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00:00:00.000 | A quick word from our sponsor today.

00:00:01.700 | Hello and welcome to another episode of All the Hacks, a show about

00:00:07.040 | upgrading your life, money, and travel.

00:00:08.960 | If you're new here, I'm Chris Hutchins, and I'm a diehard optimizer who

00:00:12.000 | loves doing all the research to get the best experience in life

00:00:14.840 | without an expensive price tag.

00:00:16.480 | And today I couldn't be more excited because I'm talking to

00:00:19.240 | someone who's had a huge impact on my travel life, Rolf Potts.

00:00:22.640 | If you're not familiar with him, you should be.

00:00:24.800 | He's an award-winning travel writer who's been published in almost every

00:00:27.960 | publication, but I came to know him from the book he wrote almost 20 years ago,

00:00:32.920 | Vagabonding, An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel, which

00:00:36.920 | became a classic of travel writing and has been an international bestseller.

00:00:40.720 | In fact, I stumbled upon the book in 2009, and it played a huge role in

00:00:45.760 | Amy and my taking a trip for eight months to backpack around the world.

00:00:49.160 | It was also a part of the inspiration for my friend, Tim Ferriss's

00:00:52.320 | book, The Four-Hour Workweek.

00:00:53.840 | Needless to say, it's a must read for travelers and maybe even more

00:00:57.240 | importantly, people who don't necessarily travel, but want to.

00:01:00.600 | And just this month, he followed it up with a new book called The Vagabond's

00:01:04.400 | Way, 366 Meditations on Wanderlust, Discovery, and the Art of Travel.

00:01:09.640 | It is filled with stories of travel and journaling, quotes for each day

00:01:13.920 | of the leap year, important note, from centuries of philosophers, authors,

00:01:18.400 | poets, and travelers, all paired with reflections about the wonder

00:01:21.760 | and importance of travel.

00:01:22.840 | I found it to be fabulous, especially for someone like me who struggles

00:01:27.120 | to find the time to sit down and read a few hundred pages at once.

00:01:30.200 | In this conversation, I want to talk about time wealth, why that's

00:01:33.480 | such a vital topic in life, how it transforms travels, and what anyone

00:01:37.680 | can take from the concept to travel in a richer way, how we can adapt to

00:01:41.480 | the changes of travel technology and still have amazing adventures, why

00:01:45.720 | he once traveled for six weeks without luggage and what you can learn from

00:01:48.760 | that experiment, how leaving your phone behind or getting lost might

00:01:52.200 | create richer experiences, why he thinks that as you get older, you can

00:01:55.920 | still have more richer and fulfilling travels and so much more.

00:01:59.120 | Let's get started.

00:02:00.280 | Rolf, welcome to the show.

00:02:03.120 | Thanks for being here.

00:02:04.000 | Good to talk to you, Chris.

00:02:05.040 | Happy to talk about this.

00:02:06.040 | Yeah.

00:02:06.680 | So I have a lot of questions.

00:02:07.880 | Big fan of yours.

00:02:09.160 | Someone always asks you, what's your favorite book?

00:02:10.760 | I was like, I don't know, but Vagabonding is the book I've

00:02:13.120 | purchased more to give to others.

00:02:14.800 | So I've tried to live a lot of the spirit of what you've written,

00:02:18.040 | but I will kick us off and ask, what do you think one of the biggest

00:02:21.960 | misconceptions the average person has about travel as you believe

00:02:26.480 | it is and you embody it?

00:02:28.000 | Well, that it's expensive for one thing.

00:02:30.600 | I think that for generations, this is something I talk about in

00:02:33.240 | the new book, The Vagabond's Ways, for generations, it's sort of

00:02:35.320 | been seen as this indulgence.

00:02:36.920 | It's been seen as this thing that wealthy people do to showcase their

00:02:40.120 | lives, when in fact, I think people of all backgrounds have always been

00:02:44.240 | able to travel if they've made it a priority, expense is a big one.

00:02:47.760 | And of course, hacking is something that you focus on and we can

00:02:50.920 | talk about different hacks and you talked about time wealth.

00:02:53.080 | I mean, that was the huge hack for me from the beginning, realizing

00:02:55.800 | that time is more important than wealth in a certain sense, that

00:02:58.800 | creating time is really what you need to do to create a dream

00:03:02.200 | experience like travel.

00:03:03.400 | There are other things too.

00:03:04.600 | There's this notion that the world is more dangerous than it is,

00:03:07.440 | partly because it used to be that the old headline, man bites

00:03:10.560 | dog, media environment.

00:03:12.680 | Well, now it's clickbait, bad news clicks better than good news.

00:03:15.720 | And so fear is another thing.

00:03:17.040 | And then I guess just difficult, but I think it's easier and easier

00:03:20.040 | these days, especially in the world where so much information is

00:03:23.160 | available, of course, sometimes there's too much information, but

00:03:25.600 | there's enough information doing at least encourage us that there

00:03:28.840 | are people who are not that different from us traveling in a very

00:03:32.480 | rich and slow and long-term way.

00:03:34.440 | It sounds like it's something you've been thinking about for a long

00:03:36.360 | time, because 2008, 2009, that's pretty early in the life cycle

00:03:39.640 | of my first book, Vagabonding.

00:03:40.960 | Yeah.

00:03:41.640 | So my wife and I, we had two jobs and I got laid off and I was trying

00:03:46.240 | to find some freelance work.

00:03:47.400 | She didn't love her job and she quit her job.

00:03:50.280 | We're like, let's take a trip before we find new jobs.

00:03:52.200 | We started putting pins up on a map of where in the world we wanted to go.

00:03:55.520 | And we didn't really know that traveling for more than

00:04:00.320 | like a vacation was a thing.

00:04:01.920 | We'd never been told that we never heard of the gap year.

00:04:04.400 | And I read your book and I was like, oh, my gosh, why a month?

00:04:08.240 | Why a week?

00:04:08.800 | Why not just go and see what happens?

00:04:10.640 | And so we ended up buying, or I guess technically in our case, using

00:04:13.760 | points to get a one way ticket to South Africa.

00:04:16.800 | And we had a rough idea of where we were going to go, but we certainly

00:04:20.640 | didn't have anything more than a couple nights booked and we just went.

00:04:23.480 | And it lasted about seven and a half months.

00:04:27.240 | It ended up costing about seven and a half thousand dollars.

00:04:30.160 | Adjusted for inflation.

00:04:31.120 | Who knows what that is today?

00:04:32.240 | But it's a whole lot less than most people spend on an eight

00:04:35.360 | month trip if they take it.

00:04:36.520 | And I think the slow travel, which I want to get into is probably the

00:04:40.800 | thing that made that possible.

00:04:42.280 | Not trying to rush from place to place.

00:04:44.320 | And then obviously staying with locals helped also.

00:04:46.720 | That's awesome.

00:04:47.320 | It's funny.

00:04:47.880 | Seven and a half months is exactly how long my first vagabonding trip was.

00:04:51.480 | In 1994, it cost me $5,000.

00:04:54.000 | All of this was back when like gas was as low as 79 cents

00:04:56.960 | a gallon in the United States.

00:04:58.160 | And then of course this is before hashtag van life.

00:05:00.040 | I was just living in a van.

00:05:01.040 | I was just dirtbagging it.

00:05:02.040 | But that's really cool to hear.

00:05:03.240 | And it's also cool to hear that it was sort of, you lost your job.

00:05:05.960 | We had a disruption in your life.

00:05:07.240 | And so you responded by doing something you dream about.

00:05:09.320 | I think sometimes people, they put off their dream life to some

00:05:12.680 | undefined time in the future.

00:05:14.480 | Often retirement in the United States is a huge one because really

00:05:16.840 | nobody is saying that you can travel more than a vacation until you're

00:05:19.600 | retired and you have more time for that.

00:05:20.960 | Well, you can create time.

00:05:21.840 | You can look for time wealth.

00:05:23.000 | So that's really cool that you responded to a disruption in your

00:05:26.480 | professional life by just sort of creating a little, what Tim Ferriss

00:05:29.600 | would call a mini retirement, but just an opportunity to embrace the world

00:05:34.120 | and live those travel dreams now, because you can, and even if you

00:05:37.040 | can't live them this second, you can start saving money and make them

00:05:40.480 | happen much sooner than American society tells you, you can take that dream trip.

00:05:44.920 | The cost to fly internationally, the cost of expensive lodging that

00:05:50.240 | you can confirm right away.

00:05:51.800 | And you don't have to walk around a town to find is such a huge piece

00:05:54.920 | of the expense that if you say, okay, well, we're going to go and stay.

00:05:58.320 | And you're willing to stay.

00:05:59.240 | And you're willing to find local accommodations.

00:06:00.760 | Everything gets a lot cheaper.

00:06:01.960 | And then my hack for your fear thing was that I always told people, they

00:06:06.040 | were like, Oh, is this country safe?

00:06:07.720 | I've heard it's dangerous.

00:06:09.000 | I don't know if it's still in there.

00:06:10.040 | But there is a lonely planet for New York city, a long time ago,

00:06:13.320 | probably at least 15 years ago.

00:06:15.360 | And if you looked at it under the safety section, it said, well, if

00:06:17.920 | you're going to New York city, you should carry a money belt and you

00:06:21.160 | should make sure you put all of your money in your passport and your money

00:06:23.560 | belt and tuck it in your pants in the front.

00:06:25.360 | I remember money belts were like a travel thing for safety.

00:06:28.040 | And I literally ripped the page out and I would show people and they'd be like,

00:06:30.920 | Oh, I've been to New York.

00:06:31.840 | You don't need a money belt.

00:06:32.760 | I don't carry a money belt in New York.

00:06:34.120 | And I'm like, exactly.

00:06:35.160 | So if they're telling you New York isn't safe and you know, it is.

00:06:38.760 | Do you really need to believe that everywhere else in the world isn't safe?

00:06:41.160 | So that was my kind of mindset shift that I gave people was everyone's

00:06:45.600 | going to say, everything's dangerous because it's clickbait.

00:06:48.640 | And if you can get over that, the whole world can be a lot more opening to you.

00:06:52.560 | There is a, to be somewhat facetious about it, a money belt industrial complex.

00:06:57.240 | There's a lot of things that people would sell you to sort of assuage

00:07:00.680 | this fear when in fact, yeah, just put a couple of bucks in your sock or

00:07:04.000 | just put it in your pocket and odds are New York is full of New Yorkers who

00:07:07.560 | don't typically get pickpocketed and a lot of times the pickpocket economy

00:07:10.840 | focuses on the most obvious touristic part of a place that most parts of any

00:07:15.000 | city in the world are going to be places where the pickpockets are going to hang

00:07:18.400 | out because there's not that many tourists to pick their pockets.

00:07:21.480 | I'm sure that there's a few picked pockets a day in time square, for example,

00:07:24.800 | but New Yorkers don't go there.

00:07:26.040 | And that area is interesting for a while, but then there's more interesting

00:07:30.080 | parts of the city after you're done.

00:07:31.720 | Sometimes just showing up and figuring things out can do you a lot.

00:07:35.040 | I think sometimes we feel like we're hacking something like hotel expenses.

00:07:38.240 | You get online, you do some comparison shopping, you find an air quotes

00:07:41.800 | bargain, and then you get to the city and you go straight to the hotel, not

00:07:45.880 | realizing there might be entire blocks of hotels where people in Thailand stay

00:07:50.080 | that cost a fraction of the big international hotels that you're

00:07:52.840 | shopping for online, for example.

