Hello, and welcome to Tryppe.com. We’re Alain and Crystal, a Gen-X couple from Canada, now living in Bangkok, Thailand. During the pandemic, we made a decision to do something different with our lives, and moved abroad. It was quite a process, with more than a few bumps in the road, but we made it!
We’re kind of obsessed with travel. We like to talk about travel, read about it, watch YouTube videos about it, and have done a fair amount of travel now, particularly in Southeast Asia.
We haven’t travelled as much as we’d like yet, and plan to do more in the future.
In 2019 we made our first trip to Southeast Asia, where we started in Singapore, continued on to Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia and flew back to Canada from Singapore. On our way there we had a layover in Haneda airport in Japan. We know some people don’t count that as a visit, and we want to go back and see all of Japan, but we had some amazing ramen in that airport. Never expected that!
We have travelled around western Canada and the northern United States, with one of our favourite trips being a road trip from Edmonton to northern California. Alain has also travelled to Belgium and France. One of our favourite Canadian trips was a hike on the Berg Lake Trail around Mount Robson.
Since we’ve moved to Southeast Asia, we’ve travelled all over Thailand. In addition to Thailand, we’ve travelled to Malaysia, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Singapore, and likely have crossed the border into Burma (Myanmar) as we’ve driven in the mountains of western Thailand.
We realize life’s too short to spend it all in the office, so we intend to experience more of what the world has to offer.
Our interests are varied, and include sailing, van life, photography, video, and slow travel. We enjoy trying new foods, trying our hand at cooking them, and a mix of modern and ancient travel experiences. At one point we were in the process of converting our Sprinter van, but we sold it when we moved to Thailand!
About Alain
I am currently working in online marketing, which I’ve been doing since 2007. My main focus is search engine optimization (SEO) and copywriting, but I also do work in social media, marketing strategy, content strategy, public relations and pay per click ads. I’ve worked with a variety of clients, and one of my favourites has been an international tour company based in Canada.
I worked as a journalist for a while after completing my journalism degree. That’s been helpful to me in doing all the writing I do on a daily basis. I even worked as an accountant for quite a while after getting my diploma in accounting and finance. I worked as an accountant for a hotel for a while, and I’m a big fan of Fawlty Towers. Maybe running a hotel is in my future!
I enjoy getting outdoors when I can, doing some hiking and camping, but one of my favourite activities is photography. I mainly shoot on Panasonic gear, and I have been dabbling in video as well.
About Crystal
Friends and family are often shocked to discover I have a huge collection of cookbooks, with a collection of more than 800 (and counting)! I like to try recipes from all over the world, and one of my favourite travel experiences was doing a cooking course in Thailand. My hope is to be able to do cooking courses in every country I travel to.
I am also an amateur photographer, also shooting on Panasonic. It’s nice to be able to swap lenses and gear! I’ve also been bitten by the video bug, and have been learning video editing on DaVinci Resolve.
Most of my work life has been spent in the aquatics industry as a lifeguard, gradually moving up and learning all aspects of pool operations. As a teen I started working as a lifeguard, went to university and completed a degree in leisure and sport management, and continued on in the aquatics industry.
I have hired and trained probably hundreds of lifeguards during my career and taught hundreds of children swimming lessons. I enjoy the mechanical component of pool operations, and getting them in perfect working order.
More recently I have been working in occupational health and safety, and enjoy the new challenges and training in this field.
About the name Tryppe.com
Alain – We had originally wanted to use a much longer domain name, and decided to find a shorter one. Well, trip.com was already taken. Imagine that. So, I decided to be creative and vary the spelling. I eventually settled on tryppe.com. It was probably the only variation that had an available domain.
It has roots in Old English, and apparently refers to a herd of animals or an army. I kind of liked it because it sounds like ‘trip’ and reminded me of an old George Carlin album: Occupation Foole. I used to listen to it as a kid (that, and a lot of Monty Python).
George Carlin referring to his job as a comedian: “Originally this job was called fool. Always want to put it down under occupation on a form, you know. Occupation: fool! I think I’d spell it with a final ‘E’ just to piss’em off.”
The final E in tryppe kind of makes me laugh every time I think about it.