'I Went to the Strait of Hormuz to Expose the LIES!" - Tommy Sabbatical

Hey guys, if you're not following me on Spotify please hit that follow button and leave a five-star review. They're both a huge, huge help. Thank you. Did you go to any of the settlements? Like the Israeli settlements in there? No, I did not have the contact to do that. And I don't know if this is still going on, but at that time what was kind of dangerous about it was. There weren't really buses running between the different cities because the Israelis had set up checkpoints. I think they're always there, but at this point in time they were super severe. Literally Palestinians would need like five to ten hours to pass these checkpoints. So you'd have to spend an entire day so I'd get past them. And so the reason I titled the video like that, they will shoot you at the checkpoint, trapped in Palestine, is because I ended up at this town near the Dead Sea. And this really friendly guy, he had a hotel. It was closed because they had zero tourists. He reopened the hotel for me, like let me stay there. But I actually had a flight the next day, my planning. And I had to get back to Tel Aviv to take it, and I was like, "Fuck, I'm going to miss this flight." So they tried to help me set up a plan so I could pass the checkpoint without getting shot. Because apparently Palestinians would walk up to these checkpoints and the Israelis would just unload on them. So it was kind of like an intense thing to do. But they managed to get a taxi driver from Jerusalem. And the Palestinians that live in Jerusalem are the only ones that can go back and forth between the two places. So why is that? It's just a specific rule that they have. I believe they come from East Jerusalem, which I guess is part from like a special jurisdiction. And they get like a special license plate that allows them to pass between the two. Israelis are actually not allowed to drive into Palestine. I think that's the Israeli government telling they can't do that. And then Palestinians obviously cannot go into Israel proper. So yeah, they get that guy. He's like waiting on the other end of the checkpoint, and I just like walk across it. And thankfully, they were definitely kind of curious why the hell I was doing that. But I was like, did not get shot. You're walking across it like the bullets might be hitting me. I had that thought in the back of my head. Were you shitting yourself? I was very nervous like what the interaction was going to be for sure. Jesus Christ. Yeah. Do you think that? Do you think that situation is solvable in our lifetime? My honest opinion is no. I agree. Yeah, because the Israelis, their mentality is they have no other home. And so they consider any kind of antagonism to Israel is just like a fight for survival. And plus, obviously, the acidic birth rate is super high. And they're super conservative, super pro. Just fuck off Palestinians. And then the Palestinians rightly also have their claims to the land. And they're going to continue to want their land back. Yeah, the best we can hope for is I don't even know. Just like no more fighting. Yeah, I don't think we'll see that. I think a lot of it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. Again, like when you see leaders of the government openly advocating for war with the NATO member, because they're already boarded this war. That they're not sending their guys to go fight, by the way. You're talking about Turkey? And it's like, because they, well, they're boarded the Iran war. And they're talking about Turkey now as like an enemy. And it's like, you got to read the room a little bit, man. You know, you don't have the international support. The support in America below age 55 is at fucking zero on, you know, not literally, but you know what I mean. And you can't keep asking for these conflicts because it's some point. And I think we've crossed that point with a lot of generations around the world. It's like, well, who really is it asking for the war? Is it you getting attacked or is it you provoking people to attack or attacking them first? I mean, have you spent time in Lebanon? I did, actually. When? I actually went for the first time. I did another study abroad there when I was in college. Oh, no kidding. Randomly. In Beirut? In Beirut. Yeah. Beautiful place I've heard. Yeah, I loved it. It was really nice. It's a very unique place in the Middle East also. And it's got like beach clubs and all this stuff going on. And how should I say this? I was planning to go there this year also. Maybe within the next few months. I'll show you working on it. Yeah. I've been really anxious to get back there at some point. But yeah, it's Lebanon is, I don't think any country has a more complicated, claustrophac of history and political situation than they do. What do you say now? The country was founded as basically like a Christian colony by the French. Because it used to be part of Syria or a broader Syria, which used to be part of the Ottoman Empire. And the French were like, you know what? You got all these Christians in the mountains. Let's let them have like their own land. You got the Sykes-Pico where they did that? That's where the British and French divided the territories. I think the French already had Lebanon. They already had it. Yeah. But yeah, so like the government that they came up with and no other government has this, it's like every position in the government is reserved for like a specific religion. So like the president is always Christian. The speaker of the house is always Shia Muslim, I think. The prime minister is always Sunni. And he just leads to a lot of like crazy corruption and like all this stuff in the country. And then to make things even like more complicated, like a ton of Palestinian refugees came over the border. I believe that was in the 40s or 50s or something like that. And the Palestinian situation was actually what led to their big civil war in the 70s. Which it was basically like the Christians in Israel against the Palestinians. And then later the Shia Muslims, it was crazy fucking complicated. Yeah. And it's still like that today when I was there. I will say like a lot of Lebanese people are like really cool. But a lot of people there would like meet me and be like, you're American. Okay. Let me just like voice every grievance I have out your country. Yeah. Like I'm a college student. I probably agree with you. Just calm down. And that's even years ago they were doing that. Yeah. Like 2011. Yes. That was wild again. Yeah. It's, you were saying when you go to a lot of these places, you try not to use a fixer and stuff like that. If you can avoid it and you're doing a lot of stuff alone. So you are literally still traveling just as yourself. Yeah. I mean, unless I travel with like another YouTube buddy or whatever. I might be able to hook you up with somebody to open Beirut. I mean, my friend Arab has been on the show. He's got to be, you know, Arab. You could say he's my friend also actually. Oh, all right. So you already know. Yeah. You should talk to him. He's from, I mean, he's from here. But his family is Lebanese and he goes back there. That's true. Yeah. Yeah. I think he's, I think he's there right now. He definitely was last month. I don't know if he still is. But yeah. Yeah. That would be pretty cool. We could set that up. Yeah. Yeah. Let's hit him up afterwards for sure. How do you know him? Uh, at some point, I feel like every travel vlogger contacts the other one. Right. You know, we all know each other on Instagram. Who are the other? Who are some other cool guys, you know? Uh, small brand American. Small runner. