Interview with Allen Burt: What Travel Really Costs Beyond the Ticket

🌍 The moment I stopped counting bus tickets and started listening

I sat on a cracked plastic chair outside a roadside tamarind-scented café in Chiang Mai’s Wat Ket neighborhood, rain drumming softly on the corrugated roof, my notebook open to a single line: “Why do we assume ‘more’ equals ‘better’?” That question didn’t come from a guidebook or a travel blog—it came from Allen Burt, founder of EpicThrills, who’d just spent 47 minutes explaining why he’d walked away from launching his third hostel chain to spend six months learning how to weave bamboo baskets in a village near Luang Prabang. His answer wasn’t about cost-cutting. It was about recalibration. If you’re asking how to interview with Allen Burt founder of EpicThrills—or more honestly, what such a conversation reveals about sustainable, human-scale travel—you don’t need access. You need stillness. And that’s where my trip began—not at an airport, but at a stall selling sticky rice wrapped in banana leaves, steam rising into cool morning air.

✈️ The setup: Why Chiang Mai, why then, and why me?

I arrived in Chiang Mai on a Tuesday in late October, carrying one 42L backpack, a water-stained copy of The Art of Travel by Alain de Botton, and a low-grade anxiety about my own itinerary. My plan had been textbook budget-travel logic: three days in Chiang Mai, two in Pai, four in Luang Prabang, then Hanoi—12 cities across six weeks, all booked via aggregators offering ‘flash deals’ on overnight buses and shared minivans. I’d optimized for price per night, distance per baht, and Instagrammable backdrops per hour. What I hadn’t optimized for was breath.

The first sign something was off came on day two. I stood in front of Wat Chedi Luang, camera raised, lens focused on the fractured spire, when an elderly woman in a faded indigo sabai gestured—not at the temple—but at the small brass bell beside the entrance. She rang it once, bowed slowly, placed a folded 20-baht note in the offering box, and walked away without glancing up. I lowered my camera. My photo would be sharp. Hers wouldn’t exist online. But hers held weight. Mine felt like inventory.

I’d reached out to Allen Burt not for a ‘founder interview’ in the PR sense, but because EpicThrills’ website listed no headquarters, no investor page, and a single line under ‘About’: “We help travelers unlearn schedules.” Their projects—like the community-run homestay network in northern Laos or the slow-travel literacy workshops for rural Thai youth—weren’t marketed as ‘experiences.’ They were documented in field notes, scanned receipts, and audio clips of elders telling stories in Lao dialects. No stock photos. No influencer tags. I wanted to understand the operational reality behind that restraint.

🗺️ The turning point: When the map dissolved

We met at the café—not at a co-working space or hotel lobby, but where he’d been for three mornings straight: Phu Kao Café, tucked behind Wat Ket Market. No Wi-Fi password posted. Just chalkboard specials written in Thai and English, mismatched ceramic mugs, and the constant clink of ice in glasses of nam manao (lime soda).

Allen arrived wearing sandals, cargo shorts, and a woven bag slung over one shoulder. He ordered two coffees—thai coffee, hot, no sugar—and slid a small, smooth river stone across the table. “This is from the Nam Ou,” he said. “I carried it for eight days while walking between villages near Nong Khiaw. Didn’t take a single photo. Didn’t log GPS. Just kept it in my pocket. Felt heavier each day—not from weight, but from attention.”

That was the pivot. Not a dramatic failure—no missed bus, no stolen passport—but a quiet collapse of assumption. I’d assumed interviewing Allen meant extracting ‘tips’—what apps he used, which booking platforms he trusted, how to ‘hack’ border crossings. Instead, he asked me: “When did you last sit somewhere for longer than 22 minutes without checking your phone?”

I couldn’t answer. Not honestly.

He didn’t judge. He just pushed the stone toward me. “Hold it. Feel its temperature. Notice the grain. Then tell me what changes when you stop waiting for the next thing.”

I did. And for 3.5 minutes—longer than I’d been fully present in weeks—I watched light shift across the stone’s surface, heard the vendor call out mango prices in rapid Lao-Thai code, smelled cardamom blooming from the next table’s khanom jeen bowl. My itinerary, printed neatly on recycled paper in my notebook, suddenly looked like a series of exits—not entries.

📸 The discovery: People, not places

Allen didn’t give me a ‘travel guide.’ He introduced me to people.

First, Pim, a 32-year-old textile archivist who runs a tiny studio above a silk-dyeing workshop in the Old City. She showed me how natural indigo ferments differently in rainy season versus dry—and how that variation means no two bolts of cloth are identical, even from the same batch. “Tourists ask, ‘How much for the blue scarf?’” she told me, holding up a scarf dyed with jackfruit leaf and fermented in rice wine. “But the real question is, ‘Do you want to wear something that took seven days to make—or something that took seven minutes?’” She didn’t sell online. No e-commerce. Orders came via WhatsApp, fulfilled only after a 15-minute voice note explaining dye lot numbers and care instructions. “If they won’t listen for 15 minutes,” she said, smiling, “they won’t wear it with care.”

Then there was Uncle Somsak, who operates a single-route songthaew (red truck) between Chiang Mai’s eastern hills and the Doi Saket district. He doesn’t use Grab or Bolt. His schedule? “When the mist lifts. When the school bell rings. When my grandson says, ‘Paa, let’s go see the orchids.’” He charges 30 baht cash—same rate since 2008—and keeps a thermos of ginger tea for passengers. One afternoon, he detoured to show me a hidden waterfall where limestone shelves formed natural basins. “No sign. No fee. Just water and quiet. You find it only if you’re not looking.”

