in the morning, I wake up and I'm like, okay. Oh, shit. And I'm feeling anxious because, like, my nerves are like. Or I'm on edge, right? I'm like, well, what do I do? Like, if I go there? Like, what happens if I break down? What happens if. You know, what happens if I get off in an accident? What happens if I get run off the road? You know, all the ifs were coming into my mind and I was starting to get overwhelmed by them. And then there was a moment where I paused. I said, all right, well, let me just stop. Because if I keep going down this path, I'm not going to take any freaking trip. I'm not. I'm literally going to stay here. And I thought about that. But then I asked myself a different question. I said, all right, well, if I wasn't afraid, what action would I take? What would I do? And then when I asked that question, right, because depending on the question you ask, you'd get a different answer. And then it was like, yeah, I was like, I'm taking this trip. So I was like, okay. I mustered up the courage, I got on my scooter and I started going out. You know, I started scooting outside. I. The entire time I'm going, I had my headphones in Because I had. I had a Thai SIM card, so I was able to get service, and I even downloaded the map. So in the event that I didn't get service, at least I would have the GPS navigating me. If I lost GPS signal, then I'd be up a creek, but I had signaled the entire way. So I'm going out of town. All of a sudden, now I'm in this industrial area, and I'm like, you know, there's all these giant trucks flying, like, going on the side. And in Thailand, if you're not familiar, you have to drive. It's the opposite side of the road, right? You're. It was. So I'm like, okay, this is not familiar. Well, I can't remember. I know in Karabi it was the opposite side of the road. I don't recall if it was the same in Pai, but nevertheless, you know, it wasn't. It was the same. So. So I'm going. I'm about to. I'm driving in this industrial area. There's trucks everywhere honking at me, and I'm freaking out. I'm like, holy shit, what do I do? Do I. You know what? I'm just gonna turn back. Screw this. I'm just gonna. Why am I going in the first place? And then my. The alert goes off in my ear saying, turn left. I turn left onto this road, and all of a sudden I see this road going straight up into the mountains. And it was the most. One of the most amazing things I had ever seen, because it was like. I can't even describe the picture. Like, you just see all the traffic is over here, and all of a sudden there's like this serene road going straight up into the mountains where you see all this lush vegetation. And I remember turning on that road, and I was just screaming. I had my fist up in the air and I literally screamed, going, whoo. Flying down there. And I think I stopped for a photo there as well, just because there was so much intense emotion. There was. How is the. You know, so it's not true of life, right? You're. You. You get the inspiration, go there. All of a sudden, all those doubts creep in, and you start going down there, and you're like, oh, man, maybe I should turn back. But then there's a point where something sticks, and all of a sudden you have a bigger vision and you start to move towards that. So I'm driving down this road, and now all of a sudden I'm in. I'm starting to go through all those switchbacks the curves that it takes to get to PI. There was a point there where I was going and I saw. I can't remember the name of it. It was like 132 Coffee or something like that. It was a coffee plantation. So you could imagine being coffee person having this ride where I don't know what the hell I'm even going to encounter. All of a sudden, now I see a coffee plantation on the side, you know, on the road there. So I pull off, get a cappuccino, and I was very dismayed to find that the woman had this beautiful espresso machine. I don't even know how many thousands of dollars. It was like the top end. It was when Sineso was the top consumer commercial espresso maker there was. And I'm like, oh, man, this is great. I'm gonna get a great coffee. It was the longest espresso extraction I've ever seen in my life. This chick, I call her chick, but she, she extracted my espresso shot over the course of two minutes. And so the entire way, if you are familiar with what they call a manual paddle group. So she's, you know, she puts it into the manual mode and then she would turn it off, turn it on, turn it off. And she kept turning the shot on and off for hoping that the flow rate was going to go faster. And I'm freaking out because I'm like, oh, man, I got to pay for this now. Because it wasn't a cheap coffee too, because this was. This particular cafe, was a. Was a tourist attract where people would come and literally like retreat in this. At this farm. I digress. So I had the espresso and surprisingly, it