You’re currently talking to me on Skype looking pretty haggard and you’re in Bangkok, Thailand, with Dylan Hughes and Nick Richards – is that right?

That’s correct. Especially regarding the ‘looking pretty haggard’ bit. We’re staying at our friend Tina’s place over here; she’s been hooking us up.

So, other than staying up all night on the demon drink – what are you three doing in Bangkok?

We’re working on something together based around ‘nocturnalism’ in Bangkok – basically trying to skate all the spots in the city at night. We’ve been nocturnal for the last 8 days or so – getting up at 4pm and then skating from 10pm till 6am every night for a week.

That’s your excuse for looking haggard then?

(Laughing), well I’m not going to lie, skating all night in Bangkok and drinking do tend to go together but we haven’t really been getting any sunlight either, which messes with your body. We took a day off yesterday because we’ve been hammering it skate-wise and…well, I’m not going to say where we went, but we treated ourselves let’s say, which probably explains why I look so bleary-eyed right now.

You’ve been to Thailand before, haven’t you?

Yeah, I came out here on a Red Bull trip with Nick (Richards), Justin Strubing and Clint Peterson a few years ago. Since then I’ve been back  plenty of times as I’ve got some connections in Bangkok now.

There’s a big skate scene there right? Preduce Skateboards are from Thailand aren’t they?

Yeah that’s right, there’s a huge skate scene here; Preduce are based here in Bangkok. They just refurbished their skate shop actually – there was a big free beer party there the other night that we went to.

Is that where the indoor mini ramp that’s on your Insta feed is?

No, that’s ‘Skate Café’, (laughs). I sent that over to Rich Smith (from Skateboard Café in the UK) before. That’s a local place – just a bar that sells beer and nice food that also happens to have a pool table and a mini ramp in it. That place is a guaranteed good time.

Tell us about the skate scene in Bangkok.

Preduce smash it – they’ve put out at least ten skate videos over the last few years. There are also a lot of skateparks in Thailand that I wasn’t aware of on previous trips. We went to one last night that was of a really high standard – like a good UK or European skatepark. There were loads of skaters there; people were going off. The other thing with Bangkok is that it gets a lot of international visitors too, so the skate scene is a good mix between Thai people and general globetrotters over here on working visas.

What’s the general attitude towards skating there? Aren’t the security guards and police armed?

Yeah some are, but the general perception of skating seems to be more confused than confrontational in the main. We’ve come across some security and police who were cool with it, and we’ve had other interactions where it was pretty clear that we needed to bounce immediately. It’s a mix really…just like anywhere else. A lot of the ‘perfect’ spots are obviously in malls or near corporate headquarters or whatever, so just like in the UK, those are usually busts but you can work around it. We’ve been finding a lot of crusty stuff at the sides of the roads, under bridges and all that – lots of rugged banks and whatnot. There’s a good mix. Aside from the heat it’s not that dissimilar to skating in London really.

How long are you staying for?

Well Dylan and Nick will have left by the time this comes out so I’m just trying to work out how long I’ll stay for after that. I have a working visa for Australia and I’m going to go there around Xmas time. Before that I might go to Malaysia or Indonesia for a week as they’re near to Bangkok and those are two countries that I’ve never been to. I need to get some nature really; being in Bangkok has sucked out all the natural, organic stuff flowing through my body because I’ve hardly seen the sun whilst I’ve been here. I didn’t understand how real that was until we did ten straight days of getting up at 4pm in a place where it’s pitch black by 6pm – you feel the effects of no sunlight pretty quickly.

You’re in Bangkok now after being in Nepal working on projects for the Skate Nepal organization that you’re involved in, is that right?

Yeah, I was in Nepal for just over a month – networking, running workshops with kids over there and mixing in a bit of trekking as well. I went up to the Himalayas for a two-week trip. Pretty varied really; it’s a special place.

Classic DD ninja feet action as he brings a heelflip into line before the inevitable brickweave rattle out. Photo Reece Leung. 

Can you give us a little background on Skate Nepal?

When I first went to Nepal, around this time last year, to do a trek with three of my friends, I found out that there was a skatepark – which at the time was the only one in Nepal – in Pokhara, which is a base-camp town that people set off from to trek in the Himalayas. So I went to the park, which was pretty small with a mini ramp and some DIY bits built from concrete, and met Ram, the guy who built it and runs the park. He told me the back story about how he basically funded it, built it and ran it all by himself.

He works on a hydro-power station so he was finding it difficult to maintain the skatepark. The park back then still had loads of unused land around it, which got me thinking about how I could help him raise money to extend it. We kept in contact and I moved on with my travels, went to Cambodia, Vietnam, the Philippines, and we were talking the whole time. When I got back to the UK I started working out how I could get some fundraising going.

The way it’s grown has been interesting actually, really organic, which is something I didn’t expect. I’d meet people, and through contact with them, other doors would open. I met two guys in London, Tom and Gorab, who had been in Nepal the week before I’d arrived who had met Ram in similar circumstances and who, like me, had wanted to get involved with the Pokhara park. I met Tom through filming with Austin (Bristow) whilst he was working on those Regulate edits – we were out street skating together, got talking about Nepal and things just developed from there.