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know him. Let's pull that up. We did a big trip through China together. Small brand American. Small brain. Small brain. Small brain. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. These are some of my favorite types of creators. Yeah. Okay. There you go. So he travels all over the world too. He does. Yeah. He's got probably a slightly different style. India sucks. Don't ever come here. Yeah. I think that's what he's known for at this point, just saying countries are kind of fucked up. Uh, it's funny. Really funny, dude, though. You know him, Amanda. I see. You've seen his videos before. You've seen Mike. Okay. I have seen Mike. You're okay. Uh, he's probably the only one I haven't talked to, actually. Um, I've talked to, uh, Bold and Bankrupt. I know him. Yeah. Yeah. He's probably the most, he's very famous. Um, who else? Uh, yeah. Probably like, yeah, almost all of them at this point. I'm like, send a message. One of, if not the most common DMs I get on Instagram are many of you asking me what my favorite books are. 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Also, the like button's a big help, and you can join my newsletter via the link in the description below. - Yeah, my one buddy, Brandon Buckingham, who does a lot more American stuff, I've talked about this before, but he did a great documentary in Lebanon a couple of years ago now, but what's really sad about it is he was, he was supposed to go to India for some thing he was covering for a documentary. He has two flights to get there, and when he's on the layover flight somewhere in the fucking Middle East or Europe, they realize like his visa didn't come through for India, so he couldn't go. So he's like, "Well, I'm already halfway around the world. Let's find a place." So he goes to Lebanon, right before the bombs start dropping. So he gets there and the bombs start fucking dropping. And he's there capturing the story of what it is for like a week or two. And what's really sad is you see all these young guys in the video that he's talking to, who are talking about what a beautiful place this is, so nice, open in their world to him, and within weeks they were all dead. - Oh, that's fucking crazy. - That's crazy. Yeah, that is the trippy things that can happen while traveling. - Have you run into that where people you get really tight with are killed after you do a video? - The closest thing I had to that, thankfully I don't know anyone that died after I met them, but I went to a country called Eritrea, if you've heard of that. - I have heard of that. Can we pull that up on the map? - Someone else talked about that on the podcast, but what it has to become popularly known is like the North Korea of Africa, because they're like very, the government doesn't allow the people to have like Wi-Fi for the most part. It's very cut off from the rest of the world. And. - Right next to Sudan and to the north of Ethiopia. - Yeah, it's in a real hotspot region. I went there from Ethiopia actually. And so it's unsurprisingly another country where they really don't like you showing anything bad about it, and which wasn't my mission going there. I just wanted to like experience the country. What happened was like, I was sitting at like this one cafe, what's cool about it is like, it was an Italian colony, and the Italians like poured all this money into it. So they have like these cities that like look vaguely Italian and they have like these cafes and stuff, and they serve pizza and stuff. So I was like, "Oh, I want to hit one of those up." And I just sit down and then there's frequently like, power cuts and there's like no electricity or anything. And this one guy there is just like, "Hey, I'll get you a coffee." And he tries to do it. And he's like, "Sorry, I couldn't get you a coffee because the power was off." That's literally all that happened in the video. After I leave, they start sending out these flyers on Facebook in the local language, which was Tegrenia. The one is just of me saying like, I went there to like cause trouble. And then another one was like this guy who said there was like no power in the country. And the only fucking thing that I can hope is just like, these were just like nationalist that are just like, you know, like trying to point this out and be like, "Hey, these are bad people." I really hope nothing happened to that guy. And nothing should have happened to that guy cause he didn't say anything against the government. But I do like worry about that. It's like for all this shit that's fucked up here that we gotta take care of, which you know, obviously interesting times we're living through. Man, there are so many times where I'm so grateful to live here, to where, you know, you can do this and you can say what you want. And yeah, you know, obviously it's been some issues with that with like censorship in the past, but there's not people showing up to your door to shoot you or take you away in the middle of the night. So to speak. - That is the single greatest thing about this country. - Yeah. - It like, I don't think there's any other country that has as great a freedom of speech as he nice is. - Have you, obviously you're spending most of your time on the road now, but in doing this now for like six years and then even before that, obviously living in China, we can come back to that. But like, do you have a greater appreciation for what we do have that's good in America because of being in so many places that don't even have the most basic things? - Yeah, for sure. So I said earlier, like when you live abroad, you start to view your own country differently. But that's like both good and bad. - Yes. - There's like, you realize all the stuff that you wish, I wish that the US Metro's could be more like Japan's. But at the same time, I'm like, I kind of enjoy the fact that people are, actually have personalities here, I'm like Japan. There's like good and bad in every single country, I would say. But yeah, no, like the good