Who in the World

In this episode, I travel back to Phnom Penh, Cambodia – one of my favorite places in the world – and sit down with my friend Kay Kay.
Kay Kay is one of the “Deportees,” those Cambodian nationals who grew up in the U.S. but were later deported back to Cambodia, to a country and even language they didn’t know. Raised in California in a poor neighborhood amid crime, drugs, and gangs, Kay Kay was more about the breakdancing and graffiti tagging life.
However, he did fall victim to the streets and ended up spending multiple bids in prison and then immigration jail. After years of incarceration in the U.S. system, he was shackled on an airplane and deported to Cambodia.
It’s there that Kay Kay’s true journey starts, as he soon helping poor street kids who had no one else, and then taking them in. He first taught them his break dancing skills, and then offered life guidance and mentorship.
The movement grew and eventually became Tiny Toones, an international non-profit that’s still in existence today after nearly two decades, offering formal education, life skills, and even job placement.
According to their website, “Our mission is to provide a safe, positive environment for at‐risk youth to channel their energy and creativity into the arts and education, empowering them to build self‐confidence in their daily lives, aim for better employment possibilities, and feel supported pursuing their dreams.”
Kay Kay still runs Tiny Toones all of these years later, making it his life’s mission to save kids from the same gangs, streets, and temptations that almost claimed his life.
Enjoy this part 1 of my conversation with Kay Kay and feel free to check out Tiny Toones and make a humble donation at: www.tinytoones.org
-Norm :-)

In this podcast, I catch up with my old friend Mounika, who tells me about her trip of a lifetime to Japan.
I was friends with Mounika and her husband Rohit back when I lived in Sacramento and became good friends with them towards the tail end of my stay there before leaving to live abroad in 2011.
Last year, Mounika invited me to speak via video chat to a club with some of her girl friends from India to California. I talked about my adventures, went over a few stories from the books I’ve written about them, and my life as an expat now.
Well, Mounika took my words of words of motivation to heart and planned her own life-changing journey – to Japan!
What makes this odyssey so incredible is that Mounika visited the land of the rising sun solo, and it was her very first time traveling except for her home nations!
Even more incredibly, Mounika’s father just passed away before her whirlwind trip, so she flew back to India to honor and bury her father, with all of the emotions and turmoil that brought, and then right on to Japan from there.
Join me in chatting with Mounika about how she overcame her fears, her impressions of Japan, the serendipitous experiences she had, and the wonderful people she met (not to mention all of the great food!).
Discover what she found on the trip of a lifetime on this very heartfelt and human podcast!
-Norm 🎙️🌏

In this part two of my podcast with Wicced, or Kalvin Hang, we reunite in Phnom Penh, sitting down in a corner of a bar tucked away in an alley to talk about his story, live from the Kingdom of Cambodia.

In episode #26, Wicced and I covered how he was born in a refugee camp in Thailand, made his way across the world to settle in California, and then fell into the street life because of his surroundings. Never a naturalized citizen, he ended up in an immigration prison for years and, post 9/11, was deported back to Cambodia – a country he’d never lived, didn’t know the language, and never even visited.

In this podcast, we pick up Wicced’s story when he first arrives to Phnom Penh on “Con Air,” handcuffed and still incarcerated. He eventually is released to family members in the countryside but the transition from modern California to the villages and province life in rural Cambodia is as radical as it gets.

Wicced finds his way to the big city, Phnom Penh, where he settles and immediately starts giving back, helping others, and making an impact. Fast forward almost two decades and Wicced is a community leader, advocate for deportation and immigration reform, social activist who has spoken and attended conferences all over thew world, business man, and family man all the same.

It's a great honor to have WIcced as a friend and little brother, and I thoroughly enjoyed our sit down and chat, including a surprise answer to a question I asked him eight years ago.

I might just have to move back to Cambodia – a place I’ve lived and really love – just to hang out with Wicced more!
I hope you feel the same after listening to this podcast.

-Norm 🎙️🌏

PS Big-up to the Deportees and my Khmer fam!

One of the amazing things about traveling and living abroad is the people you meet in random, chance, and fleeting encounters. Even if you just chat at the airport for 5 minutes or run into someone at a café, you form these deep, meaningful connections that stay with you for life.
One of those chance encounters occurred for me in the little mountain spa town of Fortuna in Costa Rica. I walked down into the lobby of my backpacker’s lodge one day and saw this tall European woman struggling to walk because she’d injured her knee badly in a surfing accident.
Being everyone’s big brother when I travel, my first instinct was to help her out, of course, and that’s how I met Rafaela, who turned out to be one of the smartest, most positive, and dynamic people I’ve been blessed to know.
From humble yet gracious beginnings in Communist Romania, she worked her way up in finance, moved abroad to work in other European nations, speaks six languages, and now lives in Paris.
I met Rafaela in the midst of her year traveling around the world, when she focused on reading, exercise, yoga, and fully immersing herself in the moment. But far from your typical stereotypical backpacker, she carried a nice suitcase and told me she loved the high heels that she packed instead of the typical hiking boots - a true sophisticated badass!
After months of invitations (and begging), Rafaela finally acquiesced and agreed to hop on the podcast with me, which turned out to be one of my favorite conversations yet!

Do you have a good friend; someone who you consider yourself close to and who is impactful on your life, although you’ve never actually met them in person? For me, that person is Ian, who I was connected with a long time ago based on a mutual friend and wild life events (long story).
For years now, Ian and I have chatted on Facebook and got to know each other, getting to know about each other’s lives, families, aspirations, and even supporting our favorite charities back and forth.
So, it was a great pleasure to finally get Ian on the podcast.
In this conversation, you’ll hear how Ian is living a full, rich, and rewarding life despite being diagnosed with FHS - a rare degenerative and incurable disease - as a child. Now in his 50s, Ian talks about how gratitude changed his life, his love of music, why his family saved, him and the legacy of good vibes he’s giving the world.
Enjoy this chat with my friend, Ian!