Rosamund Pike | The Day I Got Trapped in Vietnam

0:00Any place that I can go that is not normal. you will go i love you know it's like a magic trick the fact an ocean you cannot sink in except nobody really talks about how astonishingly painful it is when you get this water in your eyes it's agony i mean you have you never ever been it's it's a it's a pain that you it's like putting chili in your eye and we thought oh my goodness we're actually we're actually kind of trapped here in a way do you sing well i do now now that i've done inter alia and i had to do karaoke on stage in front of 900 people a night. We were probably in one of the only places in the world where we didn't know that that monumental human disaster had occurred, which was a very, very weird feeling.

0:47Welcome to Travel Secrets with me, Tanya Rose, the podcast sharing wisdom for fellow travellers. Each week, I ask my guests to reveal their six travel secrets and the holidays and adventures that surround them.

1:07Today, my guest is the fantastic British actress, Rosamund Pike, famed for so many critically acclaimed performances, from a gone girl to a Bond girl, two Maries in a private war and radioactive. And I have to say, that film about Marie Colvin was spectacular. I absolutely love it. Your new film, Now You See Me, Now You Don't, and your fantastic performance at the National Theatre in Inter-Ailia. I can't wait to see that when you come back in the West End later on this year. So before we get into your travel secrets, perhaps you can tell us a little bit about yourself and how has travel impacted the person you became?

1:50Have you traveled since you were a child? Let's just talk about travel and you. I think I've always been very romanced by the idea of travel. I think I always think it's exotic and romantic and there have been times where I've sort of followed old journeys that have inspired me or I felt were kind of potent in some way. Like, you know, I started my career and I remember very clearly the first time I had to say, you know, where are you traveling today? And I had to say Los Angeles and it just sort of gave me a thrill because when I first got the role in the Bond film I'd never been to America and within a few weeks I was flown to New York to sort of meet the editors of all the magazines because of course media and publicity was so different then and I was kind of taken around as the new taste around you know these huge towers to all the magazine editors and then some point Later, I went to Los Angeles and the thrill of saying Los Angeles was, you know, it felt so magical and I didn't know what to expect.

3:00And I remember, you know, staying at the Four Seasons and arriving to the scent of lilies, which I'm sure is still there when you go into the Four Seasons in LA. This petty smell that seems to suggest sort of opulence and promise. And but then later in my career, I felt I wanted to do the old journey that people used to do to go west, you know, which Dalits went west to kind of make their fortune in Hollywood. And I took the Great West Chief, which is a train that goes from Chicago to L.A. And it crosses however many states. And it's a two day journey. And of course, I was so, I had such romantic notions of this train, this double-decker silver train that kind of hounds into Chicago station.

3:44And then, of course, it was so, it was sort of underwhelming because a lot of the really beautiful places you travel through in the dark. Oh, so you didn't see. But I was most impressed by the hardened train staff who would, you know, this train was very sort of rickety and rattly and they would balance the most extraordinary sort of trays laden with cups up and down the train. But yes, it wasn't the sort of Orient Express, put it that way, which I still have never been on. And I am desperate. It's on my bucket list. I really, really want to do the Orient Express. Meant to be fantastic. but the um I think I think I think I always see promise and adventure in travel and I wish I had someone else to do the packing I think that's the sort of that's the kind of traveler I am did you grow up traveling uh well not really as in we never I never had a family holiday that was not um that wasn't really in our in our well you know in our price point or you know I suppose you'd say but but my my parents uh um are musicians they're they're classical singers and I remember there was a there was a very magical summer when I finished primary school that my father was doing a modern opera in a Tuscan um Hilltown festival music festival and it was for very little money indeed and he agreed to do it on the condition that he could also bring his daughter and they you know we'd have a hotel room that was big enough for both of us and things you know um and that my meals would be paid for and things like that so they they agreed and and that remains uh you know my love of Tuscany remains from the magic of that trip and of course the atmosphere of being with singers who are very good fun and you know just just being around creative people has always been very enchanting as well.