things about the US, I usually say is like, especially for people coming from developing nations or just anyone that has a dream or whatever is like, there's no better place to be. You can accomplish your dream here. Like, you can make more money in the US if that's your goal. It's probably the best place in the world to do that. And also just the amount of land and stuff you can have at a relatively affordable rate, you know? Like just the houses that we have in middle class neighborhoods in America would be like mansions in most parts of the world. In Hong Kong, for example, like people pay 10 million dollars to live in like a three story building that looks like a mini apartment building or whatever. Yeah, and in most European countries also, I think it's very unheard of to have a house like we do here. So yeah, no, it's just great. And we also, I would say like many Americans are friendlier, I would say then most of the developed world. Yeah, I would say this is a New Yorker too. Yeah, well, I'm kind of, I'm not gonna lie. Like I'm imagining like the South when I say this. (laughing) It's like I did some traveling down there. But New Yorkers can be nice too, you know? It's like we're pretty friendly to like tourists and foreigners and stuff. I think so. Yeah, I think so. There's more of a aggressive letting people know how you feel here, which I actually appreciate more than some other places where in this country that I won't name, where they smile on your face in the minute you turn around, they stab you in the back. Yeah, we're very direct. Yeah, we're in this part of the country. I like that. I do value that. And you gotta be direct where you go. Obviously we're seen in your videos because you know, you're an outsider. So you gotta make very clear that you're just here to do YouTube videos and not spy on people. So that probably helps. It is true, yeah. I can't joke around too much. I gotta be pretty honest. As soon as I usually, as soon as I said, there's any kind of possible issue with police and I've been detained like maybe like five times during these travels. All right, so there's been a bunch of other stories besides Russia. We saw the one where you were at least talking on the side of the road in Iraq. Where else did you get arrested? See, I wouldn't even count that one as an arrest, but thank you, I've only been to prison once. (laughing) - You get a tattoo out of that by the way. - I did not. - No prison tattoo. - I know. - What the fuck. - We're even in prison. (laughing) - It's a good point. - Yeah. - That's some nice idea. - All right, but you have four other times you were detained. Let's start with the first one. - First one, and I believe this is in a video. It was actually in Kenya. It's like, this is such a weird experience. It was like, I'm just like, walking through Mombasa, which is another kind of old, cool looking city. And I filmed this church. And then so what happens is the people that work at the church, they call the Kenyan police on me for like filming a church. And this is wild. They think I'm like a Muslim terrorist. - Yeah. They think me. My beard was bigger at that point. - Maybe I thought you were a chechen. - Yeah, it's something like that. Apparently what happened was there was like a girl from like Scotland that like went down there. And then she, this is kind of close to the Somalia border. She like crossed over and joined Al Shabab afterwards. And then they did some attacks there, whatever. So they're like, all right, why people like to come here to do terrorism? (laughing) - Shabab. - Al Shabab. - Chick. - Yeah. So she was probably like pale, like as pale as I am. So like it's the weirdest racial profiling. Like I've ever said. But the way they did it was super sketch. It was like, I'm just on the street and this like Kenyan police officer who's not in a uniform gets out of a car and he's just like, hey I'm police. We need to like question you. You need to get in this car. - He's not in uniform. - Yeah, and his car is not a police car. - Oh, I would've been thinking this is like, you know. - Yeah. - Fucking human trafficking. - Yeah. - I was like, fuck, I never should've come to Africa. This is what happens. Eventually I just like, I do get in 'cause there's like no way out of it. I just hope for the best. They take me to a police station and actual police station. The question me for like four hours or something like that. They figure out I'm not a Muslim terrorist. Shocking like, and then they drop me back off of my Airbnb and on the way there they ask, oh by the way, can you buy it? bias dinner. And I was like, no, not really an option. You're supposed to like let me off early. Like you want me to do that. You know, like isn't that how corruption works? Yes. You didn't do a corruption rate. Yeah. So this wasn't actually serious thing. It's like they, they do not do corruption for terrorists suspects. Okay. Yeah. So you were confident enough to say no when they said you got to buy a stinner now, even though they had just detained you and questioned you for being a Muslim terrorist. Yeah. Yeah. I was bold move. I tried to like, you know, make a joke out of it. I said, what do you want? What do you move for a tie-in via the media? What do we got? Yeah. I was like, yeah, I still need to buy dinner for myself. So, you know, sorry. Wow. I think the restaurants are closed. Did they ask you while they were questioning you if you spoke Arabic? No. No. I could totally see you be like, yeah, I just start speaking Arabic. They're like, got one. Yeah. Yeah. And again, that's how it's knowing languages. Not the best. Not the best countries. All right. So there's three other times you get detained. No, where else? Right. Right. Yeah. So straight of hormones, which was very recent. Yeah. Let's hold off on that one. Give me the other two. We're going to collect straight information. I believe I was thinking Russia for one of them. And then the other one. And for reasons, I can't say everything about this one, but China actually win. So this was right after they reopened to Taurus. And I was probably, I believe like the first travel vlogger to go around like, you know, like with like just a camera talking to people, just winging it. And maybe in me, I decide to go to Wuhan, because you know, why not? I mean, I was like, this isn't like 2023. This is 2023. Yeah. And I don't want to say like, who stopped me. I'll just let you use your own interpretation. But I did get stopped by somebody you don't want to get stopped by in China. And they take my information. They note everything down. And then they let me go. But then like a few days later, I'm at my hotel. These people show up again. They take me into the hotel room. I get interrogated for like eight hours, eight hours, three day hours. How many people interrogating you? Three