00:07:54.400 | So again, one hack might be simply the willingness to not plan too much in

00:07:58.640 | advance, because as I say, in the new book, you get smarter every day of your

00:08:02.120 | trip, whatever deals you found while you're sitting in your home office.

00:08:05.200 | And sometimes there's fantastic ones.

00:08:07.040 | And I'm not going to fault cool deals that the travel industry has, but

00:08:09.960 | sometimes you're not going to know that this cool mom and pop beach hut in

00:08:14.040 | Indonesia that isn't online, but it's in the lexicon of every traveler who's

00:08:18.160 | been through that part of Sumatra, that that is going to cost you 12 bucks

00:08:21.320 | instead of the $50 that seemed like a bargain before.

00:08:23.880 | So I think that confidence and savvy that comes with just each day of being on the

00:08:29.760 | road of a long trip really is one of the best hacks out there.

00:08:33.320 | I got a call this week from a reporter at the Washington post who asked my opinion

00:08:37.720 | on this Tik TOK video that she was writing a piece on.

00:08:39.960 | I was like, ah, this is 2022 at its finest.

00:08:42.520 | And it was a woman saying, before you book your flight, before you book your

00:08:45.480 | hotel, what you should really do is create a Google map and put a pin on every single

00:08:50.400 | thing you want to do and see and eat and drink.

00:08:52.520 | And that way, you know exactly where to book your hotel and you

00:08:55.200 | could plan it all out in advance.

00:08:56.640 | A quote of mine that ended up in the article was that I really worry in today's

00:08:59.760 | day and age that we're kind of creating a checklist before we even leave and we've

00:09:03.080 | got a map and we plot everything out.

00:09:04.840 | It's like, what kind of experience are you going to have?

00:09:07.000 | And so I'm not opposed to trying to flag some things you want to see, but I would

00:09:11.800 | encourage people to leave most of your time unplanned, have the list, maybe you

00:09:16.920 | could write a list of what you want to do, but don't commit to I'm doing this this

00:09:20.080 | day and kind of set yourself in stone and that that's the plan, because I'm sure as

00:09:24.880 | you've seen, most of the most memorable experiences I've had traveling are not the

00:09:30.280 | experience that I put on the list before I went.

00:09:32.840 | It's a random person you met at a bar that I invited you to come have dinner with

00:09:37.640 | this family. And then the list goes on a random place.

00:09:40.160 | You just wandered down a street.

00:09:41.280 | Yeah, I don't take fault with that list, be it with pins on a Google map or just on

00:09:45.600 | a piece of paper you keep in your pocket.

00:09:47.240 | But I think you really have to inbake a willingness to throw it away if you find

00:09:51.000 | something more inspiring, because in a way, there's almost like a speed dating

00:09:54.200 | analogy here, you know, that we're going to go on all these set dates that with all

00:09:58.120 | of these people or places with certain categories defined in advance, when maybe

00:10:02.800 | you'll fall in love with the person you meet in the lobby, what happens if you've

00:10:05.320 | overplanned everything and you don't leave yourself open to the spontaneous and

00:10:08.880 | literally or metaphorically falling in love, if not with a person in a place and

00:10:12.480 | staying longer than you had planned on staying.

00:10:14.440 | And I think that's a big problem that people have.

00:10:16.720 | I understand why you have a giant checklist of things you want to do in a

00:10:19.840 | place. But sometimes you're racing around so much trying to get to the checklist

00:10:24.280 | that you don't give yourself time to slow to relax and look and just savor a

00:10:29.560 | place. I think savoring is something we don't yet have an app for, right?

00:10:32.840 | That being able to just be happy that you're on the other side of the world,

00:10:36.040 | you're sitting on this beach and looking at the Indian Ocean and and just being

00:10:39.200 | grateful for this moment and not worrying about where you're going to be doing

00:10:42.080 | tomorrow. That's a great gift of travel.

00:10:44.400 | And I think allowing yourself to set the itinerary aside when you really respond to

00:10:49.080 | something on the road. That's a great non-planned plan to have.

00:10:52.520 | Just the willingness to improvise as you become inspired and more knowledgeable.

00:10:56.960 | I've heard you tell a story that I'm going to hope you repeat about someone you

00:11:00.720 | were speaking with, I think, that was frustrated that they didn't get a chance

00:11:03.920 | to go do everything they wanted to see in Paris because they were stuck at a

00:11:06.600 | cafe and all they wanted to do was experience Paris.

00:11:09.000 | And they felt shackled to the cafe.

00:11:11.120 | Yeah, well, actually, that's more than one person.

00:11:13.280 | And initially that was me.

00:11:14.600 | Like the first few times I went to Paris, I was just so frustrated that the

00:11:17.400 | restaurants are slow, like America is very efficient.

00:11:19.800 | They can churn people through restaurants.

00:11:21.560 | They find your table, they bring your bill.

00:11:23.200 | In Paris, it was just so comparatively slow.

00:11:25.400 | And then in time, I realized that that was just part of the pleasure of being there.

00:11:28.920 | And so I had students and friends who would come and visit me in Paris.

00:11:31.520 | I teach a writing class there every summer.

00:11:33.040 | And I realized for all the people who are sitting worrying about their bucket list

00:11:37.920 | of things to do in Paris while they're waiting for their creme brulee to come,

00:11:41.360 | they're looking for an experience of Paris that is abstracted from the actual

00:11:45.880 | experience of Paris.

00:11:46.640 | Parisians don't have a checklist of things.

00:11:49.040 | They actually enjoy the three-hour lunch.

00:11:51.040 | They enjoy being able to just savor each aspect of the meal and to like talk to

00:11:56.720 | the waiter, not as just sort of another pawn in their game who's looking for a

00:11:59.360 | tip, but a guy who really knows the food and that's conversing with this person

00:12:03.000 | will help them have a better meal.

00:12:04.200 | And the tables outside in French restaurants face out into the street so

00:12:09.040 | that you're sitting next to your companion side by side, sort of interacting

00:12:12.760 | with the street and observing it.

00:12:14.400 | And so I think if you don't allow yourself to just enjoy that three-hour

00:12:17.800 | lunch, even though it's way less efficient than an American lunch, you're

00:12:20.880 | not allowing yourself to enjoy Paris.

00:12:23.080 | America, and I'm guilty of this.

00:12:24.280 | Sometimes we eat lunch standing up so we can get on with our day.

00:12:26.720 | But actually the experience of Paris is being able to savor a lunch in

00:12:30.280 | the way that French people do.

00:12:31.520 | And if you don't allow yourself that experience, you're sort of cheating

00:12:34.280 | yourself out of a core experience of being in a place like France.

00:12:37.480 | You talked about time well, you said it was this major unlock for you.

00:12:41.120 | How can people take that concept and improve their mindset

00:12:44.240 | and improve their travel?

00:12:45.120 | I think it's a core shift in what you consider wealth is.

00:12:49.280 | It's a matter of sort of letting what wealth you have serve you instead

00:12:53.240 | of shifting your existence to serve a certain idea of wealth.

00:12:57.040 | I think oftentimes we go through all this trouble to reach certain

00:13:00.360 | goals, not realizing why we want them.

00:13:02.160 | And I think wealth is a big one that there's certain metrics we use to

00:13:05.320 | judge wealth and one is money.

00:13:06.640 | One is possessions, right?

00:13:08.360 | But I think the truest expression of wealth is being able to use this

00:13:11.880 | limited amount of time you have in your finite life.

00:13:14.240 | We're all born equally rich in time when you think about it and finding

00:13:17.760 | ways to let that time enrich your life in a way that makes your dreams come true.

00:13:23.440 | I talk about travel all the time.

00:13:24.680 | So often I talk about time wealth in the context of travel.

00:13:27.040 | It could be about spending more time with your kids.

00:13:29.360 | For example, I meet travelers who go to the other side of the world and realize

00:13:32.560 | that comparatively poor countries like Uganda or Cambodia, being a father in

00:13:36.160 | those places is much more interactive with their kids.

00:13:38.600 | They don't compartmentalize their fatherhood in those parts of the

00:13:41.560 | world like they do back home.

00:13:42.720 | So they learn almost by accident, this idea of wealth as a manifestation

00:13:47.680 | of how you spend your time.

00:13:48.680 | And you know, one interesting person I talked to is Kevin Kelly.

00:13:51.800 | I'm sure you're familiar with his work, co-founder of Wired.

00:13:54.200 | He talks about how young people are richer in time than money and older

00:13:58.280 | people are richer in money than time.

00:13:59.920 | And I think one reason why young people are stereotypically more given to long

00:14:04.160 | term travel is that they're in that situation.

00:14:06.040 | They don't have more money than older people.

00:14:08.440 | So they have less responsibilities.

00:14:09.920 | They have more of a willingness to forego certain comforts to get more time out of

00:14:14.920 | what money they do have in their wallet.

00:14:16.600 | And so it really comes down to spending what money you do have in such a way

00:14:20.840 | that it makes your life more fulfilling.

00:14:23.280 | Oftentimes we think that travel is something that we buy rather

00:14:26.080 | than give to ourselves.

00:14:27.080 | And if we can figure out how to travel within that local economy, how to travel

00:14:31.520 | in a way similar to how people in the country were visiting travel, I'm sure

00:14:35.240 | that's how you were able to get seven and a half months for seven and a half thousand

00:14:38.440 | dollars.

00:14:38.880 | It's not by the big flashy stuff that you see advertised in glossy magazines

00:14:43.320 | or even on Instagram feeds.

00:14:44.640 | It's the quieter, humbler, more interactive places where the people in

00:14:48.520 | West Africa or the people in Southeast Asia or wherever South America travel.

00:14:53.080 | And it pays off in time.

00:14:54.800 | That chicken bus probably goes slower and has less air conditioning than the nice

00:14:58.640 | tourist bus, but it puts you into a culture in a way that the tourist bus

00:15:02.040 | doesn't, and it costs a lot less.

00:15:03.760 | It goes a lot slower and it pays off in that time wealth that we're talking about.

00:15:07.560 | I could talk about time wealth all day.

00:15:08.960 | It's really, really worth thinking about in the context of we have a limited

00:15:13.360 | wealth of time in life, and we should really take advantage of it and not put

00:15:16.680 | off our best self to another time of life.

00:15:18.640 | We should grab this time and let it enrich our lives.

00:15:21.040 | One fun anecdote, which is my wife worked early at Lyft and the origin

00:15:25.560 | story of the company was before it was Lyft, it was a company called Zimride.

00:15:28.240 | And before it was Zimride, the name hadn't existed.

00:15:30.920 | And one of the co-founders was in Africa riding one of those slow buses.

00:15:34.520 | And that was the inspiration for starting Zimride, which became Lyft.

00:15:38.000 | So you say the luxury bus might've been more fancy, but in this particular

00:15:43.480 | random case, taking that one bus ended up building a multi-billion dollar company.

00:15:48.000 | So there is one anecdote of even that cheaper, slower, maybe sweatier

00:15:53.280 | bus could pay off for some people.

00:15:54.960 | I generally think travel is an opportunity to see people doing different things,

00:16:00.120 | different ways around the world.

00:16:01.840 | And that makes you a more creative person, makes you a more curious

00:16:05.800 | person and leads to all kinds of things.