5:40Do you sing? Well, I do now, now that I've done Inter Alia and I had to do karaoke on stage in front of 900 people a night. It's not really my pleasure zone, I can tell you that. I think when you've grown up with people who sing, really sing well, that's their primary means of expression. It wasn't mine. I think if you are a singer you you need to sing your voice I think a real singer you don't understand them until you hear them sing that's my sort of touchstone feeling about singers thank you for watching travel secrets I hope you're enjoying it as much as I'm enjoying doing it please take a second and subscribe now let's go into your travel secrets what is the number one destination you think everyone should go to once in their lifetime?

6:27I think Petra in Jordan is probably the place that has literally taken my breath away. And people had described it to me and said what I've experienced as you walk down this canyon of rock towards the treasury, I think it's called, the first building that you encounter. And when you see it, it oars you with the scale and the beauty and the way the light hits the rock and the carvings and the feet of it. I think Petra is really remarkable and not in any way diminished by tourism really. I think any of these great giant structures that you can look at and sort of carve out your own gaze away from the people trying to get you to buy whatever it is they're trying to get you to buy beads or something or something that you're not going to want or sand or something it's anything anytime you can take your gaze up and and you can still encounter something almost as it was it's pretty amazing did you go there when you were filming a private war exactly we filmed in jordan and jordan afforded all kinds of adventures i also took my children to the dead sea which is still something they talk about because it was so extraordinary i mean it's not a place of beauty it's just a sort of it's something that tricks the brain talking of you know it's like a magic trick the fact an ocean you cannot sink in except nobody really talks about how astonishingly painful it is when you get this water in your eyes it's agony i mean you have you never have ever been it's it's a it's a pain that you it's like putting chili in your eye it's awful or if you have a cut on it i guess so yeah but the idea of putting a child in who can't yet swim but but but they cannot you You know, they just bob around.

8:18How old were they when they did that? I mean, very little. We had my son's second birthday in Jordan and the old one must have been five. But we also went camping in the desert. We went out into Wadi Ram and went out, you know, in jeeps and slept under the stars in this sort of, it felt like a sort of intergalactic landscape or a kind of, you know, lunar landscape or something with stars that you can't believe. I bet they remember that. even the little one probably. Yes I mean I think they do they do remember that you know you're building a fire and eating out of doors you know as always tastes better really.

8:56Even if it's burnt to a crisp? Maybe not but burning always has a sort of it's a strong flavor in our house because my partner always burns the toast so it's a sort of so burnt things has a strong resonance in our family my children sort of hate it they hate smelling they always they're always very angry when they have to go to school with their shirts smelling of burnt turnt which is most hate awful things what's your most unexpected travel experience well I mean there was it was 2001 that I first went traveling alone or at least with a with a group of friends and I'd left university and we actually went into Kunming in China in order to take this train into Vietnam.

9:46And the story as I remember it was that this train, somebody had been slightly out on their drawings. So instead of the train passing through somewhere that was sort of logical, it went on an illogical route. So it had to go through this spectacular sort of mountain range. That's how I've remembered it. And anyway, it caused a lot of problems on the line. So the train line is often shut and it was shut when we went. So we had to take a very secure bus route to get into Vietnam. But it was also the time in 2001 when the beach, do you remember that Alex Garland book, The Beach, and it had just come out and everybody was obsessed with it.

10:20And a film had been made with Leonardo DiCaprio. And everybody who was traveling in Southeast Asia at that point was in search of the beach, or a yet undiscovered beach. And it didn't really occur to any young person at that time that it was highly unlikely you would be able to find an undiscovered beach, as in the novel. So we armed with maps because there was no Google Maps at the time. And you were scouring maps of countries or the country, the coast, looking for places you might go or be able to access that weren't on the normal routes. And anyway, we got to some area outside of Hanoi and we got on what seemed to be a sort of supply boat.