We figured that the easiest way to go about doing it was to start a non-profit organisation, which is what we did…

You’ve done a few other things to raise money too, right?

Yeah, I did a Momo eating contest at Parlour, for example. Momo’s are dumplings that are a traditional food in places like Nepal, Tibet and Bhutan.

And how will that money be spent?

On concrete, laborers and the machinery needed to build, and then eventually on things to sustain the skate community in Pokhara like workshops and whatnot. The first stage is to get the skatepark itself fixed up and extended, which looks like it’ll be happening around October of 2017.

And you’re planning to go out again and be involved hands-on, right?

Yeah, absolutely. I’ve been working on ramp jobs with Pete King and King Ramps since I was 16 so I have a fair bit of experience of working with wood, but not with concrete. That’s something I need to learn but there are people involved in the project in Nepal who can help me learn that too, which I’m keen on – it’s always good to develop new life skills isn’t it?

Did you take inspiration from what Skate Pal has done?

Definitely. I met some of the people involved in Skate Pal when they released those Dan Clarke boards recently through Parlour, so I have some friends within their organisation. We’re all working on a similar idea so it’s helpful to have people with experience to go to when I’m unsure about certain things, or to get advice on the logistics involved. I 100% back what Skate Pal are doing – it was actually my plan to volunteer to work for them before I travelled to Nepal. Then when the Skate Nepal thing happened I got involved with that so I didn’t get the chance, but I’m aiming to go over to Palestine at some point next year too.

What about logistically-speaking? Do skaters in Nepal have access to product, for example?

Sort of – there are two skateshops in Nepal; one at the skatepark in Pokhara and another one in Kathmandu, but there’s only one distributor in China who supplies them so the product they’re able to get is fairly limited. Then there’s another source for skate product that comes from the people who visit Nepal from across the world. For example there are a lot of Nomad boards over there because the owner of that Spanish brand visited Nepal, saw what they were doing and wanted to help support them. Generally though, it’s difficult to get product there and a lot of it does come via donations. All of the non-profits who work in Nepal recently came together to put on a few events to raise awareness and gather equipment so, slowly but surely, access to good quality boards and whatnot is growing. It’s problematic though because as worthy as charitable donations are, too much of that will make it impossible for the shops to survive there, which in turn will hamper the growth of the scene within Nepal, if that makes sense?

So to give us an idea – have there been instances where you’ve put a workshop on and there have been kids who’ve never seen a skateboard before? Or is Nepal more culturally pervasive than that already?

It’s a mix. I stayed in Pokhara for a week after I’d done my trek and did workshops every day and the majority of those were geared towards kids who had already skated before and knew something about it as a cultural phenomenon, if you like. Pokhara is a really small town but even from just doing those workshops there were probably ten kids who got into skating who knew nothing about it previously. And that’s just me doing it – imagine what you could do if that was extended across Nepal with skateparks and workshops in more places. There’s a charity from Australia called ‘Make Life Skate Life’ who have just built a skatepark in Kathmandu, only a small one with a skateable Nepalese flag with hips and a few quarterpipes, and that’s the best skatepark in Nepal right now. So the field is totally open to develop from this point, you know? That’s been open for a month; before I left Nepal I visited and the place was rammed with kids skating. Basically as soon as a park exists, skaters will form because ‘street skating’ as we understand it isn’t an option.

What’s the perspective on skateboarding as a thing more generally in Nepal? From, say, the parents of the kids getting into it.

It’s hard to say. I think most of them just see it as another form of playing. In terms of kids having a future in it as sponsored skaters or whatever, that’s still completely new and unexplored.

You mentioned that there was one kid who was really naturally talented; can you tell us about him?

Yeah that’s Milan, he’s this Nepali kid who was kind of ‘discovered’ for want of a better term by some Thai skaters who own a company called White Lands. They went over to Nepal and saw Milan skating and were like, “Whoa! This kid’s good”, and started flowing him some boards. A little later on there was this big contest in Bangkok, the same people flew him over for it and he won.

Whoa!

Yeah, exactly. This is a kid from Kathmandu in Nepal where there’s virtually nothing in terms of an established skate scene, entering a contest in Thailand where there’s a huge skate scene, and he came first. He’s really, really good. It’s strange to see somebody progress without any of the stuff you’d assume is necessary in order to do that.

There’s no 1990’s or 1980’s skate scene in Nepal though, right? The current generation is the first?

Well, arguably Ram, the guy who built the original Pokhara skatepark, is, to all intents and purposes, the first skateboarder in Nepal, and he started in 1998. He told me that when he started he didn’t know any other skaters and he got all of his friends into it. So no, there was no 80’s skate scene at all and virtually no 90’s scene either, so it is a really new culture over there. Ram went to Australia and then came back to Nepal with the intention of building the first skatepark in his country so yeah; he’s the source of it all, pretty much.

What’s the situation with Internet access in Nepal? Is that their window into the wider skateboard world?