00:16:08.040 | So it's funny that you use the one example that I happen to know

00:16:11.320 | ended up becoming a wild success.

00:16:13.800 | But I think it's a fun story.

00:16:15.760 | I also think I had a conversation with my wife the other day, and

00:16:19.360 | we were talking about goals.

00:16:20.600 | And we haven't really gone through this process of like, what are our goals

00:16:24.320 | for our family, for our finances, for our health, but we thought we have two

00:16:27.760 | daughters now, maybe we should, and my wife had this net worth financial goal.

00:16:31.920 | And I pushed back to her and this connects back to time wealth.

00:16:36.080 | But she said, I would love to hit this milestone.

00:16:38.200 | And I said, okay, well, we could hit it, but would you be okay if that

00:16:43.440 | meant either one of us was working a lot more and not spending as much time together?

00:16:48.440 | And she's like, well, no, I wouldn't want that.

00:16:49.720 | And I was like, well, would you be okay if we moved to a different part of the

00:16:53.160 | country that was cheaper, or we cut back on some of the things we do?

00:16:56.840 | And she's like, well, no, I wouldn't want to sacrifice those things.

00:16:59.000 | And we had this conversation where in our minds, and this is purely part of the

00:17:03.680 | society we live in and the expectations we set on people, she had felt like we

00:17:08.440 | needed to like grow our net worth.

00:17:11.040 | And in a way through this conversation about what we actually wanted to spend

00:17:14.680 | our time doing, we left being like, actually, maybe we need a smaller net

00:17:18.600 | worth, like maybe we need less, like Bill Perkins wrote this book, Die With Zero.

00:17:23.000 | And the premise is like, why are we trying to amass all this money?

00:17:26.240 | We should be trying to take the money we have and optimally use it to

00:17:30.040 | have the most fulfilling life.

00:17:31.480 | And in some cases, that might be actually not trying to grow and grow and grow

00:17:36.480 | your wealth, but maybe to find more creative ways to spend it or unlock time.

00:17:40.600 | Yeah, no, I love this example.

00:17:42.240 | Actually, I love this shared taxi from Africa example too.

00:17:45.160 | But I think wealth is an abstraction.

00:17:46.840 | It's often future oriented.

00:17:48.520 | And one thing using children as a great example, because oftentimes we think of

00:17:53.920 | children in terms of them being potential adults, when in fact, the blessing of

00:17:58.320 | having them as children is having them right where they are, right?

00:18:01.200 | And so sure, it's good to create security and create good habits for your children.

00:18:05.600 | But part of the pleasure of being a parent is like having them being a newborn that

00:18:10.640 | is gripping their finger with their whole fist, right?

00:18:13.200 | And just being able to enjoy that moment, regardless of what your

00:18:16.120 | net worth is in 20 years.

00:18:17.600 | I think one danger of having arbitrary goals for net worth is that you become

00:18:23.040 | focused on those goals rather than that very transient experience that is

00:18:27.360 | parenthood, that each phase of your kid's life, it can be exhausting, of course.

00:18:31.080 | But it's also so special.

00:18:33.040 | It's just so exciting.

00:18:34.360 | And then I think there's a different dynamic.

00:18:36.640 | I remember sort of when I shifted from being this kid that was being raised by

00:18:40.200 | my parents to this traveler who was sort of hosting his parents and sort of being

00:18:43.920 | the expert in that they were the young, curious, naive people, even though they

00:18:47.160 | were my parents in a place like China or the Czech Republic.

00:18:50.600 | And so I think, yeah, nothing against having goals or thinking about net worth

00:18:56.400 | or creating safety nets or steering children in such a way that they will

00:19:01.240 | become productive adults.

00:19:02.560 | But just that blessing, I think often that cliche is, you know, enjoy them

00:19:07.240 | while they're toddlers, that'll be gone.

00:19:08.920 | Enjoy them while they're infants.

00:19:10.080 | Enjoy them while they're in grade school because you'll miss that.

00:19:12.480 | Well, you really do need to embrace that.

00:19:14.680 | And that sometimes if we're making decisions that are based on 20 year goals

00:19:20.040 | rather than just looking at our kids or looking at our life or looking at our

00:19:23.080 | travel, looking where we are, then we are relegating our lives to an abstract

00:19:27.880 | future instead of embracing the beauty of the moment.

00:19:30.120 | You mentioned moving to another place.

00:19:31.520 | I'm based in Kansas, which is a much less fashionable place than the Bay Area.

00:19:35.000 | But one nice thing about that is that it just pays off.

00:19:37.880 | I'm not a parent, actually.

00:19:39.120 | I'm an uncle.

00:19:39.800 | I love being an uncle, but it costs less to get through the day to achieve certain

00:19:44.280 | goals in life, and that pays off in free time.

00:19:47.520 | And so I'm not saying that everybody needs to move to Kansas or to a cheap

00:19:50.360 | part of the world like Columbia, or there's a lot of places where digital

00:19:53.400 | nomads go because they can save money.

00:19:55.080 | But there are different tools, hacks, if you will, to take what money you do have

00:20:00.080 | to take what income and interests that you have and loves, be it from family or

00:20:04.520 | activities, and find a way to make them a more active part of your life.

00:20:08.920 | I've talked about it on my own podcast that they love the mountains, but Oregon

00:20:12.120 | is hard to afford these days.

00:20:13.480 | So they moved to Tennessee and they can hike three times a week in Tennessee

00:20:16.680 | for a quarter of the price of Oregon, right?

00:20:18.640 | So I think that there's a lot of ways that if you can embrace the concept of

00:20:23.280 | time wealth and realize that there's different ways of freeing time up in

00:20:27.200 | your life, then you can really focus your life on those present moment goals that

00:20:31.960 | make life richer and more enjoyable and more fun and more rewarding and more

00:20:35.840 | likely to give back to things like family and community.

00:20:38.240 | Is there a process or a framework that someone listening to this is thinking,

00:20:42.080 | gosh, I really wish I could figure out what that means for me.

00:20:45.600 | Are there questions you would propose someone think about to

00:20:48.360 | kind of figure out what they want?

00:20:49.760 | I would say that there are some questions like, well, what makes me

00:20:53.160 | happy in the course of a given day?

00:20:54.760 | And in the course of a given week, where is my happy time?

00:20:57.280 | And if it's, I'm so stressed out, it's watching cat videos on social media,

00:21:02.160 | then maybe you should get a cat, right?

00:21:03.600 | I think sometimes we assuage our stresses through distractions

00:21:07.720 | rather than passions and loves.

00:21:09.240 | I think sometimes we don't know our passions.

00:21:11.200 | I have nothing against college.

00:21:12.240 | My father taught college, my sister teaches college.

00:21:14.520 | And I think it's a very noble vocation, but sometimes we go to college

00:21:17.920 | without even knowing what we like to do.

00:21:19.480 | And other cultures have gap years in the UK and Australia.

00:21:22.960 | They have places, the gap year where you take a year off after secondary

00:21:26.920 | schooling, but before university, where you travel or you work.

00:21:29.600 | And that allows you to find out what you really love to do and where your

00:21:33.000 | passions are before you spend all this money going to university.

00:21:36.280 | And so weirdly enough, I think that travel and maybe traveling for seven

00:21:41.000 | and a half months or whatever is a great way to find out what you love.

00:21:43.560 | I think there's what your parents think you should do.

00:21:45.600 | There's what your counselors think you should do.

00:21:47.600 | I think oftentimes young people, but even older people, it's the same way

00:21:51.240 | that until you are off into the place completely away from the pressures

00:21:55.320 | and routines and constrictions of living at home, you can really

00:21:59.760 | find out where your heart lies.

00:22:02.000 | You might sit in a village for a day and watch people build a house and think,

00:22:05.240 | gosh, I want to build my own house or study architecture or something like that.

00:22:08.440 | That's just a random example.

00:22:09.680 | One thing I talk about in the new book, in the context of a couple of monks

00:22:12.600 | from hundreds of years ago, the young monk talks to the older monk.

00:22:16.040 | The older monk asked him a question about life and he says, "I don't know."

00:22:18.640 | And the older monk says, "Very good.

00:22:20.360 | Not knowing is most intimate."

00:22:21.680 | I think it's good to embrace not knowing yet, not just how to live our

00:22:25.920 | lives, but what our goals are of just sort of being the person who's

00:22:29.560 | traveling through the world without a lot of plans yet, but having the

00:22:33.880 | faith to think eventually I'm going to really wander my way into something

00:22:39.640 | that makes my heart sing, that makes me fall in love with some aspect of life.

00:22:43.240 | And that's going to be focused on it.

00:22:45.320 | And that could be any number of things, including family.

00:22:47.440 | For years, I lived next door to my parents.

00:22:49.560 | My parents are now in assisted living.

00:22:50.840 | They're not far from me now.

00:22:51.960 | The whole lesson of living next door to one's parents, which is not a very

00:22:55.160 | common American thing, is very common in almost every other part of the

00:22:58.240 | world, in Southeast Asia and Africa, pooling your resources and getting land.

00:23:02.240 | And that paid off, not just in the fact that I was able to save money, but I

00:23:06.080 | was able to spend some quality time with my parents at a really cool time in life.

00:23:09.600 | And so I think there's a lot of different strategies into creating

00:23:13.400 | either on purpose or by accident.

00:23:15.000 | And this whole familial thing was an accident that it was an idea about how

00:23:18.400 | to live as a family that I didn't get until I was overseas, but there's ways

00:23:21.840 | to allow yourself to grow into ways of being that you might not seem now.

00:23:26.200 | You just need to allow yourself to sit still for a while and stop distracting

00:23:30.440 | yourself and start embracing things in life.

00:23:32.280 | Getting the crew together isn't as easy as it used to be.

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00:26:20.320 | It seems like spending a lot of time with family, you picked up quite easily

00:26:25.240 | because it's so common in the rest of the world.

00:26:27.400 | Are there other major things that have affected the way you live your life

00:26:31.200 | now that are kind of themes that travel has brought you aside from just traveling?

00:26:35.680 | Right.

00:26:36.960 | Well, travel is so much a part of things, but I think if we can see is

00:26:40.600 | travel is more than a consumer act that are certain commonalities

00:26:43.480 | that we see again and again.

00:26:44.760 | And family is one of them.

00:26:45.920 | I've often said that when I was traveling through Southeast Asia, I was 27 years

00:26:49.360 | old, people would say, "Oh, are you married?

00:26:51.120 | Do you have kids?"

00:26:51.640 | And I said, "No, no, I don't."

00:26:52.920 | And they're like, "Oh, I'm sorry."

00:26:54.000 | Like it was such a core value in this part of the world that I got the sense

00:26:56.920 | from them that their happiness was so tied into family, into marriage and

00:27:01.120 | children and relationships with family, that it seemed weird that I comparatively

00:27:05.640 | rich and mobile guy would not have that as a core value.

00:27:08.680 | I think food, another one to get to be very simple, like in France, that's

00:27:12.560 | not the only place where meals are much slower and more communal than we have.

00:27:16.360 | And our standing up, posting to Instagram while we're sipping

00:27:19.400 | our latte, first world society.

00:27:21.400 | And so I think it's really these basic building block things that travel

00:27:26.400 | has taught me to come home to.

