Episode 26: Lucy Griffiths

Josh Caldwell: Hey Josh here, just a heads up. After this episode, I'm taking a break to record more interviews and make more music. I'll be back on May second, 2024. In the meantime, I'll still be posting bonus stories at my Patreon. So head over there to get your road story fix. Make sure to follow and subscribe wherever you listen, and if you're liking the show, tell a friend. Thanks for your support and on to the show.

Lucy Griffiths: And suddenly all these guards and other people get on, and they're basically carrying bags and sports bags filled with cocaine that's just going under every single seat and in every single locker on this train. And I'm sitting there thinking, my God.

Josh Caldwell: Hello my atypical daydreamers, welcome to the show. My guest today is Lucy Griffiths. Now, I've met some real badasses in my time, but she might be one of the most. This former TV journalist mixes machine guns and pink like nobody else.

Lucy Griffiths: In 2001, I left the UK and decided that I was going to travel around the world without using a plane. And I traveled for two years and went by train, by bus, by boat, by ship, by yacht, and donkey and walking and god knows what else. And along the way had lots of adventures.

So I left the UK by train and traveled across Europe and then ended up in Warsaw. And it was, I think it was about December 29th or something. So it was really snowy, really cold. And I ended up in this youth hostel where I met this very drunk British guy who was insanely drunk and chatting to everyone. He was really social and I'm quite shy. And he had met these Russians who were diamond smugglers. And we all decided that we were gonna cross to Belarus and then go on to Moscow. And we all went together. This guy was called Robbie, I've just suddenly remembered his name.

So we ended up being on this train. And Robbie was so drunk that he was basically being obnoxious with the guards. So we ended up being kicked off the train in Belarus. And we were left at this really small remote train station. It's about minus twelve. Really, really cold. And Robbie's then taken off by the guards and probably beaten up and put in jail or whatever. So then there's me and the diamond smugglers. And we go on this slow train back to the border with Poland.

So I'm sitting on this train and suddenly all these guards and other people get on and they're basically carrying big black holders stuffed full of cocaine. It's like bags and sports bags filled with cocaine going under every single seat and in every single locker on this train. And I'm sitting there thinking, my god, I am like party to this. I was just sitting there keeping my head down, texting my friends going, my god, what do I do? And I didn't know whether to leave because I didn't know where I was or stay on the train. I stayed on the train, I got to the border, I got off the train, still petrified that I was going to somehow be done for drug smuggling, even though I was nothing to do with it.

And then managed to get a fast train, met up again with the Russian diamond smugglers, and they took me to Moscow. So I ended up going around Moscow with them and them taking me to some rather crazy dubious nightclubs filled with Russian prostitutes. It was a rather insane way to start my trip.

Lucy Griffiths: Went on, spent some time in Cambodia, which I completely fell in love with. The people were so warm and hospitable, and they'd been through so much. And at the time there was still lots of reconciliation going on between the Khmer Rouge, as was, and the government, and all the roads were pretty impassable at the time. They were all mud in the rainy season, with potholes as big as ponds. I found this great translator, she was about 20, and I'd take her out on these adventures with a driver and we'd go and do various stories. And she'd always bring from the market a big bag of fried spiders. In the same way that we eat crisps, she would munch on these big black fried spiders.

And I remember we were going on this journey to the Thai border to where one of the last remaining Khmer leaders called Hun Sen lived. I was going to interview him, or see if I could interview him. So she had her big bag of fried spiders. Of course, the road was so bad that she ended up throwing up all over the car with the fried spiders. So yes, that was joyful. But we made it, and Hun Sen was sitting on his porch and he didn't really want to talk to me. But I think because I was quite young and a woman, I could get away with things that lots of other people couldn't. I could just be really girly and somehow they thought that I was not a threat. So they'd talk to me. So yeah, I interviewed Hun Sen.