Yeah, for countries like Nepal the Internet is so important within a culture like skateboarding, in terms of allowing it to progress. They can be in Kathmandu watching Nyjah skate on the Internet and realise that you can actually do kickflip crook nollie heel out in real life, (laughs). I’d go street skating with them after we’d do workshops at the park and a lot of the time the kids would just stop skating and watch me. I’d try to encourage them to skate as well and that was interesting to see – the etiquette side of skating is all completely new to them too, you know like, “you can skate too”.

Obviously Nepal is a poor country and the earthquake fucked up a lot of the existing infrastructure, so can street skating exist there? Is there the architecture for it to progress like it does in big cities in richer parts of the world?

Honestly, not really. There just isn’t the architecture for street skating like we know it. The surfaces everywhere, even on like University property which is newer, are pretty rough – stone slabs that feel like roofing shingle. We did find some ‘spots’ but it’s not as we know it; the future for progression there is definitely through skate parks. Also, it is so dusty that it can be hard physically to skate in the streets, even if you do find somewhere smooth. My throat was done after three days street skating in Kathmandu. A lot of the kids love to jump down sets of stairs though because architecturally-speaking that is the one kind of spot that they do have. It might have a run up made of dust and no landing surface but there are stairs so they’ll jump down them. There are no rails, and there definitely aren’t any ledges, so yeah, all they know in terms of ‘street skating’ is – learn a trick on flat then go try to do it down whatever set of stairs you can find. And again, this is why skateparks are so crucial in Nepal – whereas in the West we have the choice, they don’t.

Makeshift kicker to green leccy box with maximum kickflip points. Winner!

Photo Rich West. 

Which skaters are the kids in Nepal into then?

A lot of them watch Street League. They love Andrew Reynolds. It’s funny actually, some of the kid’s Instagram names over there will be like ‘Anish Bajur Reynolds’ or something – they’ll idolise certain skaters so much that they’ll use their names. Sometimes when they add you on Facebook, in the bracket bit next to their name they’ll add ‘Reynolds’ or ‘Hawk’ or whatever. Like you do when you’re an innocent kid super hyped on skating. But outside of the obvious ones, it’s mainly Street League guys as that’s what most of them watch.

How high up have you been?

This year I went to 5,910 metres above sea level. When you get to around 3,000 metres, you need to stay in one place for two days or so, just so your body can get acclimatised to the altitude. I was up there completely cut off from everything for two weeks. It’s a genuinely amazing experience. You’re constantly surrounded by so much beauty and amazing scenery; you meet fellow trekkers who are on a similar vibe and instantly have a connection. It’s something to do with being completely disconnected from the Internet I guess – people are just more…present, if that makes sense. You meet people, you’re all there for the same reason. I made so many good friends during my time in the Himalayas. It’s magical basically, in a real sense.

People are very respectful up there as well, which is such a massive contrast to my life in London, which is so fast-paced. Everything up there is much more slowed down; you breathe, people give you the time of day and talk to you and actually listen to what you’re saying.

It’s not like they’re obligated to interact with you like in a city. You can learn a lot from that experience I think; as in, a lot of those people don’t have much but they’re really respectful and welcoming and it just makes you consider your own life and the problems that you think you have in a different way.

So what’s next for you Daryl?

I’ve got a one-year working visa for Australia so I’m probably going to stay there until June of next year, then come back to the UK so that I can get involved with all the events and tours that will be happening back home. That’s what I do basically man, because if I was still in the UK right now, there’s no way I’d be this productive. It’s cold, it’s expensive, so I’d have to get a normal job, which would mean that I’d have no time to skate, whereas in Asia, life is so much cheaper, you can live for a lot less. Plus in Australia I’ll be working and in the middle of a new place with a massive skate scene so I can get inspired on that level too.

There’s a huge skateboarding infrastructure in Australia that I can hopefully tap into as well – go filming, meet new people and all that. If I was in London right now I’d be stuck just skating indoor parks for the next four months.

It’s not as hard as people think is it? To go and do something similar to what you’re doing I mean…

Nah, not at all. It’s expensive, but beyond that it’s pretty easy. If you have a British passport you’re laughing really. You have to pay for the working visa but I got mine without any hassle – filled out the forms, submitted it and got an email back with the visa approved immediately. I’ll work a bit, hopefully get involved in some farming so that I can learn more about self-sufficiency, then come back to the UK when the weather’s better. I’m keen to get involved with some fruit farming, firstly because in order to get a second year visa you need to have worked 90 days in agriculture whilst you’re in Australia, and secondly because, like I say, I’m interested in learning about the process of growing food. And then also because if you’re prepared to graft on those farms you can make hella money apparently. I’m happy to graft because it means that I won’t be skint when I get back to the UK, which in turns means that I’ll be free to skate and travel next year, rather than getting trapped in a job. That’s the plan anyway.

You’re winning at life, basically.

(Laughing), yeah I guess so. I’m aware of how fortunate I am in life generally, so through being involved in Skate Nepal I’m in a position to be able to give something back. If you know what you want in life then you just have to go out and grab it. You’ll learn so much about yourself and grow as a person if you just go for it – that’s my experience anyway.