people. They brought somebody that like spoke English for it, just the case. I didn't like know what they were saying in Mandarin. Oh, so you decided still to converse with them in Mandarin? I feel that good with your Mandarin. Especially at that point, I honestly like when Mandarin probably wasn't good enough to like do a full interrogation. But I did want to be like, guys, listen, you know, like I like your country. I lived there. Do we have to do this? I'm a YouTuber, you know. And what's funny was like, there's now like a billion people going to China to like make videos and being like, yeah, look, China's awesome. Like, oh, look at this hotel. Look at how nice it is. Look at Chongqing, look at the lights and stuff. This was before any of that. So they were just like, why were you filming? Like, this is very strange, you know, like. And so I think they were trying to go the Russia angle, but credit to the Chinese, they did not do what the Russians did. They were just like, this guy's clearly a YouTuber. And they probably should I say, they probably bogged my phone and then let me go. Is your phone still bugged? I have that was probably like seven phones ago. Okay. I'm just going to say, you're switching that a lot. Yeah. So when when you switch out a phone, do you want you to take the SIM card out? Well, I don't even know, like, would the bug be in the SIM card? From what I saw, they download. I looked this up afterward. And because it was an iPhone. And, you know, like, you can't just like upload like malware onto like an iPhone because you got like the app store and stuff. It has to go through that. There's some they have literally like downloaded some kind of like app that allows you to like hack the iPhone and then just like do like in like a third party way start uploading shit onto it. They had like left that on the phone when they gave it back to me. And I even pointed it out. I was like, Hey, what's this? There's like, Oh, don't worry about it. You can delete it if you want. We are listening now. Yeah. They don't that's a country that is not very direct that they're the very indirect communication stuff. Yeah, they keep minors on everyone who comes in. Yeah. Yeah. But I do believe they concluded I was not a threat or fucking CIA or whatever. But they were talking for eight hours. Yeah. That's a long fucking time. You can watch the whole Godfather trilogy in that time. It's really long time. Yeah. The nicest thing they did was they showed up with McDonald's and they were like, we wanted to bring something from your country. We had to eat. You haven't had lunch yet. So you want chicken finger? It's like, thanks. I guess. Yeah. The finest of American cuisine. Oh my god. So how did they interrogate you, though? Is there a lot of like nothing, nothing, nothing, until they try to hit you with something? Or what's the kind of jab and cross? I want to be very clear for my own situation that this was not the secret police. It basically what they did was they just asked me a series of questions. And I think what they were doing was they would ask you like casual questions and then kind of like fear the conversation into the territory of like, oh, do you actually like know a guy that might you know be doing anything against our country? Stuff like that. They also needed time apparently to like upload all this shit to my phone. So I think that's the main reason why I took like so long. But yeah, how do you keep calm during that whole period? Yeah, that was I was weirdly like very calm during that book and back because I was just like, I know I'm just a YouTuber. I know I'm like not doing anything bad. I know I've even like said nice things about this country. And I usually say nice things about it. So like, why are they going to do anything else? So I just waited for them to figure that out. But afterward I thought about it and I was like pretty angry, pretty annoyed about it. And just ended that particular China trip pretty early after. Are you afraid to go back to China now? I've actually been back multiple times since then. Well, China. It's tough. I lived there for six years. I had a lot of friends there. That girlfriend's there like, you know, like all kinds of stuff. So like in some ways because I lived there for so long, like my social circle, social circle, excuse me. It's about as big as the one I have in like New York or even bigger. So it'd be really tough to not go back. Tough to leave it back. Yeah. So I mean, I'm not going to lie. Like the I think the time I went back after that. I was like pretty nervous rocking up the customs. But it was over in like five seconds and even give like a second glance to the passport. Do you look for tales in countries like are you looking for people telling you? In Russia, that was don't tell me you're going back to Russia. No, no, no, no, that's that's off limits. That's legally off limits, too. They officially for five years. But don't get any ideas in 2030. I've got to go back either way. I'll put that on the record. Okay. Did go to Ukraine though. But if you want to talk about that, you went to Ukraine when after you were arrested in Russia, after I was arrested. Oh my god. All right. Where'd you go in Ukraine? Went from Lviv to Kiev to Odessa and just hitting all the hotspots. I just yeah. Didn't go to the front lines at least. Not that insane, I guess. But I did get bombed while I was there. So there's that. You got bombed. Is that on camera? Yeah. Yeah, it's pull that up. We could pull that one up. That's what's it like getting bombed in the middle of a war zone were 1.8 million casualties have happened over the last four and a half years. Pretty fucking shitty. Right? Yeah. So Ukraine was not what I expected. What the fuck did you expect? Yeah. Well, I go in disrespect, but I go into that a bit. But this is actually me looking at a notification on my phone saying that like 500 drones are coming to the center. Oh, that's nice. Yeah. Okay. Show us how it happened. Yeah. I was holding out by a loud siren noise. And then I got these messages on my phone telling me that a fleet of drones is going across you crazy. specifically To La Vie right now. Right stay in a shoulder. You still go drinking even when they're sirens out That would be deep and late. That's what I didn't expect 2024 one year ago while traveling across Russia as a slightly naive tourist the local FSB AKA the KGB they decided I must be an American spy in order to get time to investigate me I was sentenced to jail for 17 days by a compromised judge for such vague crimes as resisting authority and calling the Russian invasion in Ukraine and invasion in my YouTube video I was interrogated a lot during that time and they would always come back to the same subject Who do you know when Ukraine when was the last time you were there? They went through my phone