I got really obsessed with human rights in the country. There was a lot of trafficking of women, women from Vietnam or Laos who were trafficked to Cambodia to be sex workers. It wasn't something that we really talked about in the West at the time. I would go and work on the Thai border a lot. I worked in the refugee camps on the Thai Burmese border and became quite obsessed with Burma. So I'd go in with the Free Burma Rangers, who were this kind of group of American, probably former Marines, missionaries, stroke mercenaries. They weren't being paid for it, but it was kind of that sort of vibe. And they would go in and work with different groups within Burma who were fighting the junta.

There are about 134 different ethnic groups within Burma, some of which are Muslim, like the Rohingya, and some of which are Christian, like the Karen. And the Burmese army would go and fight the villagers, basically burn down their villages. They'd rape the women, torture them, use them as sex slaves. And they'd use the men as porters to carry the weaponry. So I'd go in and report on them going into certain villages and training the Karen and doing different activities to try and reclaim land. And I would do a lot of work with the women who were living in the refugee camps who had been brutally tortured. It was awful. And that really shaped my view of journalism and changed the way that I worked, going from local and national news to doing much more international news.

Josh Caldwell: Hey Josh here. I love making this podcast and I'd love to make it my full-time gig. Besides telling the stories, I'm basically a one-man band, and that takes time. If you're enjoying the podcast, please consider becoming a patron. You'll have access to loads of great bonus stories, and you'll have the satisfaction of knowing that you're supporting a truly independent podcast. Find the Patreon link in the show notes. And thanks.

Lucy Griffiths: So one of the times I was in Pakistan covering an earthquake in the Swat Valley. Thousands of people displaced. I think it was 2006 or 2007. So I was there covering that story. And then afterwards I'd go and stay with my friend Susanna, who lived in Islamabad. She was a journalist and we'd go and do other stories around Pakistan.

I wanted to go to this village near the border with Afghanistan where they basically made AK-47s. It was a gun village. Each person in the town was intimately involved in making guns. The five year olds would be scraping out the casings, older kids would be banging the metal, it was a whole Dickensian factory of gun making. I wandered around to do this story, and there's me in my pink shalwar kameez. So it's not obvious, she says sarcastically, that I was a Westerner. And anyway, we ended up being picked up by the Taliban.

Susanna and I were taken to this big country estate of these Taliban leaders. They all spoke perfect English. They'd all educated their children at Eton and Harrow. They'd all studied at Oxford or Cambridge. So this was this complete dichotomy. They're the Taliban, but they've been educated in the British system. Until the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan, they were fighting alongside the British and the Americans, funded by the CIA. So suddenly their funding gets cut off, 9-11 hits, and they're suddenly the enemy. They then had to find other sources of money. That was kind of it. It was just a money game.

Lucy Griffiths: They then wanted to show us their guns. And I'm like, well, I've never shot a gun in my life and I'm really not into guns. So I could do the girly thing because I'm in pink. Susanna said, I've shot guns before, I'll do it. So anyway, Susanna shoots this gun but she starts screaming. I mean, screaming. And she's completely freaked out. And of course, this isn't a cool thing to do with the Taliban, to be kind of freaking out. So I'm like, god. I say, I'll do it, I'll do it. Okay, so I have a go with this gun. And of course, I'm being really girly, so they have to show me what to do. And then actually it was quite fun. There I am, firing this AK-47 at these apple orchards. And I'm like, this is fun, this is quite good. So anyway, we have tea, and I think because we managed to kind of jolly the whole thing along, we leave. And we still to this day laugh about the fact that we managed to get out of what could have been a really tricky situation. We could have been kidnapped, but we managed to make it into just going around for a cup of tea.

Lucy Griffiths: Then went down through Malaysia to Singapore and I crewed on yachts. So I got a yacht from Singapore to Bali. This was with an American guy who was sailing around the world with his girlfriend, and she'd dumped him, and he needed crew. So me and this other couple got on. He was this rich lawyer who had done the famous McDonald's hot coffee lawsuit and made record numbers at the time. He had this schooner and we sailed to Bali and stopped at these amazing islands along the way and snorkeled and dived. It took us a month or so, it was just like a big holiday, but we still had to do the early shift or the late shift crewing and make dinners.