11:03You know, everyone was communicating in sign language a lot. And we got on this boat, this sort of supply boat going to an island, which was the island we were aiming for. And when we got to this island, people welcomed us. They clearly were not used to tourists. and we traveled a bit further inland and a family were very, very welcoming and offered us to stay. And we went out walking, trying to find the beach. Anyway, we came back. We had a lovely meal with his family and we paid them for our bed and board. And then other members of the village clearly got wind of the fact that there were these tourists here who had dollars.

11:49And we suddenly found that it was quite difficult to leave. and the rides that were so easy to get from the place where the boat came in were suddenly not forthcoming when we wanted to go back. Oh, my goodness. And we thought, oh, my goodness, we're actually kind of trapped here in a way. And so very early one morning, we made a pact with each other to walk back in the direction we thought the port was, and we made it, and we just sat there, you know, to wait. We had no idea when a boat would come. Anyway, a boat came. We got on the boat. we realized we'd been very stupid you know very very stupid we got on a boat we got back to hanoi and we went to a restaurant to just sort of unwind have a beer have some rice and and there on the tv in the restaurant was a movie of this plane um coming into new york city and crashing into the Twin Towers.

12:45Oh, God. Do you know that? And we then saw that it wasn't a movie, it was the news, but also that this was sort of three-day-old news. Oh, my God. So we were probably in one of the only places in the world where we didn't know that that monumental human disaster had occurred, which was a very, very weird feeling. because how hard it is now to be oblivious to go anywhere. So that remains quite a strange travel experience. What was the word you used? It was unexpected. An unexpected travel experience. I think that was very unexpected. Yes, it was unexpected. But, you know, that's when the sort of thirst for adventure can, you know, bite you in the back, as it were.

13:38But I think as young people, you do do foolish things. and I'm sure you did too didn't you? Yes I don't think I've ever done anything quite as adventurous as that maybe walking back no I don't think so. I've seen an amazing photograph of you in a BA advert not advert it was an article which was very unexpected the photograph of you was incredible was in the wing or the the engine you were standing in the engine weren't you? Well I was asked to do High Life magazine um and often BA High Life will photograph people on the cover in a destination where BA flies and I think I was about to start rehearsing the play I think or for whatever reason I couldn't travel anywhere and we were talking about places that were near and I said you know what the part of BA that I really love and would love to see is the place where the all the planes are serviced.

14:33I'd love to go and see, would you ever let somebody be photographed there in the hangar where the planes are? And at first it was considered maybe a bit unlikely. And then suddenly the gates were opened and it was possible. And we did this really experimental shoot where I stood in the engine of a 787 and then, no, on the wing of a 787 and on the engine of a 777 Boeing. And it was just a thrill. I mean, any place that I can go that is not normal, I love. So the idea, it's all the stuff about, it's a bit, it's the same thing that draws me to the theatre or to film sets. It's the magic that you go into another space.

15:27It's a space that you're not meant to see. The wings of the stage are not what you're meant to see when you go and see a play. Where the set ends is not what you're meant to see when you're watching a film. So the view into an aircraft from the wing is not what a passenger is meant to see and certainly not standing in the engine being able to turn those great turbine blades you know and of course I got to ask all the questions of the engineers and all the things that I've a nerd like me loves to know but they must have been thrilled because probably they'd love to tell someone that and no one's interested well I think I think it's sort of I think I'm deeply respectful of aeroplanes and I I know how much, you know, how many lives we entrust to these great machines every day.

16:14And they're pretty, you know, they're pretty mighty things, aircraft. I'm a real lover of the 747, queen of the skies. And I actually made a special trip to Seattle. Oh, to the Boeing? To the Boeing factory. Factory, did you? Yeah, which was a big thrill too. Was it? And I saw the, you know, there's a, what's it called? the dream, I want to say the dream, no, I want to say the dream catcher. It's the aircraft that transports bits of the dream. It's like a great sort of whale that can take the nose of a great plane in. And there's a sort of, there are all kinds of wonderful things about the Boeing factory, like things that you will think I'm a total nerd when I tell you.