looking for some hidden Ukrainian connection, but the truth was I had never been there But I always promised to myself while I was in that jail if I ever got out I would go and visit Ukraine I go and visit the people struggling for survival against the same ridiculous regime that I put me there Well now I'm free and I'm keeping my fucking promise This is my trip to Ukraine You're getting better at the entrance You can see the progression. Yeah, the progression is there so Where you went to all the different places. So Kiev, Odessa and then what's this one called in? The first place you went. Lviv. Lviv. And yeah, that was really crazy because Lviv is supposed to be like the safer city Because it's closer to the Polish border Yeah, so Apparently that attack that I experienced was the largest attack they had ever launched on that city during the war So it was like a huge surprise to like everyone there And that was like my like second or third day in the country and I was like oh Jesus fuck Um, but I I tried to make the most out of it unsurprisingly The one political stance I heavily take is I'm very anti-Russian government at this point. I can understand that Yeah And so I was like all right at least I can do some good here. I'm gonna go to like the places that were hit Which I show in the video I managed to convince the Ukrainian police to like let me in and film it because it was like You know what I'm not a journalist But I'm gonna show America what's happening in your country. So you don't consider yourself a journalist. Don't what you do That's a good question I feel like I'm like in some ways trending in that direction, but no, I don't I think I I just try to follow and show what I think is interesting And if I can help some people by doing that. Yeah, I think that's I don't want to say by definition, but I think it's a Not the right term to use right here, but I can't think of the right word It's like it's just kind of a consequence of you doing the work you do Is that the result is that there is an element of journalism to this from the outside like that's what I see You're showing me places. You're not going in there. What's great is you know Maybe minus like the Russia Ukraine thing because of your own experience like you're not going into these other places Would like an agenda of here's what I want to get out of it Which by the way that's good journalism But you are showing people stories of other people that exist around the world and places they exist in and what they think of the places that they exist in in a way that a lot of people don't do And that by definition I think is really giving people an element of journalism so that people can decide for themselves Yeah, I mean, I think I've said in my videos a few times. I'm like an unintentional journalist. Yeah, sometimes like I just End up filming something that maybe a normal journalist wouldn't even get to because it's you know There's some like very unique situations that I get myself into and To say the least that's for sure and I'd stand up like revealing stuff I believe if there's been times where like I've made a video and then I see like a news organization making a video about it Like a year later or like a few months later or something like that So yeah Do you have an how long were you in Ukraine again? I think I spent about two weeks there In total and um what what is the war for people at home because you were in several different places So you got to see it from multiple different angles. Obviously we see like there's drone attacks and stuff We hear about all the violence and all the continue casualties on both sides, but like What for life a better way of asking it? What are the vibes of the people on the ground with respect to this being a war where it continues to be sometimes You know two weeks a bunch of guys fighting and killing each other over You know 14 yards. Yeah It's wild the Ukrainians were some of my favorite people in the entire world they like That intro I did with like the the guys at the bar just being like yeah, we got to keep drinking We don't have a choice That's the attitude of most of the people there Especially the people that are like still living there. I met so many people There's a girl in the second video that I made in Ukraine. I made two of them in total Where this girl could literally like move out move to like Europe or wherever And just find like a normal job But she's like intentionally choosing to stay there and like support like the war effort and like the country and everything And there's so many people like that. They're just like you know what like we got to support our country It's fucked up. What's happening Um, if I can't join the military then I'll do something else to like help out and um, yeah, that was all this crazy What do they say about their government? With respect to the leadership and the war and where things are I don't think I met a single person inside Ukraine that disliked the government really yeah, they were all very supportive of it um I did meet Ukrainians outside of Ukraine that voiced opposition to the government But they also had other weird opinions like maybe Russia should take over Ukraine so um Yeah, did you go so you didn't go to those regions though like the Donbass? Um didn't know it's impossible to go to Donbass. Yeah, that's pretty much like a death wish going there Um, I did have somebody that invited me to go to Kharkiv which is um a huge city that's right near the Russian border and um Almost went but more just for like time reasons I ended up skipping it I'm like, hey, I'm in Kiev. There's already like sirens Gonna go to Odessa that's like getting bombed like all the time. Yeah, maybe that's enough. Maybe I'll like limit the danger Yeah Probably not a bad move Yeah, you put yourself in the middle of the Of the shit all over the place, you know, yeah, that's the one thing. It's like you get you also get You got to not fall into that trap of like all this amazing content here Or whatever when you keep going harder and harder and harder because the fact of the matter is Think of all the stories you would leave on the table for the rest of your life if you went somewhere You really it wasn't worth it to be and the worst thing happened, you know, yeah No, yeah, I have to remind myself of that all the time Is your family get worried about you? Of course, yeah, yeah, they were obviously especially worried when I was in the prison um Difficult to contact them You really know like who your true friends are like what you end up in prison Go to Russian prison learn who's got your back. Yeah. Yeah. I don't do that sometime Everyone that actually cared about me. It was like doing everything they could to get me out of there Um, I try to find a lawyer try to find some kind of aid organization That was used to foreigners