These weren’t ‘local experiences’ curated for tourists. They were ordinary lives—unscripted, unmonetized beyond basic dignity, and deeply anchored in rhythm rather than speed. Allen’s role, I realized, wasn’t building infrastructure. It was amplifying existing infrastructure: the elder who teaches weaving, the teacher who documents oral histories, the farmer who opens her field for seasonal rice-planting workshops—not as performance, but as continuity.

🎭 The journey continues: From observer to participant

On day five, Allen invited me to join him on a 90-minute walk to Ban Tha Ton, a village 12km east of Chiang Mai where EpicThrills supports a library project run by high school students. No transport. Just walking shoes, a reusable bottle, and a promise: “Don’t take photos unless someone asks you to.”

The path wound through teak groves, past terraced cornfields, and alongside irrigation canals thick with water hyacinth. We passed three schoolchildren cycling home, their uniforms flapping, shouting greetings in Northern Thai. Allen stopped twice—to examine a termite mound with a boy named Petch, then to help an elderly woman lift a basket of guavas onto her shoulder. Each pause lasted 4–6 minutes. No agenda. No translation app. Just gestures, shared smiles, and the occasional phrase repeated until understood.

At the library—a converted rice barn with bamboo shelves and hand-painted maps—we met Nok, 17, who’d translated six folk tales from oral Lanna dialect into Thai and English. She handed me a stapled booklet titled ‘What the River Remembers’. Inside: no author bio, no ISBN, just ink drawings and stories about monsoon floods, spirit trees, and the sound of frogs before rain. “We print 20 copies a month,” she said. “Only enough for our school and the temple. If more people want it, they come here. Or they wait.”

That evening, I deleted four booked bus tickets from my calendar. Not because I’d ‘found meaning,’ but because the math had changed. Time wasn’t currency to be spent. It was medium to be inhabited.

🤝 Reflection: What travel taught me about silence, scale, and self

I used to think budget travel meant minimizing cost. What Allen Burt helped me see is that true budgeting isn’t about price—it’s about attention allocation. Every photo taken instead of a question asked. Every attraction ticked instead of a conversation deepened. Every ‘must-see’ that crowds out a ‘might-hear.’

EpicThrills doesn’t run tours. They run listening posts: physical spaces where travelers commit to staying in one place for at least five days, attend three community gatherings (not performances), and contribute one tangible skill—translating menus, repairing a school desk, digitizing handwritten recipes. Their ‘success metric’ isn’t occupancy rate. It’s how many locals initiate contact without being prompted.

That shifted my definition of value. A 200-baht guesthouse room wasn’t ‘cheap’ because it lacked AC. It was valuable because the owner, Mae Lin, taught me how to fold betel nut leaves into ceremonial packets—and then showed me her daughter’s university acceptance letter, paid for by guests who’d stayed six months earlier and returned each year to volunteer in the village school.

I left Chiang Mai with fewer photos, no new souvenirs, and one unshakable realization: The most reliable travel hack isn’t finding cheaper transport—it’s learning when to decline movement altogether.

📝 Practical takeaways: How this reshapes real-world decisions

None of this required money. It required recalibration—and that starts with observable, repeatable actions:

• 💡 Before booking anything, ask: “What must I stop doing to be here?” If your answer is ‘nothing,’ the place may not be ready for you—or you may not be ready for it. In Chiang Mai, that meant pausing my habit of reviewing Google Maps every 17 minutes. I switched my phone to grayscale and set a lock-screen reminder: “Where are your feet? Not your cursor.”
• 🚌 Choose transport by duration, not speed. I took the 3.5-hour public bus to Pai instead of the 2-hour minivan—because the bus made 11 stops, including one where a grandmother sold roasted chestnuts from a charcoal brazier. Those stops weren’t delays. They were data points: how vendors organize shade, how children negotiate fare discounts, how rain changes roadside commerce.
• 🍜 Eat where the queue forms after 10 a.m. Morning markets cater to residents stocking up. The real pulse—the gossip, the price haggling, the unadvertised specials—starts when office workers and students arrive mid-morning. At Khao Soi Mae Sai, the best coconut curry appears only after 10:30 a.m., served in reused jam jars.
• 🌅 Reserve one ‘anchor hour’ daily—untimed, device-free, location-locked. Mine was 6:15–7:15 a.m. at the Wat Ket riverside. No goal. No output. Just watching light hit the water, counting ferry crossings, noting which birds nested in which trees. That hour didn’t ‘add’ to the trip. It anchored it.

These aren’t rules. They’re filters—ways to test whether a choice aligns with presence, not productivity.

⭐ Conclusion: The itinerary that fits in your palm

I still use spreadsheets. I still compare bus fares. I still check visa requirements three times. But now, beneath every logistical decision, there’s a quieter question: What does this allow me to receive—not acquire?

Allen Burt never asked me to ‘travel differently.’ He simply modeled what happens when you treat time as non-renewable, relationships as non-transferable, and curiosity as non-negotiable. His work with EpicThrills isn’t about building something new. It’s about reclaiming what already exists: the unmediated glance, the unpurchased story, the unphotographed moment that settles into your bones and stays.

My backpack is lighter now—not because I packed less, but because I carry fewer assumptions. And the most useful item I brought home isn’t in my bag. It’s the river stone from the Nam Ou, sitting on my desk. Cold. Smooth. Unremarkable. Exactly as it should be.