17:02The aviation nerd, that's amazing. It's like, you know, they have a, nothing is in the factory for longer than I think 48 hours or 24 hours. So any part that comes in will be on an aircraft within 48 hours. There's no storage there, which I find very efficient. I think it shows a kind of efficiency that I would really like to have in my life. So aviation and also cars. You're a lover of old cars, aren't you? Yeah, I bought my Citroen DS when I made Pride and Prejudice in 2004. I called her Jane and she's a green Citroen DS from 1972. And she's a wonderful creature. And the first long road trip I did in her, I drove to Croatia.

17:47And it's just a different view of the world. If you're in a slow, stately car that looks graceful, people are less angry with you on the road. Yes. they're more likely to let you in because it just it's sort of amusing to see this sort of green ship sailing around and um and she goes wrong of course you know she she she overheats and I have to stop with the bonnet up and do you know what to do the radiator with bits of water and yes I mean there was one time I was I was driving back um from Prague with my children and I'd stopped because she'd overheated and it was by a hornet's nest, which was just awful.

18:30And I'm such a wasp-phobe. I mean, it was my punishment for something. Anyway, I heard this fizzing coming from the battery and I thought, oh dear, that's not good. And the battery was clearly sort of very overexcited. And it was about the hottest day you can imagine in France in August, you know, when most mechanic shops are closed. And I found somebody stopped and they told me that there was a garage that might sell a new battery, you know, a couple of miles away, three miles away or something. So I drove with everything I could possibly think of to switch on in this car on the windscreen wipers, the headlights, the radio, the heating, you know, everything to suck as much electricity away from the battery as I could so that the thing didn't explode and overheat.

19:18So they thought this total mad woman was arriving on the hottest day of the year with the windscreen wipers going. And yeah, it was quite funny. Oh my goodness. But, you know, it didn't blow up and I got a new battery. And you got a new battery. Yeah, yeah. Very good. But it's those things that, you know, I sort of see my child sitting at the side of the road looking. And I think this is edifying. You know, this is edifying. This is, you know, if you were with the kind of mother who never got into scrapes, you know, you might be different. You might, you know, one day you'll be able to tell these stories and, you know, moan at me, complain about me.

19:57But at least, you know, it's not vanilla, you know. Definitely not vanilla. Oh, that's hilarious. That's marvellous. Wonderful. What is your most overrated or underrated travel experience or place you've been to? Well, I do love that feeling of awe. You know, I think that is something I seek out when traveling. And I love trains. So one of the places that we discovered on one of our European road trips in my old car was this magnificent hotel at the foot of the Eiger called the Bellevue des Alpes, which is a hotel dating back to 1800 and something. and it's you cannot believe its location it's it's it's right at the foot of the north face of the eiger it was the place where climbers would go before beginning that sort of feat of all climbing you know to test you know bravery courage endurance all of it and and you know people would come to spectate you know back in the day and see you know attempts failed attempts so many All kinds of things.

21:09And then obviously the real heroes of that hotel would be the returning climbers who'd made it. Anyway, it can only be reached by train, a cog railway, you know, because obviously trains are meant to go on the flat. And these are these extraordinary cog railways that pull you up the mountain to this place called Kleiner Scheidegg, which is a little village, which when all the trains stop and you're left there at night and you've got the looming presence of the Eiger over you. It's very, very powerful indeed. But by day, there is also a further train that can take you inside the Eiger and the Monk mountains and it's taken you right up to somewhere up in the peaks and it's a real tourist attraction.

21:59Oh, is that the Jungfrau? Yes, it's the Jungfrau railway that takes you up inside and the feat of the engineering of the railway is magnificent. What you arrive at at the top is hell. It's a kind of hideous tourist hell. And you think, this is awful. I wish I'd never come. It's a lint chocolate factory. And I'm a chocoholic. I mean, I love lint chocolate, but I don't want to find, I don't want to be able to buy a lint Lindor at the top of a mountain because you feel like such a fraud. You think about those poor people who died on the mountain. You think about the brave people who've successfully climbed it.