being in Russian jails Yeah, so um yeah Kind of like because of my family. I've tried to like Maybe tone it down a little bit Doesn't sound like it. I yeah, I mean, I guess I do have like adrenaline rushes that like I you know, which I can't control but I mean Yeah, there are like I there are some locations. I don't want a name which I was thinking about going to and then I crossed off the list for my friends and family Um, one of them we're currently at war with Uh, yeah, so I do what I can Yeah, what before you ever did this stuff though, were you like an adrenaline junkie and did you get that out in other ways? Um, yeah, you can say that. I've always liked climbing mountains um, I've always like just going to places. You're not supposed to go to Uh, trespassing a little bit stuff like that trespassing trespassing. Yeah, into like, you know just like Trave stations or whatever. I don't know um, perfectly normal. Yeah, yeah, you know, yeah, it's just just what you do It's always people like you like the quiet dude is like yeah, just you're having a good time. I always got a fucking wild streak to you Yeah, yeah, you know, you can't judge a book by its cover. That's right. It's goddamn right. Yeah, it's about like a true spy Exactly Now you did go to Look at the straight-ahour moves and you put out a full I think it was like a 50-55 minute documentary on this which you know until February 28th or actually even probably a few days after that most people in the world didn't know what the straight-ahour moves was But then it became most important thing because you realize how important it is from an economic standpoint to Basically like world trade continued to happen and it has been the choke point in a lot of ways of the Iran conflict that continues to just go back and forth and somehow get worse. But you went and looked at it for yourself where we hear about a lot of these attacks and stuff happening. First of all, where were you like on the actual physical ground? So, well, at this moment, I'm in the UAE, but so where I went was the Omani side of the straight-of-formos. Omani is actually like separated into like two pieces. There's like one that's on the other side of the UAE, which like juts into the straight-of-formos. That is the straight-of-formos, basically. And that's where I went. I went there. I went to. I got obsessed with like this one village that's on like the very tip of it. Like the very tippity tip. It's called Kumsar. Yeah, there it is. And there's actually no roads to go there. You can only go there by boat. And you went on a boat together. Like got on a damn boat. You weren't worried about the mines and shit. Or they know we're near there. You wouldn't be anywhere near. Yeah, that would be probably like if you got closer to Iran. Right. So they're not planning it like across the straight. That's more on their actual got it. Yeah, I'm crazy but not that crazy. All right, that's good. So you took a boat. We're talking like a dinghy boat or you know. We're talking a dinghy boat. A dinghy boat. Are you rowing speed boat, I guess. Are you rowing? Not rowing, you know. It did have an engine. That's good. That's good. I motor. Which it takes like from the place I got the boat. It took like an hour through pretty rough waters to like get to that village. Yeah, how is the water there? Is it like the Atlantic Ocean and the northeast here where you can't really see your hand or is it more clear? What's it like? Oh, that's a good question. No, you can't really like see into the water. I would say. Yeah, it's not really brown. But yeah, there's a lot of fucking chips coming through there. There's a lot of shit in there. Yeah. Okay, so you go up to what was the name of that place again? Cumsar. Cumsar. Yeah. And that's an interesting place because if they speak like this weird language that like nobody else speaks because it used to be like this like meeting place for trade between like the Persians and Arabs and even the Portuguese at one point. So like their language is a mixture of all these different languages. And so I was like, you know what? That sounds interesting. Let me try talking to the people. They were fairly friendly, I would say. Except there was like a weird thing with the women there. Like the women did not want to be like talk to by a man. The men were like very overprotective. So I was like, okay, don't talk to the women. Right. Got it. To like you have enough wives. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I don't have any room for number six. Oh, it was four earlier. There's a fifth. It just keeps the creasing. You know, it's like my bad. I did one like during this conversation. I don't know. Yeah. Anyway, like I saw walking through the village and at some point, this guy is like, you know what? You should go down like this road. There's like this cool like mountain dang like it's like probably like the best part of the village. Go see that. So I'm like, I start walking that way and then I even have this on camera. Like a police car just like starts rocking up on me from behind. And they're just like get in the car. Oh, no. They don't say why there's like getting the car. And so my boat driver is in there. I guess they found him first. We work for him. Yeah. And then they they put me in the back seat. And the only thing that makes me not panic as much is the fact that they didn't like slap any handcuffs on me. Anything like that. So I'm just like hoping for the best at this point. No zip ties even. No, no. Yeah. Just showing down no bag on my head or anything. When the bag comes out, it's a problem. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. So so the weird thing about this place is like again, you only get there by boat. And they're like we need to take you to the big police station. So we're going to throw you on this police boat. And we're going to just ride you all the way back to like the bigger town of the area. So we do that. It's like going to police boat. It's like an hour ride back. And they take me to this police station. And they tell me like, yeah, we want to know why you were filming. We don't, you know, it's probably not a good idea that you're filming because you know, there's like a conflict happening. And I'm like, you know, that's a good point. That's a good point. Like, thankfully, it wasn't too intense. Like again, they're just they're not, you know, restraining me or anything. They're just asking like what I'm doing. And after I would say about 15, 20 minutes, they're just like, okay, you know, it's probably best if you leave Oman because we don't really want you to film anything else. So, but they didn't like deport me or anything. They didn't deport you. Yeah. So what they do, just dump you out on the side of the road and say get lost. Pretty much, pretty much. They're just like, okay, yeah, you can go. We're not going to give you a ride back to your hotel. It's not Kenya. You just find less customer service here. