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We're about to spend a weekend in the Bahamas to have a little escape from the Canadian winter and soak up some Caribbean sun. And we're going to be staying with my best mate James, who's actually just moved here. Being on an island where people are coming on holiday, but you're not weird. So, we'll be checking out his new place, exploring the downtown area of Nassau, and heading on a boat trip out to Rose Island. All right. So, my YouTube channel kicked off with my best friend James and I doing a 9month round the world trip from Hong Kong to New York. And then ever since then, anytime I've done a trip without James, I always get asked
where's James? And it came became like a running gag on the channel, which was funny at first, then got a bit tedious, and then we kind of just milked it and sold some t-shirts with where's James on. Um, but now there's a more interesting answer to that question because James has just got a new job as a commercial manager in the Bahamas. So Jamie and I have just popped down over the weekend from Canada. You know, it's like a 2-hour flight to Toronto, 3-hour flight to the Bahamas. It's not too that big a journey. Doesn't take that long. Word of warning, if you are flying in on a Friday, the immigration took an hour to get through. But yeah, we're here in the Bahamas for the weekend to catch up
with James and show you what you can do here in one weekend. So, let's check out his place. So, this is James's new place. But before we get too settled in, we're in the Caribbean, so we've got to make some rum punch. So, we are we have two bottles of rum because one is regular rum, golden rum, and one of them is mango flavored rum. This was recommended to us by the guy at Jimmy's. All right, we're just going to pick up some booth.
What's your local liquor store called, James? Uh, Jim. What else? Where else do you get rum? Because when you need to figure out how to make a rum punch, you ask a Bohemian. When this water bottle's empty, I'm going to make a rum punch and put it in here. So for weekends and Monday to Fridays, I'll switch over to the rum punch and then it'll just come straight out. Genius. This is where you've been all this time. I dragged too much and I couldn't leave.
There's James in his new house. And here's the beach. My dad's favorite gate. This is pretty James's beach. Islands in sand beach. But yeah, James got money off his place cuz they're doing construction next to her. Um, but obviously they only work during the day during the week when James at work as well. So there's no interruption for the weekend life of the beach. It's funny. If I film the beach just looking this way, then it looks kind of gross because of the construction behind it. But in any other direction, it's just perfection.
Yeah, it's a little chilly. Yeah, not very cold though. Time to go for a swim. See what we can find. Oh, it's so clear down there. Yeah. We're now going to head to the downtown area to check out the beaches and bars near where the cruise ships land. Right. So, we come to towards downtown. Massive cruise ships just parked up there. That's the actual downtown. But there's a whole bunch of beach bars just here that we're going to go check out. If you're on a cruise, this is what you got off to in the moment. be like, "Okay,
we made a friend who's taken us to this bar. So, we'll see what it's like and work our way around." Thank you very much. So, this is the conch snack, which I think is just like fried kch and fries. Fries and flies. Flies. Yeah. They didn't hang around, did they? Fish is like fried goodness. Almost tastes like calamari. Yeah. where I live is so chill and there's it's like living in the suburbs to living in a city and like when I went downtown the first time I was like oh there is life here do you know what I mean
James just explaining this area during a day on a Saturday just rams cuz it's everyone from the cruise ships. But as you just seen, the cruise ships are leaving. So now it's all quiet down. So we just come for a drink at the Green Parrot. Uh having a couple here, then we're going to head back to James' area. Yeah, everything lots of stuff just shuts down here. Like the cruise ships are in for the day and then after 5:00 everything shuts down. I'm sure there's some late night clubs, underground clubs if you're into that sort of thing. But I'm 41 so I'm not. But yeah, but it's such a gorgeous, gorgeous evening though. Just look at this.
The plan for today is we're going to head out on a boat trip to one of the nearby islands. But before we get to that, let's have a quick little story time. So, as mentioned, my YouTube channel kicked off with James and I doing a 9-month round the world trip from Hong Kong to New York, and I filmed the entire adventure. This series took me a year to edit in my spare time and took over 3 years to save up for in the first place. If you saw the retrospective videos we made back in 2021, you'll know that one of the motivating factors for doing such a big trip was that during my mid20s, I had a tremendous sense of lost time. Like my young adult life was just slipping away from me due to things
going on in my life that were out of my control. It was at a time in my life when I was basically just incredibly frustrated with how my life was going. Because when I was 18 for my last year of school and also during my second year of uni, uh due to personal stuff going on in my life, I was basically depressed. I was battling depression. Now, we didn't talk about mental health back then like we do now. So, we didn't use words like depression. It was more just like my mates going, "Our car seems a bit quiet." But either way, those two years were just complete write-offs for me. In hindsight, what would have been really useful for me back then would have been easy access to a professional
that I could just speak to about what was going on. Which brings us on nicely to this video's paid partner, BetterHelp, who were on a mission to make starting therapy easier. A therapist will listen, ask questions, and help you see things from new perspectives. They can give you advice and techniques to make positive changes in your life. So, with Better Help, you can fill out a questionnaire, and you will match with a therapist as soon as possible. Plus, you can easily switch therapists anytime at no extra cost if it's not the right fit. With over 7,000 reviews and a 4.3 rating on Trust Pilot, BetterHelp is a platform you can trust. So, click the link in the description or go to betterhelp.com/carlwatson
and get 10% off your first month of therapy. And now, back to the Bahamas. So today we just want to head to Rose Island and there's lots of like boat tours you can book with activities included, but we just want to go to the island instead of camp at a beach bar and do a bit of snorkeling. So we came down to the marina and there's all these stalls here and like they weren't advertising exactly what we wanted, but we just went to ask and chat and they said, "Oh yeah, we can do this for you." So I think it's like $50 each for a return boat and a beach lounge kind of thing. So that'll do.