00:27:28.040 | Another great thing about France, but it's also something that you'll see in

00:27:30.880 | Africa or Asia is, is eating food that was obviously grown within 20 miles

00:27:35.560 | of where you're eating it, of biting into a cherry in France and feeling

00:27:39.400 | cheated because you didn't realize cherries could taste that good.

00:27:42.000 | And it's not some magical French thing.

00:27:43.920 | It's just that French place value on seasonal produce.

00:27:46.600 | You know, they're not flying in cherries from Chile in the middle of the winter.

00:27:49.560 | There's a certain time in late June, early July when it's cherry season.

00:27:53.640 | And that's when you eat your cherries.

00:27:54.840 | Obviously travel has given me philosophical perspectives

00:27:58.840 | with things like time wealth, but it's often these basic building

00:28:01.760 | block themes, love for family, concern about food that I bring home

00:28:06.240 | and try to bake into my travel life.

00:28:08.280 | And then also just not rushing and multitasking things, being able to slow

00:28:11.640 | down and let a day happen instead of micromanaging and trying to rush

00:28:16.280 | through it to be somehow ahead of your competitive neighbor at the end of the

00:28:20.160 | day, not to fetishize other cultures, because I'm a big fan of American

00:28:23.560 | culture, but I think sometimes we're throwing too much at life and not

00:28:27.280 | sitting still as just another great lesson I've had from travel is the

00:28:30.640 | ability to sit still and let a day happen in a way that really enriches it.

00:28:34.160 | And that can happen in a comparatively wealthy country like Norway,

00:28:37.920 | where we went for the first time this summer, or a comparatively poor

00:28:41.080 | country like Indonesia, where I went a few years ago.

00:28:43.560 | It's really fun to intertwine one's home life with lessons learned from travel.

00:28:47.520 | I'm sure you discovered a lot of things on your own journey

00:28:50.720 | and the journeys you've had since.

00:28:51.760 | So many.

00:28:52.640 | I'd love to talk a little bit about how you have the kinds

00:28:55.520 | of experiences in a new place.

00:28:57.640 | Obviously we mentioned, look, if you land in Paris and you go straight

00:29:00.960 | to a hotel and from your hotel to the Louvre, and then from there to a

00:29:03.680 | reservation, you're going to kind of miss it.

00:29:05.240 | But are there things that you try to do and how you structure your time

00:29:09.920 | in a place, how long you're there, what you do first that kind of allow

00:29:13.480 | you to immerse yourself in a new place?

00:29:16.040 | Well, one of the catchphrases from Vagabonding that I refreshed in the

00:29:19.000 | new book, The Vagabond's Way, is walk until your day becomes interesting.

00:29:22.320 | And I think we often don't give ourselves credit for just showing up in a place

00:29:25.440 | and walking around without really knowing where we're going or having any goals

00:29:29.840 | or checklists and just sort of walking until you sort of get a sense for the

00:29:33.160 | pace of a place instead of sightseeing, maybe smellseeing, follow the smells

00:29:38.000 | around a neighborhood and just find ways to slow down and realize that quotidian

00:29:43.160 | things are as amazing as sightseeing places.

00:29:46.760 | To use Paris as an example, they have a convenience store.

00:29:48.920 | It's an equivalent of 7-Eleven.

00:29:50.440 | It's called the Carrefour.

00:29:51.360 | There's also a Monoprix.

00:29:52.480 | And just realizing that it's a little bit different than the American equivalent.

00:29:56.720 | Another thing I write about in the new book is getting a haircut in Egypt

00:29:59.320 | on Zamalek Island in Cairo, which like took an hour and had 23 steps

00:30:03.360 | and cost $6, including tip.

00:30:05.000 | One, it was the best haircut of my life, but it was just a haircut, right?

00:30:08.440 | It also gave me a perspective on the meticulousness of Arab masculinity

00:30:11.960 | as pertains to appearance.

00:30:13.440 | And so I had this wonderful experience just by willing myself to get

00:30:16.800 | a haircut in a foreign place.

00:30:18.400 | So I have nothing against sightseeing.

00:30:20.200 | I have nothing against tourist districts.

00:30:21.680 | I think it's pretty normal to go to places you've dreamed about.

00:30:24.000 | If you're in Egypt, sure.

00:30:24.840 | Go to the pyramids.

00:30:26.080 | It'd be silly not to go to the pyramids, but get a haircut, go to the local market,

00:30:29.760 | go to a sweet shop.

00:30:30.680 | A great thing about Egypt specifically is that they take their sweets very seriously.

00:30:35.360 | Like way more than your average hostess ding dong.

00:30:38.520 | They have these handmade sweets that are amazing and dirt cheap and really fun to see.

00:30:43.040 | I'm curious, like you had a seven and a half months around the world.

00:30:45.560 | Did you have any go-to strategies when you landed in a place after you were a

00:30:48.760 | little bit salty as a traveler?

00:30:50.000 | No matter what the purpose of the trip was, we try to always walk towards the food

00:30:54.040 | market or the market.

00:30:55.600 | It doesn't have to be a food market.

00:30:56.640 | In Turkey, there are more markets and a lot of Arab cultures.

00:30:59.240 | It's just like everything's going on in the market.

00:31:00.760 | There's food stands, there's shopping.

00:31:01.960 | In some places it's really more of a food market and you go early.

00:31:05.440 | In Indonesia, like the food market's closed by 10, 11 in the morning because

00:31:09.400 | everyone's there right in the morning to get food.

00:31:11.440 | And all the senses are kind of a part of a food market.

00:31:14.760 | But it's also true, you know, in the fish market in Tokyo, it's like just people

00:31:18.280 | running around, bumping around, what's going on.

00:31:20.200 | I feel like that is my favorite place to kind of get my bearings of a city.

00:31:25.600 | It's like, what are people eating?

00:31:26.560 | What are they drinking?

00:31:27.320 | Are they negotiating?

00:31:28.360 | Are they a yelling culture?

00:31:29.720 | Are they a friendly culture?

00:31:30.800 | Like you could see it all in this one place and you could eat, you know, you

00:31:34.400 | could do it on your own.

00:31:35.320 | I kind of love just going on a tour somewhere with some local of a food

00:31:39.280 | market and getting a lay of like, what do we eat in this culture?

00:31:42.280 | How do people shop?

00:31:43.160 | How do people buy?

00:31:44.120 | I don't know how you feel about hiring tour guides versus just walking solo.

00:31:47.680 | I think there's room for both for me, but that's where I start almost everything.

00:31:52.560 | And I mean, we went on our honeymoon to the Seychelles, but we

00:31:55.280 | still went to the food market.

00:31:56.760 | I think it was a fish market downtown because we were like, even if the goal

00:32:00.200 | is to relax, like we still want to feel the culture here.

00:32:02.680 | Yeah, I love that.

00:32:04.080 | And I think sometimes travelers will go to a market and they'll walk through the

00:32:07.600 | whole thing, but they'll only go to the, like the jewelry stand or the brass

00:32:11.200 | figurine stand, like the obviously souvenir thing.

00:32:13.720 | But I love the idea of getting ingredients for a meal.

00:32:16.680 | Even if this vegetable, you don't even know what it is yet.

00:32:18.880 | It helps to have a place for the kitchen.

00:32:20.280 | Of course, there's just so many times where tourists will spend like an hour

00:32:23.200 | and one of the most famous markets in the world, and they'll go to a restaurant.

00:32:25.960 | It's like, no, don't buy food, get a picnic, get those figs and that tea or

00:32:29.880 | whatever, and have an adventure of it.

00:32:31.800 | And you mentioned a guide sometimes early in the travels, like in your first days

00:32:35.280 | in a place, I don't often get guides, but I'm not opposed to it because sometimes

00:32:38.400 | the guides can help you negotiate things and they can explain like, oh yeah, no,

00:32:41.480 | actually this isn't a fruit, it's a spice.

00:32:43.680 | And we use it in this soup for this reason.

00:32:45.800 | And it's worth the monetary investment because it gives you a headstart on

00:32:49.280 | understanding how life works there.

00:32:51.360 | I love market cultures.

00:32:52.880 | I also love market squares too, because oftentimes there's like a soccer game or

00:32:56.320 | people are playing foosball.

00:32:57.560 | It immediately insinuates yourself into the daily life of a place.

00:33:01.880 | Because again, Parisians aren't usually standing in line for the mosque.

00:33:05.120 | Egyptians aren't usually taking a tour bus to the great pyramids.

00:33:07.920 | They're doing different things.

00:33:08.920 | Like Cairo and Paris, two of my favorite places in the world, really reward that

00:33:13.520 | walk through the market, like in Paris, for example, different markets will be

00:33:16.720 | open on different days.

00:33:17.680 | In Cairo, the best oranges I've ever had.

00:33:20.080 | I've gotten in a market in Cairo for pennies.

00:33:21.920 | Who would have guessed?

00:33:22.640 | But I was just wandering around and it's like, yeah, I'll get this orange.

00:33:25.400 | That's half the size of my head.

00:33:26.560 | Why not?

00:33:27.000 | And it was delicious.

00:33:27.800 | And I think those are the surprises.

00:33:29.640 | There's no app for that.

00:33:30.760 | There's no micromanaged way to wander into those awesome market moments where

00:33:35.440 | suddenly you're eating this fruit that you didn't realize existed.

00:33:38.280 | And now you're on your fifth one because it's amazing.

00:33:41.160 | And you're in Indonesia and it's a lot of fun.

00:33:42.960 | That was jackfruit for me.

00:33:44.360 | I had never heard of jackfruit my whole life.

00:33:46.400 | I tried it now.

00:33:47.040 | I'm like, I love it.

00:33:47.920 | My daughter is two and she's obsessed with jackfruit.

00:33:50.600 | So I'm like finding myself trying to find the Asian grocery store to go buy more

00:33:53.960 | jackfruit.

00:33:54.520 | I didn't even know it was a thing.

00:33:55.520 | I just saw it and I was like, what is this?

00:33:56.760 | They're like, it's kind of like a banana, maybe a pineapple, a little bit mixed.

00:33:59.680 | And it's my favorite.

00:34:00.600 | Well, that's something you can take home too.

00:34:01.800 | You were talking before just like what attitudes do I take home?

00:34:04.240 | Well, sometimes it is the simplest one is food.

00:34:06.160 | Like for my birthday last year, my wife took me to a Korean restaurant way out

00:34:09.600 | and like probably an hour from here.

00:34:11.680 | Well, I was so excited because every time I eat Korean food, it reminds me of being

00:34:14.640 | back in Korea in a way I can always take a little bit of my heart back to Korea

00:34:17.640 | when I'm eating kimchi and bulgogi.

00:34:19.440 | Right.

00:34:19.680 | So that's a big part of it.

00:34:20.520 | It's like suddenly these places are in conversation with each other.

00:34:23.200 | I'm curious.

00:34:23.600 | Do you have any rituals that are sort of born of travel?

00:34:25.680 | Do you have any things at home that were sort of baked in by your journeys and

00:34:29.360 | other places?

00:34:30.000 | When it comes to food, I'd say 50% of the foods that we cook are not traditional

00:34:36.280 | American foods.

00:34:36.840 | We cook a lot of Korean food because we just, we love Korean food.

00:34:40.120 | So when we go to places, the gifts I try to bring people, I'm like, oh, let's bring

00:34:43.760 | some smoked paprika from Hungary.