22:37And then you are having a Lindor ball, having a Lindor ball, having travel by train. And there are people in Instagram worthy dresses who've come up on the train just to have an Instagram photo with some snow at the top of the, you know, you wouldn't survive. I mean, I wouldn't survive. None of us would survive up there. And we're in a place where we shouldn't be. It feels a bit like going to the moon without knowing how to be an astronaut. You know, it feels sort of arrogant and a bit shameful. So I think that's my underwhelming thing. So I would definitely recommend going to Kleine Scheidegg, experiencing those mountains, but staying at that level.

23:19Unless, of course, you're a mountaineer. And then you get your crampons and things and try. But do you know what I mean when you go to somewhere where the human footprint just feels all wrong? All wrong. And it's sort of disheartening and somehow a bit sort of sad. Yeah. It is happening a little bit too often now, isn't it? Unfortunately. Yes, maybe. I mean, I haven't found it. I went back to Cambodia recently, which is one place that I traveled on the same trip as the Vietnam trip when I actually branched off from the two girls I was traveling with and went on my own. Because I think I've always I've always quite liked solo adventure because not because I'm particularly brave.

24:02but because I like to challenge my own fear, I think. I think I'm naturally quite a fearful person, but who recognizes fear as not a particularly useful emotion. So I sort of challenge it and, you know, will fly somewhere and rent a car and do something on my own. And this was one such case. I remember leaving the girls in Ho Chi Minh City and taking a boat up the Mekong. and I went up into Cambodia on my own, which turned out to be just an inspirational trip. There's a story there that I can't tell you, but there was once I arrived in Siem Reap and experienced those temples. And I remember this wonderful guy I met called San Pork.

24:53I always remember his name because, of course, it was written on pieces of paper. And when you wrote people's name and phone number down, you can still see them sometimes. He was sort of my guide. And I'd jump on the back of his motorbike and he would give me tips like, you know, we have to go to this temple in the dark. Because you're going to think I'm like some, I'm going to sound like I'm some sort of gullible teenage girl. A guy saying we have to go in the dark. Sample. Not in that way. We have to go early in the morning before the dawn because you have to experience the sunrise. And anyway, he would take me and he would leave me.

25:35And I remember walking up these steps of this temple in the dark and waiting at the top of this structure. I mean, these structures are sort of so mighty and beautiful. But this was a sort of one, you know, without anyone else there. And I will never forget the sun coming up. It wasn't like a sunrise. It was like a ball of fire coming out of the blackness. And I don't know what made, I don't understand, I don't know to this day why it didn't get light first. I don't know. It was the red rising sun as a ball of fire coming out of blackness. And I don't know, I almost think it can't have been real because surely that's not what ever happens.

26:19there's a dawning before you see the sun but that is what I saw and he was right well yes he was right but I was alone so I don't I mean I don't know if I hallucinated the whole thing or something no I didn't have a I know because I I've always had funny enough I have a funny relationship with photos I believe that if you take photographs of a trip you remember the trip through the pictures you took and not through your own eyes so I go back and forth sometimes I really photograph something intensely and I have really good cameras and sometimes I don't take any pictures at all and that whole Cambodia trip which I remember so vividly I didn't take a single photograph but because you have it in your mind I have it I have such clear pictures in my mind and then recently with the work I do for um I'm the ambassador for a landmine charity the mines advisory group and And we went back, well, I went back to see their work in Cambodia.

27:15And before we went further into the field where the landmines are closer to the Thai border, we went back to Siem Reap. And of course, Siem Reap, since the pandemic, is now, you know, what was dirt paths is now paved roads. I mean, it was unrecognizable. I mean, unfortunately, I don't have any pictures to compare, but pictures in my mind's eye. In your mind, you do. Yes. Yes. I mean, it was unrecognizable in 20 years. And you didn't do the same night, climb up and then see the sun? No, we got up very early and went. But the whole thing about going to visit the temples of Angkor Wat have become more, it's a much more of a machine now.