Then I got on this other boat that was going to Brisbane. It was a delivery crew. The yacht had been owned by somebody who was making a TV show. This is early days of reality TV. There was this guy called Jesse Martin who had sailed around the world and was the youngest person to do so. He and his brother were on this yacht with some crew members and they made a reality show. Then I think there was all kinds of chaos with the boat and lots of love drama triangles with the girls. So the thing imploded and somebody had to deliver the boat back to Australia to sell it.

There was this Australian skipper who had never left Australia before. He was quite racist to say the least, and had no experience at all. And then there was me, a German guy, and a guy who was cycling around the world. He brought his bike. So we're all on this boat, and basically the boat starts leaking water.

Lucy Griffiths: We'd disembarked from Indonesia in Bali, but there are loads of islands you sail past in Indonesia to get to Papua New Guinea, which at the time was in the middle of a war. So we're sailing along and this particular night, the sea is deathly calm. There's a film called Dead Calm. It was a very similar experience. The sea is so calm, like a mill pond. No wind. We're just bobbing along and we're running out of water. We basically have two liters of water each to last us and that's it. Everything else is gone. It's burning hot. And we're letting off distress calls but we're in Indonesian waters and all the Indonesian fishermen don't understand us or the international maritime obligations.

So about since four in the morning we're thinking, my god, this is serious. And then by 12 o'clock midday we're beginning to think, my goodness. Eventually in the afternoon, about two-ish, an Australian sheep ship is passing. A big cargo ship full of live sheep being transported to Saudi Arabia. That comes and rescues us and tows us to East Timor. So we go to East Timor, there's a war going on, but it's the first country we can go to to disembark. So we get the boat fixed. We were literally staying with all the UN members in the main hotel in Dili. We were there about a week and then we sailed on to Australia.

Australia at the time was really struggling with boat people, people sailing from Indonesia and other places claiming asylum. The immigration minister had excised all the islands so that if you sailed into Australia you couldn't disembark on an island, you had to go to one of the main ports to check in. So I arrived into Thursday Island, an island in Australia. I was the first illegal boat person to arrive into Australia under this new policy. And so it was very convenient for the Australians because it was like, we are not racist. This is just policy. It doesn't matter where you're from, this is the policy. So they put me in a detention center for about 48 hours on Thursday Island.

Then eventually they agreed to let me sail down the coast of Australia and fly out from Brisbane. But the skipper was this slightly crazy nut job. By this point he was so stressed by the entire journey, he was on the whiskey. He was basically drunk the whole time. So Edwin, the cyclist, had a massive row with him and got off at Cape York, the very tip of Australia, impassable roads, filled with crocodiles, swampy. He literally got off at the most remote part and cycled down the whole thing. If anything had happened to Edwin, Michael the skipper would have been done for manslaughter, because it was pretty serious.

Lucy Griffiths: And we'd run out of food by this point. So there were these big shrimp trawlers and they had loads of food. And I remember them giving us some shrimps. Of course, a girl like me being sent over with a rowing boat to beg for shrimps. And I remember them saying to me, he's a weirdo, you don't have to stay on that boat if you don't want to. And I said, I know he's completely weird, but I can't get off the boat because of the immigration purposes. So instead I stayed on the boat, went to Brisbane, and managed to get on another boat where I then sailed on to New Zealand and then on across the Pacific, like Vanuatu and other Pacific Islands, and then ending up in South America and then the Caribbean and then down the Atlantic and then sailing back to the UK.

Josh Caldwell: I want to thank Lucy for sharing her experience. Be sure to check out her book, Make Money While You Sleep, or one of her many small business and solopreneur courses, available online. This podcast was created and produced by me, Josh Caldwell. Music by Visual Aid, my side music project. General support and copywriting by Miranda Caldwell. If you like the show, please follow, subscribe, rate, and review wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you'd like to financially support the show, check out my Patreon page. You'll have access to loads of great bonus stories. You can find the link in the show notes. Thank you for listening, and I hope you come back next week.