00:34:46.760 | Hungary, I think has a lot, I could be totally wrong here, but I think it was

00:34:49.560 | Hungary has a lot of paprika.

00:34:51.320 | So like I brought home everyone paprika and the things we bring people are things

00:34:55.400 | to help them experience something kind of satiating, like a drink, an alcohol, a

00:35:00.880 | spirit, a spice.

00:35:02.400 | That's one.

00:35:03.160 | I can't remember where I was that I experienced raclette.

00:35:05.760 | We bought a raclette grill.

00:35:07.280 | My wife has since it's been this sore subject in our house, which is like, we

00:35:10.960 | never use this thing.

00:35:11.960 | And I'm like, no, but one day we will.

00:35:13.520 | And she's like, we've got to get rid of it.

00:35:15.120 | It hasn't been touched in two years.

00:35:16.360 | It's caked on with dust.

00:35:17.400 | But I think food is something that when we're in another country, it's like, I

00:35:22.040 | only want to eat local.

00:35:23.440 | In India, it was like, I will risk sickness to be able to eat the food on the

00:35:28.160 | street, drink the chai tea.

00:35:29.520 | Just that's travel a lot for me is kind of understanding that.

00:35:32.960 | And ideally talking to people about it.

00:35:35.400 | I think the experiences that have happened once we've come home are always

00:35:41.480 | being able to connect the dots in strange ways.

00:35:44.440 | A great example was we were in the park, just five minute walk from our house the

00:35:48.320 | other day, and all these people are dancing.

00:35:50.840 | And I was like, why is everybody dancing?

00:35:53.000 | This is not a park where there's normally dancing, but there's a bunch of kids and

00:35:56.160 | adults all dancing and eating.

00:35:57.560 | And I asked him, I said, what's going on?

00:35:59.640 | And they're like, oh, we're celebrating because it was the Lebanese festival.

00:36:02.680 | Last weekend and all these kids danced in a parade.

00:36:05.440 | And so now we're kind of celebrating here.

00:36:07.200 | And my daughter runs up to the middle of the group, a woman picks her up.

00:36:11.080 | And it's funny because I think many Americans would be terrified if a random

00:36:15.560 | person in a park starts picking up and dancing with your kid, but we were like,

00:36:18.600 | oh, you know, I've been to Lebanon and like the culture is just so welcoming.

00:36:21.840 | We ended up spending two hours there, having meals, talking about our trip to

00:36:25.560 | Lebanon and having a way to connect with people.

00:36:28.600 | And it turns out we live half a mile from a Lebanese church.

00:36:32.000 | And they're like, come on.

00:36:33.120 | Every second and fourth Sunday is like when we have all the families there and

00:36:36.640 | we do all these events and gatherings.

00:36:38.000 | We don't care if you practice whatever religion just come.

00:36:41.080 | We love meeting people who understand and are excited to learn more about our

00:36:45.480 | culture. And so I think one cool thing to take away and depending where in the

00:36:51.360 | country you are, it could be harder, easier, but you don't have to go halfway

00:36:55.080 | around the world to have a really immersive cultural experience that's far

00:36:58.720 | different from where you are.

00:36:59.760 | We try to have those experiences when we're traveling, but we also try to have

00:37:02.960 | those experiences here and find the pockets of a city that are, you know, lots

00:37:08.480 | of Korean restaurants or lots of people doing XYZ and try to do that while we're

00:37:12.920 | here. Because for us, like we can't always be traveling.

00:37:15.640 | And with two small kids, it's hard, but it's not hard to necessarily go to a

00:37:19.640 | local Korean restaurant or meet a bunch of Lebanese people dancing in the park.

00:37:23.360 | That's awesome. It's great that you had a kid that was just completely fearless

00:37:26.880 | and just ran in and sort of insinuated in that situation.

00:37:29.520 | Kids are actually a great travel tool.

00:37:31.080 | I have a lot of old traveler friends who, you know, they get married and they

00:37:34.040 | start to have kids and they're worried that it's going to cut into their travel

00:37:36.480 | experience. You know what I can, because kids need a certain structure and

00:37:39.640 | discipline on the road. But I found that people around the world love kids and

00:37:43.840 | they don't really need a common language to pick up a kid and admire how cute it

00:37:47.760 | is. And so kids can really be a window into a place.

00:37:50.640 | And when they get to a certain age, not only are they fearless, but they have no

00:37:54.240 | preconceptions about what is or isn't important.

00:37:56.480 | I have a chapter in The Vagabond's Way about I went with my nephew to Père

00:37:59.840 | Lachaise Cemetery in France and he was 14.

00:38:02.400 | And usually you go there and it's like, oh, here's Jim Morrison's grave or

00:38:05.640 | here's Oscar Wilde's grave or here's Abelard and Eloise.

00:38:08.120 | Well, he was 14. He didn't know who any of these people were.

00:38:10.240 | Jim Morrison died the year I was born, so he barely knew who the Doors were.

00:38:14.280 | But he just was curious about everything.

00:38:16.160 | He's like, well, why are there all these flowers on this grave?

00:38:18.760 | His name is Frank Alamo.

00:38:19.760 | It's like, well, I don't know. And he's like, you don't know who Frank Alamo is?

00:38:22.360 | It's like, I've been here for 10 times, but I don't know.

00:38:24.280 | So we looked it up and Frank Alamo is like this sort of Elvis style pop

00:38:27.520 | star who just died in France.

00:38:28.960 | And there's this other grave in the cemetery that had all these hammers and

00:38:32.320 | weasels carved into this giant grave.

00:38:34.240 | And it was this Russian princess who her fortune was made on iron and fur,

00:38:37.720 | hence the hammers and the weasels.

00:38:39.280 | It's just sort of this strange mystery that basically all he brought to this

00:38:43.080 | place was his imagination because he was a 14 year old kid.

00:38:45.760 | And suddenly I was learning things in a cemetery that I'd been to several times.

00:38:49.200 | And so I think kids can be a great travel tool because not only are they just

00:38:53.680 | excited that people are dancing, but also they humanize you to other people.

00:38:57.520 | It's one thing to be a couple of outsiders in a group, but outsiders with kids who

00:39:01.920 | are excited about things, then suddenly you're one of them.

00:39:04.720 | In a certain way, a family is a very recognizable unit around the world.

00:39:08.520 | It's a great window into places.

00:39:10.000 | I know you don't have children, but you've got your nephew.

00:39:12.600 | I'm sure you've had more travel conversations than probably anyone listening.

00:39:16.040 | Are there tips that you've picked up from others that you'd give to people with

00:39:20.200 | kids trying to think, gosh, you know, travel can be stressful with children.

00:39:23.880 | That seems like too much, how to make it easier, how to make it feel more

00:39:26.880 | approachable?

00:39:27.480 | Well, again, a structure is something that they need more than your average

00:39:31.360 | dirtbag traveler.

00:39:32.320 | They need sort of need a sense for how each day works, but maybe also take them

00:39:36.200 | into environments that do capture their imagination, maybe environments where

00:39:39.440 | there are other kids.

00:39:40.320 | We default, it's just sort of a museums and cathedrals way of travel, which is

00:39:44.280 | fine and interesting, but it's sort of more abstracted.

00:39:46.560 | It's more tied into things like history or religion or wherever.

00:39:49.720 | We're sometimes just a random park.

00:39:51.600 | Like now I feel like if somebody is in the Bay area, they should go to this

00:39:54.120 | park where you found that dance.

00:39:55.480 | Like basically any park where people are having fun is a window into a place and

00:39:59.520 | kids at the end of the day, love to run around.

00:40:01.560 | And there's so many places, preferably away from heavy traffic where kids can run

00:40:05.360 | around and suddenly you're hanging out and your kids are opening doors into a

00:40:10.080 | place that you wouldn't have noticed before because kids don't need to have a

00:40:13.240 | common language to run around and have fun.

00:40:15.120 | And sometimes they'll talk to each other and have perfect conversations without

00:40:18.360 | realizing they don't really speak the same language at a certain age.

00:40:21.040 | And so I think just sort of that openness and realizing that it's a

00:40:24.040 | lot simpler than you think.

00:40:25.680 | I think we can sometimes micromanage parenthood in the United States.

00:40:28.800 | We have our special backpack full of the sippy cup and the iPad and all these

00:40:32.320 | things that we feel like we need to keep a kid occupied.

00:40:35.440 | But in fact, a green space where they can run around with other kids is great.

00:40:38.920 | Actually that market, I'm sure kids would be really excited visually and

00:40:42.560 | centrally by a market to use a metaphor that would make sense when I was a kid.

00:40:46.040 | It's like something from Star Wars.

00:40:47.440 | It's like the cantina scene from Star Wars where the music is different and

00:40:50.920 | the food is different.

00:40:51.800 | And in this kid-like way, it's like you're on another planet.

00:40:55.000 | And so I think allowing your kids to engage their imaginations in a way that

00:40:59.040 | we as parents and elders sometimes have ceased to do is a great way to make them

00:41:04.600 | great travel allies and to sort of follow their example of being kid-like in a

00:41:09.240 | place that we don't understand, but we can be engaged by.

00:41:11.560 | I want to talk a little bit about slow travel, but I think that is also a big

00:41:15.280 | thing. I haven't done this yet.

00:41:17.680 | Our kids are two and four months, but we've thought about travel.

00:41:20.200 | It's like, what if instead of trying to take a week trip to Italy, we take a

00:41:24.360 | month trip, we find some Airbnb, we could rent our place out here while we're

00:41:28.240 | gone so that the cost of the trip is a little cheaper, or maybe we find a family

00:41:32.200 | and stay with them or something and get to know people.

00:41:34.200 | But when you're there, you can create the routine there.

00:41:37.160 | There's not as much pressure of, oh, well, we have to do all this stuff because

00:41:40.240 | we're only here for four days.

00:41:41.400 | It's like, well, today we're going to go to the park.

00:41:44.000 | Maybe we're going to sit at a cafe.

00:41:45.360 | We'll come home. You can take a nap like we don't have to get it all done.

00:41:49.040 | And I think I'm really excited to do a little bit more of that style travel,

00:41:54.960 | which we did on our big trip because we didn't have the money.

00:41:58.040 | So we were just like, oh, we're going to stay in the city for a week because we

00:42:00.720 | can't afford to keep moving.

00:42:01.880 | I think that could be something valuable to do with kids instead of the

00:42:05.520 | traditional late 20s kind of trip where you're just like, go, go, go through

00:42:10.200 | everything. That's great experience more by doing less.

00:42:13.680 | And in fact, you live in a very popular part of the United States.

00:42:16.160 | There's actually home exchanges.

00:42:17.360 | You can find somebody in Italy who wants to live in the Bay Area for a while.

00:42:20.560 | There are online sites where you can do home exchanges.

00:42:23.440 | I want to do a little bit of research here, but it's like, what are the odds

00:42:26.680 | that there's a person in Italy who wants to come to the Bay Area the same week I

00:42:30.080 | want to go to it? Like, have you heard good success stories from people doing

00:42:34.120 | this? Absolutely.

00:42:35.240 | Some of the students in my Paris class from the Bay Area have done home swaps.

00:42:39.120 | OK, they basically find a place to stay during my class in Paris while the French

00:42:43.120 | family is enjoying a California vacation of their own.

