Ride Now: Vanuatu (2024)

Ultimately an exciting and soulful adventure fueled by passion and the thirst for conquering!

With the same title “Ride now” as his previous Vlog adventure, the show has evolved and gone beyond his favorite cycling activities into leisure activities that Wu Lei enjoys in general. And the destination for this time is Vanuatu, a small island northern of Australia, where the world most accessible active volcanoes are located. It is some of the very few places in the world where human can watch and experience firsthand erupting volcanoes within safe distance.
Though independently produced by his studio, one can expect a small-scaled traveling reality show here with beautiful overhead long shots and vibrantly vivid colors of the nature including spectacle images and sound from the erupting volcanoes, the deep blue sea, sunrise beaches and so on. The trip is divided into 2 episodes. Episode 1 provides the common tourist experiences like shopping and strolling around the local market through Wu Lei’s eyes, showering us with the actor’s child-like joy and excitement; while the later part brought us some radically gorgeous images from the active volcanoes with insights into his choice to travel here. The short and succinct narration unveils and explains where his passion for volcanoes originates from.
Episode 2 is about his stay on the islands and his scuba-diving challenge to conquer his fear of the deep sea. Thanks to this ép, I got to know about one of the 5 under-water posts in the world that actually sends postcards from the sea!

Overall, the show is highly entertaining and engaging. One will be infected with his joy and excitement exploring a more dangerous traveling destination. With beautiful shots, hilarious editing and comment, compelling narration, mood-setting music and satisfying length, the show proves its content worthy and entertaining value! Not less than any professional reality shows imo.
To be honest, I was quite impressed by the volcanoes and the narration about it. One can feel the authenticity of his passion and his thoughtful& contemplating nature under his enthusiastic outlook through this show.

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Let's go on holidays !

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCVAqlybDwc&t=287s (episode 1) 19.50 minutes full screen
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xU3e6PssdY4 (episode 2) 19.08 minutes, mobile phone screen format in the beginning, to get in the mood of the mobility
both subtitled or double subtitled Hanzi + English.

It feels like a while now since episode 1 was out, I was almost despairing to get to see episode 2. At last, it dropped on screen today :-)

I love this feeling of traveling by proxy with a smiling and humorous travel companion ! Islands, markets, volcanoes, and now underwater : exhilarating! I too used to collect postcards to send souvenirs including to self, and visited some unusual post offices, that had unusual stamps, but did not know about this one which makes the trip particularly interesting.

And a beautiful sunrise on June 29 (2023, presumably), after the time stamp 5 am on the phone's screen,, so we know when that was filmed : did "post production" take that long that we only got to see it now?

That episode 2 outing to discover another island in the archipelago felt like best of holiday making : dream like accommodation with a pier, dancing on old music, night sky illuminated by fire eaters to remind us of the previous episode where the Earth itself blew fire.

Wu Lei stated in another video (the one about Xiamen in the Marvelous City series), that he had a fear of the sea ; yet, he pushed his limits and overcame it, even diving under potentially dangerous rocks or hard coral : he admitted he was a little scared, but curiosity drove him to do it anyway. He got a reward from the lofty sky down to azure stellar life of those clear waters.

Short episodes but so nice to share his view of the world he travels to!
"best supporting actor goes to the mouse" :-D

There was not much music there. Since this is French speaking islands, I would have suggested Polnareff's "Holidays" song, an oldie but goldie : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oTIf6AvsaY (especially the hook and riff with the last chorus)

That will be my review, then, in waiting for further micro adventures.

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