wasn't nearly as bad as I was anticipating. And likely because of how it was roasted and the type of coffee they have in Thailand, which you rarely will find anywhere here because I don't know of a single importer that imports that kind of coffee. So back on the road. So I'm back on the road and I'm going. And now, you know, I'm enjoying the ride. And all of a sudden now I'm like, all right, I'm almost out of gas. What do I do? I've never filled up gas in Thailand and there's no gas stations. So I'm freaking out. I'm going down the road and all of a sudden you see, like, look like a gas pump or something. Literally just like in the street. I'm trying. Yeah. All right. There was a couple times, I think once I filled up I had to get. I literally bought gas in a. In a water bottle. I believe I did that on the way there. Yeah, that was on the way back. So on the way there, I. There was a little store there, and I had heard about this, but I never actually had a purchase and fill up my tank. So I'm going there, I pull in this little shop, and I ask, you know, like, point of my. Point to my scooter, I'm like, you know, gas. And I get a. I get a liter water bottle of gas. And so I fill up my tank. And that was an experience, right, Because I. I didn't know how to ask, but ask. Okay. So I started going down the run again, and then there was an opening as the closer I got to. Oh, actually, I forgot. Let me. Not to mention. So now I'm at a roadblock, right? I'm getting closer to pie, and there's a military blocking it. And I guess they were. They have this, like, this blockade there because they wanted to prevent drugs from going in and out. Freaking out a little bit because. Not because I had any drugs on me, but I was driving without an international driver's license. And in Chiang Mai, the cops would have this game. They would, you know, you. They would pull you over, hey, do you have a driver's license? No. Okay, well, you know, pay US$80 and we'll let you go. They'd let you go, and you'd come back the other way. They'd stop you again, like, hey, do you have a driver's license? Like, no, you just stopped me like, all right, we'll pay another $80. And it was like this. This game they had going. So I was. I didn't get pulled over, thankfully, but I thought that was going to happen here. So thankfully there was a coffee truck there. So instead of going straight into the past, the, like, the stop, I pulled over, I spoke to this guy who had this coffee truck and, you know, had a shot kind of the same results as the other person. I say, hey, listen, let me help you out here. Let me get in your truck. Let me dial in your espresso machines. This way you'll at least pull it better. So I get into the machine, and I was very conscious about wasting coffee. I didn't want to pull too many shots of coffee because I didn't want to burn through an entire thing of coffee, because sometimes when you're making espresso, sometimes it takes that much coffee. Like, I can go through easily a pound of coffee trying to dial in new and espresso. So as I was doing this and the. This shot, like, I actually stopped. I didn't spend too much time there, but I will say I left with it pulling extremely slow. So in a way, I was almost like. Wasn't as. I was almost as bad as that girl, but not quite who I was pulling shots, but the shots did pull better. But nevertheless, I stopped there because it had a good conversation. I had a great. I end up having a great, good cup of coffee as well. And, you know, the. The people saw me there talking to this guy, and so then they let me go by, and now I'm on my way to Path and on the way to Pai. The roads literally just open up, and all of a sudden, like, the. The scenery changed and I was seeing all these beautiful trees. And again, I had that moment of exhilaration where I just felt like I was on top of the world. I arrive in Apai. I check into the Tiger Hostel, and I'm like, hey, is Joanna staying here in the. In the person? Like, no, there is actually no one here by that name. I was wondering, well, maybe it's a German name. Is there a German girl staying here? No, no one from Germany. I was like, oh, wow. So I could have been told the wrong. The wrong hostel. Maybe she wasn't interested and she just kind of blew me off. Who knows? But the. The point is, is that the way there, like. Like, that was the destination I was going for. I was going there because I wanted to meet this girl that I saw on the plane that I thought was be beautiful and wanted to get to know better. The end result there was that the ride was so freaking phenomenal that I could care less if I saw her or not, you know, and those are the type of journeys that you want to have in life where you're literally, you're enjoying the entire process and you're. You're being fully present in that process. After spending a couple days in PI, I was like, all