00:42:45.880 | There's no silver bullet. It's not a perfect thing, but it's very doable,

00:42:49.400 | especially if you live in a part of the United States where people from other

00:42:52.520 | countries would like to live in themselves.

00:42:54.600 | And then the great thing about being with a family in a place is that doing

00:42:57.880 | chores, washing dishes, you're basically routine.

00:43:00.240 | You're suddenly doing it in a more Italian way.

00:43:02.160 | I guarantee when you walk down the same street for the third day in a row with

00:43:06.760 | your super cute kids, the guy that owns the pastry shop is going to come out with

00:43:10.760 | a little snack for your kids.

00:43:11.960 | Basically, you become a part of the habit of that neighborhood.

00:43:14.120 | I think sometimes tourists, even backpackers, are ghosts.

00:43:17.960 | They're there for a couple of days and they're gone.

00:43:19.680 | And so you can't really develop relationships.

00:43:21.680 | Whereas in for a month, it can be really special if there's this American family

00:43:25.480 | that's suddenly in the village and they don't speak the language that well.

00:43:28.760 | And they're sort of cute when they order the food because they get the words

00:43:31.560 | wrong. But then suddenly you have this new enlivened empathy simply because

00:43:36.680 | instead of being part of a touristic routine in a place, you've joined the

00:43:40.240 | daily routine of the people who live there.

00:43:42.480 | And then suddenly you and your family or you and your partner or you as a person

00:43:46.960 | alone are experiencing a place in a very rich way that is not taking five

00:43:52.120 | countries off your list, but it's taking one community, for example, a month.

00:43:56.360 | And you're really going deep in a way that you're probably more likely to think

00:44:00.760 | about it in your old age, that one month in the beautiful Italian village, than

00:44:04.400 | if you'd been racing to five different countries in that one month during the

00:44:07.400 | same time. So I'm a big fan of slow travel.

00:44:09.920 | It's funny because you talked earlier about getting your hair cut.

00:44:12.200 | And I think back to our trip around the world and some of the most memorable

00:44:15.280 | moments and mine, too, was getting my hair cut in Nairobi by someone who was

00:44:19.840 | terrified because I've never cut a white person's hair in my whole life.

00:44:23.120 | And I was like, look, I promise you, you can't mess this up.

00:44:26.560 | Like, I don't care.

00:44:27.680 | It wasn't quite as long as your experience, but it was so much fun.

00:44:31.000 | And we had a great conversation.

00:44:32.200 | And I remember that infinitely more than probably I mean, I can't even tell you

00:44:37.920 | the restaurant that maybe someone recommended I go to or was the highest

00:44:41.120 | rated. And we went to I don't know what it was.

00:44:42.560 | I don't remember dinner out in Nairobi, but I do remember that haircut.

00:44:46.400 | And so I think that's interesting.

00:44:48.400 | I just want to thank you quick for listening to and supporting the show.

00:44:52.840 | Your support is what keeps this show going to get all of the URLs, codes, deals

00:44:58.680 | and discounts from our partners.

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00:45:03.640 | So please consider supporting those who support us.

00:45:07.080 | You mentioned checking items off a list.

00:45:08.840 | I'm curious how you feel about people creating bucket lists.

00:45:12.240 | Is that something that you're like anti bucket list?

00:45:14.440 | You like it. How do you feel about the concept?

00:45:16.160 | Well, I have a whole mini chapter about bucket lists.

00:45:18.120 | I'm not anti bucket list, but you really have to understand that the bucket list

00:45:20.840 | is what gets you out the door because so many items on the bucket list, the

00:45:24.320 | pyramids being a great example.

00:45:25.680 | Well, there's a lot of tourist buses there.

00:45:27.560 | There's a lot of Egyptians there who are part of the tourist industry, and they

00:45:31.120 | want you to pay a hundred dollars to sit on a camel, which is fine.

00:45:33.480 | But I think five hours spent in a neighborhood market in Cairo is going to

00:45:38.200 | be more rewardingly Egyptian than you would have five hours waiting in line

00:45:42.880 | and going around and getting your pictures for Instagram at the pyramids.

00:45:45.240 | I'm not going to say don't go to the pyramids, but I'm just going to say that

00:45:48.440 | the things that you find by accident on the way to the various items on your

00:45:52.640 | bucket list are probably going to be the things that make you happiest.

00:45:55.600 | Not to make this all about haircuts, but I was driving in New

00:45:58.200 | Orleans with my friend Dan once.

00:45:59.600 | And he just said, I'm sick of my hair.

00:46:01.720 | I need a haircut.

00:46:02.400 | So we just pulled off the road.

00:46:03.360 | We just happened to be in Canton, Mississippi.

00:46:04.840 | We pulled into a place, it was a black neighborhood.

00:46:07.040 | And we go into a barbershop and the guy's like, I've never cut

00:46:09.320 | white hair, but I got this.

00:46:11.040 | This is the United States.

00:46:11.920 | And we sort of made the day of everybody in this black barbershop.

00:46:14.840 | It was sort of this collective effort.

00:46:16.640 | Let's cut Dan's hair.

00:46:18.160 | He doesn't have the naturally kinky black hair that the people

00:46:21.240 | in this neighborhood have.

00:46:22.000 | But let's figure this out because in Canton, Mississippi, white people

00:46:25.120 | never come into this barbershop.

00:46:26.600 | And so it was this funny thing.

00:46:27.800 | It wasn't the best haircut that my friend Dan ever got, but we sort of made their

00:46:31.440 | day because in a town where there's still elements of segregation and white

00:46:35.040 | people just don't swagger into the barbershop in the black part of town.

00:46:37.960 | Suddenly we had this experience that whatever lack of proficiency that in

00:46:42.800 | the haircut was, it was super memorable and super fun where suddenly we were

00:46:45.920 | just sort of casually hanging out in a black barbershop in Canton, Mississippi

00:46:49.800 | because we needed a haircut and it was as memorable as anything we found on

00:46:54.240 | the way to New Orleans, right?

00:46:55.680 | So we had a blast in New Orleans.

00:46:57.160 | I'm not going to knock that.

00:46:58.680 | But part of what was fun were that the things that happened away from Bourbon

00:47:03.600 | street or the other things that you're supposed to see in New Orleans or on

00:47:07.680 | the way to New Orleans itself, stopping in this town that we didn't really know

00:47:10.520 | much about before we randomly walked into a barbershop to get a haircut.

00:47:14.280 | So I think being willing, even as you seek out items on your bucket list to

00:47:19.240 | surprise yourself and to sort of foolishly wander into a barbershop that isn't

00:47:23.480 | necessarily used to cutting your kind of hair, that can be super memorable.

00:47:26.640 | It was obviously memorable for you in Kenya, and it was memorable

00:47:29.040 | for us in Mississippi.

00:47:30.000 | I mean, I think this juxtaposes something really fascinating, which is

00:47:33.200 | I think, oh, I had this experience.

00:47:35.680 | I had to go halfway around the world to get my haircut by someone who'd never

00:47:38.840 | cut a white person's hair and hear you do it straight in the United States.

00:47:41.560 | And I think so much of travel and I'm guilty of this myself.

00:47:45.280 | It's like in order to have these crazy experiences or unique experiences

00:47:48.840 | or different experiences, you have to go halfway around the world.

00:47:51.840 | Can you help me get over that?

00:47:53.280 | This was one example, but how do you feel about the fact that I feel like

00:47:57.680 | there's all this pressure to have to travel?

00:48:00.120 | You need to hop on a plane and cross an ocean.

00:48:02.280 | Yeah, well, a couple of things came to mind.

00:48:04.080 | One is a concept of a walk until your day becomes interesting.

00:48:06.560 | Like just going for counterintuitive walks in your own neighborhood

00:48:09.360 | or in one neighborhood over

00:48:11.120 | even walking to work or driving to work in a way that you're not used to doing.

00:48:14.360 | Just sort of finding different patterns in your home environment

00:48:17.000 | on foot can be really interesting.

00:48:18.960 | One thing I talk about in The Vagabond's Way is during the pandemic,

00:48:21.960 | my wife and I were itchy to travel, but we really couldn't.

00:48:24.440 | So we decided we couldn't go see your cousins in Norway.

00:48:27.280 | So we decided to walk to a town in Kansas called Little Sweden.

00:48:29.920 | It was 22 miles from our front door to Little Sweden.

00:48:32.920 | It took us seven hours.

00:48:34.160 | Our feet hurt really bad.

00:48:35.400 | But it was so fun to see this little landscape of the Kansas countryside

00:48:38.800 | on foot through a method that we had never seen before.

00:48:42.280 | So that was really fun.

00:48:43.520 | Even simpler than walking 22 miles to Little Sweden is these food experiences.

00:48:48.080 | And I think one fun thing about the barbershop experience in Mississippi

00:48:51.320 | is that we had broken an unwritten rule, which is white people

00:48:54.120 | don't get their hair cut in black neighborhoods, right?

00:48:56.120 | Well, oftentimes we go to places that are "dangerous" in our own hometown.

00:49:02.040 | But even places where poorer people live, they have to eat lunch.

00:49:04.680 | What's it like to go to a cafeteria counter in a neighborhood we don't usually go to?

00:49:08.680 | And so I think sometimes we realize that there's a wealth of

00:49:13.040 | cultural options in our own town just because we're sort of in the habit

00:49:17.600 | of our own social class or our own bubble of familiarity in our home.

00:49:21.480 | And that sometimes a neighborhood that's sort of seen as a barrio neighborhood

00:49:24.760 | probably has the best Mexican and Latin American food in your own community.

00:49:28.640 | It might just be a storefront that's next to a television repair shop.

00:49:31.480 | But odds are that food is really great.

00:49:33.920 | And the price of doing it is just being willing to go to that part of town

00:49:37.280 | where maybe not as many people speak English as they do in your own neighborhood

00:49:40.760 | and going to a place where people who might have a generation ahead of them

00:49:44.840 | still living in Mexico, and suddenly you're eating food in a context.

00:49:48.600 | Actually, speaking of Mexico specifically, my sister, who teaches college

00:49:51.720 | in a little Sweden town here in Kansas, she realized that most of the Mexican

00:49:55.560 | people who worked at local restaurants and stuff didn't just come from Mexico,

00:49:59.160 | but they came from Zacatecas, they came from a place called Fresnillo.

00:50:02.200 | And she realized that there were buses that go from central

00:50:05.360 | Kansas to Zacatecas for 10 or 20 bucks.

00:50:08.360 | You can go to Mexico on the same buses that migrant workers

00:50:11.280 | go to see their family, right?

00:50:13.480 | And so just by asking, just like pushing the envelope,

00:50:16.320 | but not just going to the Mexican restaurant by saying,

00:50:18.440 | where exactly in Mexico are you?

00:50:20.440 | How often do you see your family?

00:50:21.720 | Really, there's a shuttle service that goes to Wichita

00:50:23.800 | that takes you to a bigger bus that goes to Dallas.

00:50:25.880 | It takes you to an even bigger bus that takes you to the border.

00:50:27.760 | And then you take Mexican buses home.

00:50:29.640 | She actually was able to create an adventure to Mexico with her family

00:50:32.840 | that cost nothing.

00:50:34.480 | And they were able to instead of hanging out with tourists

00:50:36.520 | going to Mexico to Cancun, nothing against Cancun,

00:50:39.080 | but basically they took a bus full of people who work in the service

00:50:42.560 | economy of central Kansas, and they were able to get to see a part of Mexico

00:50:46.680 | that they never would have otherwise seen

00:50:48.440 | because they're willing to see a part of Kansas that they had never otherwise seen.