Hello. It's like the blest water I've ever seen. It's absolutely amazing. You're getting right now. Just like at the port. Yeah. Normally the port is where it's disgusting. Yeah. The vibe kind of reminds me of like Universal City on the way into Universal Studios or the edge of a Disney. It's like a entrance to a theme park kind of vibe to it. They're clearly mimicking the beach bars that are on the actual like local beach over there by doing like the same colors and the same look, but it's like all new materials, all like very sanitized. So different to where you're actually living, right? Yeah. So it's like drive 10 minutes and you're on holiday. It's
weird. Yeah. Cuz you're living where people actually live and they don't live on holiday, right? No. Okay. But it's like being on an island where people are coming on holiday, but you're not. It's so weird. I haven't worked out how it feels. Like, you know, like you go down and everyone assumes that you're here on a cruise like that guy like and he was like, "Oh, you live here. So, we have an hour to kill before our boat ride. So, why not go to Margaritaville? I don't know. This feels so American right now. Like you don't feel like you're in a Caribbean. You feel like you're in a Could be Vegas, could be Florida. But yeah, that's why we only come for a drink whilst waiting for our boat.
Cheers. Just for reference, it's $20 for a margarita. Yeah, it's good. Thumbs up. Yeah. Well, why would you call it either the Dak Shack or Daiquiri Shackery? Like, it just seems like it's a missed opportunity here. It's either or. After a bit of a delay with the boat arriving, it was finally time to head out to Rose Island. Like not to state the obvious, but it's it's freaking huge. It's a big boat. The sea's blue. So the bridge is an actual room. Yeah. So that's the suite. So it's about I don't know maybe 20 or 35,000 a night or something. And it's a Michael Jackson suite apparently because it was his either he bought it or he stayed in there. I think Opra stayed in there.
It's like the place. Yeah. I don't want a photo with this [__] This [__] Give the people what they want. Well, this [__] back with James in the Bahamas. You like that better when you leave? Uh, not soon enough. Can't wait for you to go. I'm going to take you to the airport myself. Yeah. So, just telling car like if you're ever seasick, which I'm not by the way. I'm fine. I am. But if you're seasickness, feel seasick, have some room. That's why the pirates are here.
All right. So, we made it to Rose Island cuz the boat left late. We literally have an hour and a half here to enjoy it before we have to go back. And you can see the pig experience there where they feed the pigs, which we're not doing, but yeah, we pay extra money for that. Piggy. Hey little guy. Hey piggy. She's like you don't have any food. [__] you. He's like I've seen your wristband. You've not paid for the pig experience. So [__] off. You know the story of the pig, James. Like I'm not even telling. So, a very intelligent local man told me that the pigs are here because on one island Exumas on the Exumas. Yeah. The pigs just escaped one day. Yeah. And they were just swimming around and
playing around in the ocean and everybody loved it. So now on Rose Island where we are, they have pigs that they just let out when the tourists come cuz it's very popular. and charge a shell a lot of money and charge money to feed the pigs. Yeah, you can pay to get some food so you can feed the pigs basically. And it stinks as [__] Yeah, this is the other side of the island. By other side, we've walked 2 minutes. That's how thin this island is. Hello. I like coming into like a beachy place when you see a rocky place if that kind of makes sense. It's like the other side. So like all the sand's on that side and then it's like to see the other side of it. The other side of paradise.
That should be the title of the video. The other side. How does it feel to have two pipes up your ass? Like double. It's a little bit like double fisting. Yes. Double fisting. Doesn't work. Nice little cove here. This is cool though. We got our own little private little area on Rose Island's just over there. If you want more drinks, we can go for a snorkel. Snorkel. A snorkel. A snook in a pancake. Snorkel. Who's that coming over the horizon? Do you guys want a drink, too? I just got to wait.
Yeah. When the wind changes, you can smell the pics. Might look lovely on Instagram, but cold shower. You refuse. I wiped you. Why? Visibility is terrible. It's just so blue. Still, you can't complain when you're touring a place like this. Just like old times. Back at James' place and our friends Mike and Christy had just flown in from Toronto. So, you're you're okay to have this when you're pregnant, right? Yeah.
Okay. I'm just not pregnant. As long as I can. Are you pregnant with Are you really? I knew it wasn't going to take long, but hey. Hey, wait. Since you're holding the shot came out. Congratulations. I'll take film. I thought we were just going to shut the rum. We had a lovely time with the five of us catching up that evening and into the next day before Jamie and I had to fly back home in the afternoon. So, we've come to Sandyport, which is just a few minutes walk from James' place, and it's like the expat community area. Um, there's lots of pastely colors and 80s ballads playing, so it kind of makes us feel like we're in Miami Price. And we just come to Twisted Bar to eat all of the food. Uh, James isn't here right now
cuz he's at work, but we're having a lovely time. So, that's it for our time in the Bahamas. We'll be seeing James again very soon as he's going to come visit us here in Winnipeg this summer. And then I'm sure we'll go see him many more times in the Bahamas, especially during the winter months here. Next up on the channel, it's going to be back to the documentary series and the first of which will be the Sri Lanka trip from February. That'll either be a two or three-part series and it'll come out in about a month, so towards the end of July. So, make sure you subscribe so you don't miss out on that. And I'll see you again very soon.