27:53And I do feel very grateful to have been there when I did go. There were far fewer people then. It's still incredibly wonderful because of the way these temples are in, surrounded by trees. And that sort of, you feel it's a place where some of the, you've probably been, some of the trees and the roots are lifting up the stones built by humans. It's like the land is reclaiming it. And of course, that's what made it so wonderful for a film like Tomb Raider. Yes, exactly. Do you go back every year for your landmine charity? I go to try and go to different places. I've been to Lebanon with Cambodia.

28:32Cambodia, we're planning a trip to Sri Lanka next year. I was supposed to go to Ukraine. And then my children very honestly said, I don't want you to go. We'd lived in Prague for four years and the war was very, very at the forefront of their minds. And we lived very close to the Ukrainian embassy. So we were very, very aware of, you know, fleeing Ukrainians and the trauma. And I think they just I just don't want you to do that. No, not yet. Not yet. No, I think they're right. I do think they're right. Let's go on to food and drink. It's so much part of travel. What do you like eating? Where do you eat?

29:08What's your favorite restaurant? Where's been your favorite drink? Let's just talk about food and drink travel. I love food and drink. I've had such, I'm lucky enough to have had such varied experiences of food and drink. So I've just come back from a trip. In September, I went on a two-week trip to China with my family. And my children speak Chinese, which is a superpower. And it means that I have an experience of China that I couldn't otherwise have. Because we can, you know, we can dive into the midst of something and not fear, you know, getting lost or getting ripped off or any number of things.

29:42And so we can, you know, we go into the night markets and the things to eat. I mean, my husband, mainly to amuse the children, ate a skewer of scorpions grilled before him on the griddle. and I had sort of quail's eggs dusted in sesame that were just, you know, and you're spending 10p on this deliciousness. So there's eating like that. Yeah, fantastic. That's amazing. Or kind of blackened tofu just sort of chopped up and strewn with spices and sort of wok fried in front of you and then delivered back with sort of just an explosion of flavour. So we were filming The Wheel of Time, a series I did for four years, and we went in our first season to Slovenia, which is close to Prague, which was our main base.

30:39And Slovenia is so beautiful. And there's a mountainous region with these waterfalls and pools of the palest turquoise water, which is colder than anything you can imagine. I mean, it takes your breath away with how cold it is, but it looks so inviting. And on a hot summer's day, you think, oh, there's nothing more inviting. You jump in, it freezes your bones. It's even on the hottest day of the year. But there's a restaurant there called Hisa Franco. And I think Anna Roche, who's the chef there, who now has three Michelin stars. The whole place is an experience. You have to surrender. And I love places where you just surrender to someone's vision and you eat and you eat too much and you just get bewildered by taste and excitement and imagination.

31:36And it's a theater. I think it's the actress in me. So it's the theatrical experience of a place like that where there's no choice. It's a performance. And I think that part of eating really excites me. I was also lucky enough to go to El Bully before it closed. Closed, yeah. And that was a meal I will never, ever, ever forget. I mean, again, the theatrics of it, and the way that you're, you know, talking of a film that I'm promoting now, Now You See Me, Now You Don't, which is about magicians and magic and the place of magic in our world. It's about, you know, magicians taking down the world's worst people.

32:15It's a kind of Robin Hood sort of way, using magic and illusion and, you know, trickery to foil, you know, dastardly people out of their assets. But, you know, in these restaurants, you're often given something that your eyes tell you will taste like one thing, and your mouth, you'll have an explosion of something completely different, or you'll think it'll be hot and it'll be cold. And that's not, or, you know, I remember something that looks absolutely 100 % like a peanut, you know, and in fact, it tastes of, I don't know, cheese or something something completely different and almost something i remember at the albouli experience that was was with you know it was like um it was like vapor but you could taste it it was almost like you were inhaling vapor but you had a full meal it's you know it's willy wonka stuff it's the stuff that enchanted me as a child when you know roald dahl wrote about a piece of chewing gum that could give you a three-course meal you know i think it's the same person yes you know So, yeah, it's the same person gets enchanted by those experiences.