00:50:51.840 | So I think food in immigrant communities is a huge window.

00:50:56.080 | Even if you don't end up on a minibus to Mexico, being willing to just unfold

00:50:59.720 | the layers in immigrant communities in your own hometown

00:51:01.800 | is a great way to experience travel while you're still home.

00:51:04.080 | So there are a few things we haven't touched on that I'd love to talk about

00:51:07.560 | briefly. I know you took this trip about, I don't know, a decade ago

00:51:10.480 | where you just literally had no bag.

00:51:12.240 | So first off, that's wild.

00:51:13.800 | We did no checked bags, which I think is doable.

00:51:16.480 | TBD on whether how doable it is with small kids.

00:51:19.040 | But what did you learn from going on a trip with no bags?

00:51:22.640 | And what does that change now?

00:51:23.840 | What do you not take on trips now?

00:51:26.160 | Well, one thing I learned almost immediately that this big central

00:51:29.920 | core conflict in telling a story about traveling the world with no luggage

00:51:33.800 | became pretty easy, pretty fast.

00:51:36.160 | I was traveling with a sponsor.

00:51:37.400 | I had a vest full of things where I could put things in my pockets.

00:51:40.440 | And I got used to that system very early.

00:51:42.320 | And people would often say, well, gosh, I wouldn't want to sit next to an airplane.

00:51:45.840 | You must smell bad.

00:51:46.640 | And it's like, no, I actually showered every day and I washed my clothes every day.

00:51:50.360 | At the end of the day, I would take off the clothes

00:51:52.000 | I was wearing, shower with them, dry them up for the next day.

00:51:54.800 | And I would just rotate two sets of clothes.

00:51:57.160 | So I was actually very clean.

00:51:58.760 | And once I got used to it, it was pretty simple to do.

00:52:02.600 | And early on, my sponsors are saying, well, should we contact

00:52:05.520 | the Guinness Book of World Records? I don't think this has ever been done.

00:52:07.640 | And it's like, have you heard of refugees?

00:52:09.320 | Have you heard of merchants that have been traveling the world forever?

00:52:12.160 | Like the idea that you have to travel the world

00:52:14.480 | with a bunch of giant bags is pretty new in a certain sense.

00:52:17.800 | And so the first lesson I learned is that once I sort of got into my meticulous

00:52:21.400 | cleanliness routines, I didn't really miss my bags that much.

00:52:24.240 | Now, this has not made me a full time, no baggage traveler,

00:52:27.920 | because but what it did make me realize is that it's not that hard

00:52:31.360 | to take a small day pack or like 30 liter or less backpack with you

00:52:36.000 | that you can put in the overhead bin, because at the end of the day,

00:52:39.680 | what I was most relieved not to have were the giant bags

00:52:42.880 | that I had to check under the plane or drag around over the cobblestones

00:52:46.280 | or to grunt through the tropical country with sweat dripping down my brow.

00:52:50.160 | I realized that my kit, whether it be in pockets or in a relatively small bag,

00:52:55.560 | you don't really need that much to have a great time when you travel.

00:52:59.400 | And in a sense, our best travel memories aren't about the crap

00:53:02.600 | that we put in our backpack.

00:53:03.920 | It's about this awesome thing that we found in the village square.

00:53:06.520 | It's about these people we met or it's this experience we had.

00:53:09.320 | Or at the very least, it's about something that we got

00:53:11.360 | and we put in our backpack and brought home from the other side of the world

00:53:14.160 | to commemorate this memory of a great experience we had before.

00:53:17.480 | So it's such an instructive trip.

00:53:19.680 | And to this day, I haven't really done anything that compares to going

00:53:23.600 | literally with no baggage for six weeks around the world.

00:53:26.200 | It was a blast to do.

00:53:27.680 | But it's really leavened to me.

00:53:29.640 | Like three years ago, I traveled around the world for three months

00:53:32.240 | with one 30 liter bag, and it was easy.

00:53:34.320 | And in fact, I still felt like sometimes I was overpacked.

00:53:37.200 | At the end of the day, it just didn't take that much for me

00:53:40.320 | to have a great time and have everything I needed.

00:53:42.600 | And one final thought about that.

00:53:44.440 | It's even easier these days with so much on your smartphone

00:53:47.720 | to help guide your trip from GPS maps to language translators.

00:53:51.280 | There's fewer things that you do have to pack in your bags.

00:53:53.880 | Of course, this brings up the can of worms of your phone

00:53:57.560 | can actually distract from your travel experience, too.

00:53:59.720 | But no, there's really no longer any reason to take a bunch of stuff

00:54:02.760 | around the world, just discipline yourself into taking the bare minimum

00:54:06.360 | and letting the world provide the rest, including experiences.

00:54:09.560 | Are there any items that you're like, yeah, this one particular brand of shoes

00:54:13.680 | or sweater is like the thing that I always bring now?

00:54:16.120 | Is there anything for you that's like your go to travel item?

00:54:18.480 | Besides my Kindle, I don't want to sing the praise of Kindle too much

00:54:21.560 | because I'm a big fan of independent bookstores and my new book is out in hardcover.

00:54:24.600 | It's my fifth book, but it's the first time I have a book in hardcover.

00:54:27.080 | But like the Kindle allows me to take my library with me. I love it.

00:54:30.360 | There's certain clothing items.

00:54:31.440 | I'm a fan of merino wool, for example.

00:54:33.120 | I'm a fan of my 30 liter pack.

00:54:34.720 | I'm a fan of Blundstone boots.

00:54:36.440 | They're not a sponsor.

00:54:38.200 | Actually, my merino wool and my pack are sponsors

00:54:40.560 | because Vagabonding is such an old book.

00:54:42.600 | People have actually started travel product companies and said,

00:54:45.800 | look, Vagabonding inspired this.

00:54:47.160 | So it's like, oh, y'all wear it. This is pretty good.

00:54:49.480 | Blundstone boots out of Australia is not one of those companies.

00:54:52.440 | I think they've been making them since the 19th century.

00:54:54.640 | I love Blundstones. They don't have laces.

00:54:56.640 | You can slip them on and slip them off.

00:54:57.920 | They're very sturdy.

00:54:59.000 | They look good.

00:54:59.960 | They look as good in a nightclub as they do on a mountain trail.

00:55:03.280 | So I'm a big fan of that.

00:55:04.800 | But it's not that many things.

00:55:06.600 | My Kindle, my boots, a few toiletries, my merino wool.

00:55:09.600 | And I'm a pretty minimalist traveler, and I'm happy traveling that way.

00:55:12.640 | Well, you brought up the phone, so I feel like it'd be a good place to go.

00:55:16.000 | I thought about the first international trip I took that I remember.

00:55:19.280 | I took some as a young kid,

00:55:20.640 | but the first one that I was like on my own without my parents.

00:55:23.920 | And I went to Taiwan when I was a freshman or sophomore in college

00:55:27.200 | because I'd gone to boarding school.

00:55:28.920 | My roommate in high school was in Taiwan.

00:55:31.200 | I was like, I want to go visit him.

00:55:32.600 | And I was like, gosh, we didn't have iPhones.

00:55:34.840 | So I was like thinking about this trip and all the things we did.

00:55:37.680 | I was like, well, I guess we just relied on,

00:55:39.440 | you know, locals and instincts and just it didn't matter.

00:55:42.200 | Now I think about trips and the way technologies changed,

00:55:46.080 | both for the better and the worse, the experience of being somewhere.

00:55:50.880 | I know you've challenged people to leave their phones behind

00:55:53.600 | at different parts of trips.

00:55:55.280 | How do you think technology has changed things?

00:55:57.280 | And how can we still have the kinds of experiences

00:56:00.560 | that we all want to have and not get distracted?

00:56:03.080 | Well, I remember that first wave of technology

00:56:06.360 | that really allowed us to travel in a different way.

00:56:08.520 | In fact, my example is my first Vagabond trip was 1994.

00:56:12.040 | I was living in a van and I would call my parents once a week with my calling card.

00:56:15.240 | This is before I used email.

00:56:16.600 | Five years later, I was living in Asia,

00:56:18.640 | and it felt like a luxury to be able to email my family.

00:56:21.040 | I was in closer touch with my family from Mongolia than I was from Oklahoma.

00:56:24.800 | Right. Just five years earlier, around that same time, that was 1999.

00:56:28.480 | I remember there are some articles,

00:56:29.600 | I think, in the San Francisco Chronicle about how virtual reality

00:56:32.480 | will allow you to travel the world without leaving your home. Right.

00:56:35.680 | Well, now that we have the smartphone,

00:56:37.400 | now that we have this little black mirror in our pockets,

00:56:39.360 | we can be traveling the world without really leaving home in the habit sense.

00:56:44.000 | We're still sending text messages to our friends.

00:56:45.880 | We're still looking at our social media feeds instead of picking up

00:56:48.600 | the local newspaper, we're reading an online newspaper

00:56:51.440 | or an online social media feed that we still do back home.

00:56:53.920 | In a sense, smartphones have made travel easier.

00:56:57.480 | They've made it harder to get lost and harder to get bored.

00:57:00.160 | But they've also sort of trapped us into those same insipid habits

00:57:03.920 | that we have back home.

00:57:05.320 | And I've literally met travelers who even on the other side of the world,

00:57:09.160 | the last thing they do before they fall asleep is look at their phone.

00:57:11.320 | The first thing they look at when they wake up is look at their phone.

00:57:13.920 | It's like, guys, you've paid all this money to go the other side of the world.

00:57:16.480 | Do you really need to put a phone between yourself and what you're experiencing?

00:57:19.520 | So that's why I'm a big fan of encouraging people to use their five senses,

00:57:23.000 | to not just look and listen, but to smell and taste

00:57:27.200 | and feel their way around the world.

00:57:29.080 | And really, you don't have to travel without a phone at all,

00:57:31.520 | but maybe leave it in the room for a day.

00:57:33.200 | My wife and I did this in Paris and Norway this summer.

00:57:35.440 | We found all the cool places we wanted to see

00:57:37.800 | on our computers and phone when we were still in our lodging.

00:57:41.720 | But we would mark it on a paper map and use that paper map to explore the city.

00:57:46.000 | And that allowed us to not fall back on our phone

00:57:48.840 | every time we thought we were lost, not to fall back on our phone

00:57:51.880 | every time we wanted to send that cool picture of the cool dog to our mom back home.

00:57:56.160 | Right. Basically, it just forced us to be unconnected for a while.

00:58:01.040 | We could have those experiences.

00:58:02.520 | And sometimes there's this little pencil for a restaurant

00:58:05.200 | that we wanted to see in the 20th arrondissement.

00:58:07.280 | But suddenly we found a place in the 11th arrondissement that was sort of cooler

00:58:11.080 | and completely caught us by surprise.

00:58:13.720 | And this cool fromagerie was next door and we got some cheese for the next day.

00:58:17.040 | Right. So I think allowing yourself to have experiences by chance,

00:58:21.240 | to use the information that is available through our phone,

00:58:24.280 | but not to drown ourself in all these options

00:58:26.880 | so that we're always questioning the moment we're in.