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So just walked back and I had rented a car, which was actually like a pretty complicated thing because I drove it from the UAE from Dubai. And into Oman, you have to get like these special permits to do that. Okay. So I'm like, all right, I think I'm going to get in that car and then drive back to Dubai and then just go to like a pool party or something. Yeah. That was, that was pretty intense. Different world. Now, what did you see in the straight of Hormuz, like with your own two eyes? What did it look like? You know, because like we have this picture in our head of like, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, you know, a bunch of boats backed up and like people would guns on the ships and stuff like that, but the fact of the matter is it's probably more I'm guessing of a situation where it's like a lot of boredom until something happens, but what did you actually physically see? Yeah, definitely more of the latter, but I did see, I believe I show that in the video, you see like just these boats like backed up. Some are like clearly like shipping container boats ships. Some clearly had like petroleum on board. And so like you'll see like the traditional money fishing boats and then in the distance beyond them, you'll just see like these tankers that have been like stuck there probably for months at that point. So nice boats right there. Yeah, they were guarding the bus stop there. That's a bus stop. That's a bus stop. It looks like it ain't been used in a while. Oh, never. Oh, okay. Yeah. Well, I think I ran through. That was actually asking him if the buses were still coming. Oh, yeah, they are. Who's helicopter? That's the old Monty Monty. Okay, so we're now in a sub, which is the closest thing to civilization here in Los Angeles. It's right here, you guys spot promoting eyes and proofs. It seems to be shut down. Anyway, what I've heard is to get to the furthest northern tip of the straightforwardness, the northern tip of this peninsula. What you have to do is you've got to take one of these. You've got to take a boat because there's a village up there. That speaks a unique language. It's a little more than doing the rest of the peninsula, the rest of the country. Now, I might be the only person insane enough to want to take a boat tour in the straight of foremost at this point in time. So I don't know if anybody will take me, but let's find out. There were more expensive options, but what do you get on that like a catered meal? Before the conflict, they weren't bringing people to this village and stuff like that, but until I keep the rich tourists entertained, they'd give them lunch. By the way, when you were saying earlier, you met Aaronians who were talking about the war and saying they're happy to see it happening. You mentioned they were in Oman, were you talking to some of these people when you went up to the tip there as well? They weren't there. They were in, I guess like, you can call it the mainland of Oman, like mosquitoes, didn't actually film anything there. Got it. So when you were just coming in country, you didn't find it. So you didn't see anything like blow up or gunfire exchange on the straight. You just saw backed up boats. Thankfully, yeah, or for YouTube purposes, maybe not thankfully, but no. Thankfully, all things considered. Yeah, like I think this is the part where I'm just like trying to find the boat, but when I'm actually on the boat and like looking out, yeah, you can see some of the boats back there. Yeah, let's let's get him on the boat. Let's see if we can find that. Yeah, it might be about like five hours or something like that. Yeah, because now, The last turn on hand, the wind is coming so quick. - Maybe. - So it will be difficult to go there. - Yeah, right around there. - Exciting journey. - It's actually a very stupid journey. I'm not sure it's yet. - It was in this month, it's a two-pack. - A two-pack's record? - You know what you're talking about. - It's got about that. - Oh, that's good. - Oh. - That's where we listen to when you walk. - I think it's serious. - Right, yeah. - I know it's almost in the legend as well. (laughing) - Was that your driver? - It's just a map of this area. - It's just a pretty dry geography. First of all, you'll notice that even though this is a mod, this parable mod is completely disconnected from like the heart of the gun. - Oh, wow. - So it's like a laser. - UAE is in the middle. And then another crazy thing is to get to the very tippity tip of this peninsula, Mosanda, you can only go there by boat. And there's a village there. In that village, they speak a rare language that no one else speaks. It's called Kumzari. It's a mixture of Persian, Hindi, Portuguese, Arabic, all these different places that trade it with the region and pass through. This is very exciting. - I don't think anyone else has gotten a map. - For good reason. - But that's what we're gonna do today. We're gonna go check out that village. - To be honest, I found out about that when I was there. - Maybe I'll see my people off the way at the straight up arm up soon. - Is it? - Oh, that's the boat. - Yeah, that's the boat driver. - Thank you. - Get out of here. - I'm there. - Yeah. - Look, wait. - Lolo. - That's all right. - There's a white boy's gravy. - All we can do now is just go for the best. - So he wanted you to wear his identity? - Pretty nice, yeah. And I mean, I'm sure he would get trouble for this also. - The water is dropping. - Oh, yeah. - You've got to feel like-- - Yeah. - There they are. - Yep. - Not what a mess. - You're not worried about getting too close to those things? - I was definitely pretty nervous on this boat. Like, more than some of the other trips I've been on, 'cause I realized like, holy shit. Like, this was a really stupid thing to do. But, yeah, I just hope for the best. It was my understanding also that these tankers, they try to park closer to the well-mongued. So, I mean, as long as you don't go past them, I guess, you're okay. - In moments like this, do you feel like the world gets really, really small? 