right, well, not even a couple days. What am I saying? I spend one night, the night I had at the Tiger Hostel. So Tiger Hostel was a really, really cool hostel, but there was a ton of mosquitoes there. And I had just gotten, you know, I'd gotten all my malaria and all these other typhoid fever, whatever, other vaccinations that I needed for this trip based on the areas I was going to be traveling. And so I was, like, kind of panicking because, you know, I just didn't want it. Someone had told me a Story where they got some kind of mosquitoes, ill born illness. So I was, okay, let me just get into my bed. And I was getting eaten alive when I was in bed too. And then the following morning I set out early, early morning to go back to Chiang Mai. And isn't it true, like, you know, when you're, when you're on that journey on the way back, it's often a lot easier on the way there because now all of a sudden you come back as a different person. So I'm leaving early in the morning, there are no cars on the road, the sun is coming up. I am literally cruising in and out of these turns. Like I was the only person on the road, which I was. And I just had the blast. And I ended up getting. While it took me six hours to get there, it was roughly, I want to say maybe close to like three hours on the way back. True. I was going downhill most of the time. Right. Versus climbing. So take off some time there. But it was just this experience. It's like the initiation of someone in a tribe. They turn 13, they send them on this journey to the mountain and they come back a man. That's what I felt like. I ended up having such a blast getting back there and I was in a completely different state and then end up meeting a friend from Brazil whom I have got to reach out to. This story reminds me to reach back out to him. And I just had an amazing trip. When I left Chiang Mai, it was one of the. I was just, there was just so much pleasure in that journey that I was like, man, it's going to be hard to, you know, to go back home after such a trip. And I mean, that's a completely different story coming from like this super high, emotional high than coming back home and having to adjust because there's always an adjustment. Well, I guess that's part of life too. So how does this relate to life? Right? Look at your life. There's always life is a journey if you're just literally looking at the destination. If I were just focused on meeting that German girl, I would have missed the entire thing, right? I would have said, oh, screw this, I don't have time to stop at the coffee shop. I don't have time to stop at this other coffee truck and even enjoy it because I'm just trying to get there. I would have missed the entire thing. Right? I wouldn't have been able to. I wouldn't even been open to perceiving all the beauty around me. Secondly is just knowing that there's going to be discomfort and that. There's always fear. And leaping over that fear, that fear I leapt over was when I decided to turn from that main industrial street and start to head up that mountain. When I headed up that mountain, that's when there was the release. Yeah, there was still fear, but now I had momentum. Now I had gotten past the most difficult car, and then it was going to, you know, through the turns, which would be probably the scary part for most people, but there was momentum there. Right? And isn't that true of life? Once you get momentum, all of a sudden now you just feel like you're just going with the flow. There's very little effort. And then you reach the goal and then also just enjoying the process. I don't even know how many times I stopped to take pictures of the viewpoints, to talk to people, to have pad thai, which is like a less than a buck. And it was the freaking most amazing thing. They say Bangkok has, like is known for. They invented the pad Thai. But there's many places, I feel like, who do better and much cheaper. If you can get like, you're like, oh, Bangkok, $3 pad Thai, $1. Anywhere else in Thailand, or maybe even less than that. And then also, you know, the, the initiation, once you actually grow, once you've actually stepped into that fear, now there's more to give. Now you, you've changed who you are. You're no longer the same person anymore. And those skills that you picked up the layer now have equipped you and better equipped you, I should say, for the rest of your life. For the other journeys after that, I went to. I ended up going to Krabi Town from Karabi Town, you know, I. Having ridden that scooter in Chiang Mai and going on this journey now going to Krabi Town, I was like, all right, whatever. And I, you know, I went. I met one of my friends and we went to this. We went on a hike to this tiger. I don't know if it was Tiger Temple or Tiger Mountain, but nevertheless, it required me to navigate. And having that experience allowed me to do it better. I might be mixing up the stories. I don't know if I went to Krabi, then Chiang Mai, or Chiang Mai to Krabi. But nevertheless, after I had that first experience, when I was back on that scooter, there was more confidence, I was more comfortable. And as a result, it opened up different options, right? Because now I was able to experience more because I felt comfortable getting on the road. Isn't that True of life, when you're moving in the direction you're taking action despite or in spite of fear, now all of a sudden you gain new skills and now you're willing to take a bigger action because you have the confidence. And I guess if there's a closing issue is when you meet someone on a plane, don't always assume that they're going to be the right place they're staying at. No, but it's always a journey. And that's one of the things, again, this journey can teach you so much about life. But if there is another lesson to be learned from it is just to literally take time to travel. So why I'll go on a quick travel rant, like, why is it I travel every year? You get caught in routines and patterns, in routine ways of living. As a result, it's like your world starts to shrink and all of a sudden now you find yourself staying in what it is that makes you comfortable. And I experience this every single year because I travel will usually start booking travel around the fall and then I'll travel again all the way into the spring. But whenever I get to that fall moment, whenever I'm starting to travel in the fall, I'm always like, I don't know if I want to book a trip. You know what, I just don't feel like I should be traveling right now. I don't have no, I have no desire to travel. What I'm really saying is I'm a little bit nervous. I don't feel as comfortable because those decision making years in my brain have gotten a little bit rusty because they haven't been lubed up from another trip. Now what happens the moment I take a trip, all of a sudden I take a trip and all of a sudden like, I am like, all right, when is the next one coming? And you know, like, I get back and have the next trip planned. But by traveling, it allows me to one get past the comfort and like the routine living and opens my. It gives my brain time to relax, to say, okay, well let's reorganize here. Like, let's not worry about all the shit that was clogging your mind before. Let's let that relax and let's kind of get. Allow yourself to just see some new things, get new perspectives on life and meet new people, you know, release biases and remember just to enjoy life. Right? Really, that's really what it all comes down to is just getting the maximum amount of enjoyment in life. And if you're not a big traveler, that's fine. I encourage you to do it anyways because you'll learn something. And I really think that the, you know, one of the biggest parts of traveling is the people you meet along the way and assuming that they, you know, you like this kind of thing. Maybe traveling is not your thing. Maybe you rather stay home. You know, wherever you are your tribe, you'll find your tribe. Travelers are my tribe. And whenever I meet someone, I always tend to meet someone who I find is like my, like a best friend. Nearly every single trip I have, I met someone who's had a big impact in my life and now I consider it so close that, you know, they'll be my friend for the rest of my life. So that is my story. Hope this journey inspired you to get out there in life, but also remind you that it is a journey and that, like, you know, sometimes the thing you're going for is not necessarily a thing you want, but it's the journey that is the most satisfying part of your life or of that experience. And again, just to get out there and start living life right. Life is happening now. There is no time to waste. There's no time to wait. Yes, you have to prepare in the future, but not at the cost of today. And don't live for today at the cost of your future. Live your life now because it is happening now. You only have this moment. So I hope you enjoyed this. If there is someone whom you feel like could benefit from listening to this, send this podcast to five people. You know, maybe someone who was thinking about going to Thailand. You're like, man, you have got to check this, this experience out. Or maybe you want to do it yourself. And if you have any questions or would like to leave a comment, you can do it by visiting my website@www.donnyrouse.com again, d o n n y r a us.com that is all for this episode. I hope you enjoyed this podcast. If you did again, please hit that subscribe button. Thank you so so much for tuning in. I hope this inspired you in some way to go on your own journey. Doesn't have to be Thailand, but to go on some kind of journey and to just take the moment to enjoy the process, to enjoy life. Remember, you only get one life. Live it. God bless and I will see you again soon.