'Cause you're this little speck in the middle of it, and yet you're at the heart of the world's greatest crisis at that time. - Yeah, that's interesting way to put it. Yeah. - That's how I usually feel when I'm traveling. I'm just like one person, kind of like eight billion, and so much shit going on at this very moment. - Hell yeah? - It's eight billion people. - All of their own thoughts. - Yep. - What the name sabbatical come from, by the way. It's interesting. I actually like, when I was in China, I was like, trying to build like a startup company. So I was gonna be like this ed tech kind of thing. And that was actually the name that I gave that company. I had to like think about it for a while. And I was like, you know what, that name is not bad. Like why don't I like reuse it for a YouTube channel? And that's basically it. I mean, I did also think about it like, this is probably gonna be like a four month sabbatical. - And here we are. I'm gonna go back to some real job after. - Where are you looking forward to going to next? The most? - Yeah, well, I hinted at it before Lebanon, possibly. - Possibly. That entire region again, don't wanna like say it, just in case. But multiple countries in the Middle East. - Okay. - And, but I guess like on a personal entertainment level, this was supposed to be the year that I go back to Africa or like Sub-Saharan Africa, where I basically started the channel. And so I wanted to like do this like, trip from Egypt down to South Africa somehow. Still figuring out how to do that by lands because there's some, yeah, there's some, insane countries in the way there. But yeah, I'll do some variation of that later. - All right, don't get caught in Congo for sure. But the one other thing we haven't talked about today is you just got back from Cuba. - I did just get back from Cuba. - All right, how was that? And you weren't funded going there, were you? - What was that? Apparently they investigated that now, so I gotta ask. - I was not funded, I was totally self-funded. In fact, that was a problem. I did not bring enough funds with me. It's too Cuba, and they don't have 80M's in case you haven't heard. - Yeah. - Yeah, now it was a self-funded trip that I did with a friend of mine. And we flew into Havana from Cancun, and the situation is definitely not getting better there. What's it like? So a perfect symbol of the entire experience was, as soon as we got to this Airbnb, which interestingly, they have Airbnb's in Cuba, did not know that beforehand. It's the only thing you could stay in now. All the lights in the city go off. Complete blackout, power outage. And for the majority of the time I was in Cuba, they had no power anywhere. So the country's already adapting to this. Anyone that's trying to have tourists stay at their hotel or whatever, or their Airbnb, they will have a generator in there. But I did end up staying in places there that did not have one, 'cause it's obviously expensive. And you just have to hope for a miracle that the power would stay on while you're sleeping. 'Cause it's Cuba, and it's very hot there in the night. But there was other well stuff. There was no water in the faucets. So I was just like, "Yeah, shit, all right. I guess no showers on this trip." The people of their understandably very paranoid which is funny because I've done a lot of traveling in Latin America. And there are some of the most extroverted, like, "Oh, put me on camera." Like, "Yo, let's go." Like they're very relaxed with being filmed. Cubans not so much because they're, I guess, worried about saying the wrong thing and then being thrown in a Cuban dungeon. So I did have, even with that said, I did have multiple Cubans that speaking very honestly about what they thought about the government and got that on camera. - I did, yeah. And I don't wanna name names, but there was another travel blogger that went there who's kind of infamous now because he just recorded a ton of Cubans talking shit, doing crimes and stuff. And then supposedly they all got thrown in prison after he went. So trying to be responsible with this. But yeah, very interestingly, the Cuban people, what they most often told me was, we think freedom is finally coming. Or like we think it's like just around the corner. But, you know, we were getting really tired of this. Like, and you're like government hurry up and help out. The only people I met that were like supportive of the Cuban government, as far as I could tell, were like government employees. Like at, like, you know, there was like this cool castle I went to and the lady was just like, you should talk to Trump and tell him to stop doing this. (laughing) - Yeah, you don't wanna get back. - Yeah, I'll put that on the agenda. (laughing) Got a direct line to it, you know. - How long were you there? - About, I think it was like 10 days or something like that. - Wow, yeah. - You're never worried? - I was worried flying in. They have some like for Latin America, pretty intense security at the airport. It's like they like have you empty, like your entire bag. They go through everything. Like I didn't realize this beforehand, but apparently like you're not allowed to bring like meta glasses into it, which I just bought. And then I don't even end up using them on the trip, but I was like super paranoid about that going in. They didn't, they actually like pulled it out, like looked at it, and I guess didn't realize there were meta glasses. - But you didn't chance it. - Like after, did you use them or? - No, yeah, I didn't. I just didn't really see like a reason to use it. And then I thought if I like, you know, the one thing that it might be useful for was like rocking up on like the police or something and like talking to them, and I was like, yeah, that's not a good idea. - Yeah, that's not good. - Smart. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Be interesting to see what happens there. 'Cause again, it's like, you know, awful regime, feel bad for the people and all that, but like, Yeah, you know, what are you getting involved in and what don't? Yeah, the one common theme I've noticed in a lot of these countries like Cuba, Venezuela, Iran is that the people will honestly do support like US military action into these places. They generally hate their own governments and they really want the US to intervene. They'll be like more pro Trump or whatever than like the most Republican person in America. Yeah. And it's just it leads to like this like weird situation where it's like, yeah, you know, like, I don't know what to thank anymore. It's like, I want to help you. But I don't know if like our people should be dying for that. It's complicated because it's also what's the success going to be? What does success look like? What does it take to get there? Is it even possible to get it? It's very different, you know, going in and abducting one guy in a coordinated microwave weapon military operation in Venezuela overnight versus going into a country of 93 million people protected by insane geography with a crazy regime in the dead center of the Middle East. Thank you guys for checking out this clip. If you haven't already subscribed, please subscribe and hit the like button on this video. It is a huge, huge help. And if you'd like to check out this clip, full podcast episode that link is in the description below or right here. And finally, you can follow me on Instagram and X by using the links in my description below.