00:58:29.680 | Going back to the idea of living so much of our lives in the future,

00:58:32.960 | even as we plan and try to be responsible individuals,

00:58:36.240 | we cheat ourselves so much out of what is in the present.

00:58:39.040 | And there's that old it's actually an old phrase now, FOMO, fear of missing out.

00:58:42.880 | Sometimes we have our phone.

00:58:44.320 | We can be having this amazing experience in an amazing city.

00:58:47.240 | But our phone is telling us that, oh, maybe there's a better market

00:58:50.440 | like that's five minutes this way, or maybe there's a better restaurants

00:58:53.960 | that ten minutes this way.

00:58:55.200 | Actually, no, it's amazing.

00:58:56.480 | You found this place by accident.

00:58:57.960 | Embrace that while you have it.

00:58:59.760 | Give yourself permission to trust your instincts, to trust your nose

00:59:03.920 | and your palate as much as that smartphone app,

00:59:06.240 | because those are the things that you're going to remember,

00:59:08.160 | that you're really allowing yourself to travel as a pilgrim instead of as a consumer

00:59:12.560 | and to sort of wander yourself into a deeper understanding

00:59:15.480 | of what that travel experience can be.

00:59:17.280 | I like that.

00:59:17.920 | I try even locally, my wife and I, like, let's go on a walk tonight

00:59:21.320 | and let's just leave our phones at home.

00:59:23.680 | If we have the kids, if we don't have the kids and they're at home,

00:59:26.280 | we don't leave the house because they're so small.

00:59:27.760 | But, you know, if our au pair's there, we're like, OK, we got to bring a phone.

00:59:30.400 | But maybe we're just going to like turn the ringer on and put it in a bag

00:59:33.080 | or something. We just try.

00:59:34.960 | It's hard, but I think it can be really valuable.

00:59:37.560 | Well, there's just a corollary.

00:59:38.520 | Travel has become so much like home that these lessons apply in both places.

00:59:42.280 | Right. That being connected constantly is not always the best way to raise a child,

00:59:46.160 | just like it's not always the best way to experience another city.

00:59:48.480 | So it's funny how these travel lessons become more and more relevant to home

00:59:52.560 | as home becomes more and more a part of the way we travel in other places.

00:59:55.640 | So a couple of things I want to hit before we wrap.

00:59:58.240 | I found that one of the greatest ways that I lighten the cost of my travels

01:00:02.400 | is to play the travel hacking points and miles game.

01:00:04.720 | I know you're not as deep in that world as me, but I'm curious

01:00:07.480 | if there are any kind of cost saving travel hacks that you like

01:00:11.200 | that we can share with people listening.

01:00:13.240 | My old one was just fly into a place and then take it from there.

01:00:16.520 | Regardless of the multi itinerary you could do,

01:00:18.400 | there might be a train that crosses an international border.

01:00:20.640 | There might be buses.

01:00:21.640 | There might be share taxis that could inspire the next Lyft

01:00:25.280 | or Uber in some part of the world that you didn't even know existed.

01:00:27.840 | But suddenly it's a really cool way to travel.

01:00:29.760 | And the people are just delighted that this awkward, sweaty American

01:00:32.920 | is in this share taxi in Laos or Senegal or some other part of the world.

01:00:37.160 | So I'm a big fan of overland travel and flying into a place

01:00:40.920 | and winging it from there.

01:00:41.840 | Oftentimes, too, you go into the neighborhood in Bangkok

01:00:44.400 | or the neighborhood in Nairobi where local people find their plane tickets.

01:00:47.880 | And oftentimes those onward flights are cheaper than if they had been done

01:00:51.080 | internationally through a middleman.

01:00:53.160 | What I've done as I've gotten older, I'm not the best flight

01:00:55.680 | travel hacker in the world.

01:00:56.800 | I can probably learn from you and other people who have done that quite well

01:00:59.280 | with credit cards and miles and things like that.

01:01:01.160 | In part, I got so insinuated in the overland travel sort of bucket shop

01:01:05.320 | travel bucket shops or places where in immigrant communities

01:01:08.560 | or in local communities where you buy discounted tickets.

01:01:10.880 | But I've often found that more recently I've taken a lot of trips

01:01:14.200 | through flight aggregators like Airtreks, Airtreks.com

01:01:16.920 | that allows you to plan multi-stop itineraries under one umbrella

01:01:21.080 | that you can fly around.

01:01:22.040 | I think they do itineraries up to 25 stops,

01:01:25.000 | but I usually do like four to eight stops.

01:01:27.680 | I've done it around the world.

01:01:28.640 | But this summer, for example, I went from Denver to London,

01:01:31.640 | to Paris, to Norway, to Faroe Islands, back to London and Denver.

01:01:34.920 | Just under one umbrella, I was able to sort of have them put together

01:01:38.600 | the best flights possible.

01:01:40.160 | There's two ways you can do it with Airtreks.

01:01:41.920 | One fun thing is you can waste half a day

01:01:43.760 | just doing a sample trip that you don't actually plan on taking,

01:01:46.760 | but just seeing how much it would it cost for me to fly from New York

01:01:51.320 | to Brazil, to West Africa, to Italy, and take a train to Moscow

01:01:56.200 | and then take another train to the Pacific and then fly to Bangkok.

01:01:59.840 | You can waste a day just doing trips that are absurd just to see if it works.

01:02:03.720 | They also have a number that you can call and talk to a person.

01:02:06.520 | I usually use them in tandem.

01:02:08.000 | And the person will help you put together this trip.

01:02:10.560 | And they might give you some advice like saying, well, actually,

01:02:13.240 | the cheapest way to fly from Los Angeles to Australia is through Singapore.

01:02:17.440 | And maybe you can just stay for a week in Singapore on this cheap trip

01:02:20.600 | and get another experience out of that trip.

01:02:22.720 | So what I do with Airtreks is usually I'll tinker around with their online widget.

01:02:26.640 | And then when I think I know where to go, I'll call the representative.

01:02:29.840 | It's sort of like a travel coach.

01:02:31.640 | And they help you design that flight.

01:02:33.400 | And so I'm not saying it's always the best way to hack flights.

01:02:36.240 | But my gosh, if you have an extended multi-stopper around the world flight,

01:02:39.920 | it's a great way to go because it saves money.

01:02:42.960 | Everything is under one bucket.

01:02:44.280 | And you basically have an advisor that can give you that great advice,

01:02:47.480 | saying that like, yeah, you'll save two hundred dollars going through Bangkok.

01:02:51.040 | And actually, Bangkok's pretty cool.

01:02:52.560 | Why don't you stay there two weeks and save another hundred dollars?

01:02:54.760 | It's not technically a hack, but it's a great service.

01:02:57.160 | Airtreks.com.

01:02:58.400 | Other question I always like to ask everyone.

01:03:00.440 | Is there a city in the world you know well enough to leave anyone listening

01:03:03.880 | who might be heading there with a few kind of unusual or fun recommendations

01:03:07.800 | for whether it's a meal, a drink or some unusual activity or experience?

01:03:11.360 | Wow, let me think.

01:03:13.240 | Immediately it came to my Paris.

01:03:14.560 | It's like I'm not even that much of an expert on Paris.

01:03:17.280 | I've been there many, many, many summers in a row to teach English.

01:03:20.320 | And so my French isn't even that good.

01:03:21.600 | I'm there teaching classes in English.

01:03:23.200 | This is sort of cheating on the answer, but it's a good answer.

01:03:25.200 | It's an old French technique of the flaneur.

01:03:27.160 | Do you know what a flaneur is?

01:03:28.400 | No. A flaneur is this is Baudelaire sort of invented the idea in the 19th century.

01:03:33.240 | It's a person who walks through the city, not in search of things,

01:03:36.520 | but just in search of experiences.

01:03:38.840 | They don't see the city as this utilitarian route between point A and point B.

01:03:43.000 | It's a person that realizes that wandering from point A to point B

01:03:46.160 | is full of experiences that you don't know about yet.

01:03:48.800 | And so you can use it as it's technically a male verb,

01:03:51.600 | but you can be a flaneuse or you can be a female flaneur.

01:03:54.000 | It's a noun, but it can also be a verb.

01:03:55.880 | I'm going to flaneur my way through this experience.

01:03:57.960 | It's very baked into the Parisian way of seeing the world.

01:04:00.840 | You can practice it in any city in the world.

01:04:03.240 | And you probably don't want to go through a dangerous neighborhood drunk at night.

01:04:06.440 | But being a flaneur who just sort of wanders through a city,

01:04:09.160 | not quite knowing where you're going to go,

01:04:11.320 | but knowing that something awesome is going to happen based on something

01:04:14.560 | you smell, something you see or somebody you bump into.

01:04:16.760 | That is a great strategy for seeing a place.

01:04:18.760 | And I'll have an aside story.

01:04:20.360 | I talk about it in the Vagabond's Way.

01:04:22.080 | I use TripAdvisor to find TripAdvisor's best rated rendang restaurant

01:04:26.760 | in the Indonesian city of Bukit Tinggi.

01:04:29.000 | I went there and it was fine.

01:04:30.600 | But what I realized I'd gone through a market again, going back to markets

01:04:33.560 | through of people who lived in Bukit Tinggi eating dinner

01:04:36.520 | and they weren't going to this place.

01:04:38.240 | They didn't use TripAdvisor that lived in Bukit Tinggi.

01:04:40.440 | They're eating in the market.

01:04:41.480 | And so I realized that instead of just flaneuring my way through the market

01:04:44.520 | and seeing what was delicious,

01:04:45.680 | I'd use TripAdvisor to a place that was outside of the market.

01:04:48.400 | So that has only reinforced the idea that wandering through a place,

01:04:52.960 | just sort of being hyper aware, not to your phone,

01:04:55.720 | but to the environment in the manner of a flaneur who's just seeking experience

01:04:59.280 | and is seeking surprise.

01:05:01.160 | That's probably better than any single recommendation

01:05:03.360 | I could give you in Paris.

01:05:04.800 | My wife is the foodie.

01:05:05.800 | She could give you restaurant recommendations, but she's out of town today.

01:05:08.680 | So be a flaneur. Yeah. Fair answer. I'll take it.

01:05:11.440 | The book's out. You can get it where books are sold.

01:05:13.400 | I picked up a copy at a local bookstore.

01:05:15.640 | So thank you for writing it. It was fantastic.

01:05:17.920 | Where could people stay on top of everything you're doing,

01:05:20.120 | all your writing and everything you're up to?

01:05:21.840 | I'm an old school website guy.

01:05:23.080 | I've had it for almost 25 years.

01:05:24.480 | RolfPotts.com. It connects to all my socials, which I use from time to time.

01:05:28.120 | But really, it's a good starting point for all the books I've written,

01:05:31.040 | for all my podcasts, my Deviate with Rolf Potts podcast,

01:05:33.720 | with articles I've written back into my dirtbag days in the 1990s.

01:05:37.640 | For all things Rolf Potts, it's a good place to start. Awesome.

01:05:40.560 | Well, Rolf, thank you so much for being here.

01:05:42.760 | Yeah, it's good talking to you, Christian.

01:05:44.040 | It's fun to hear your stories.

01:05:44.960 | Good luck with your next adventure with your kids.

01:05:47.440 | Ah, thank you.

01:05:48.200 | I really hope you enjoyed this episode.

01:05:51.800 | Thank you so much for listening.

01:05:53.560 | If you haven't already left a rating and a review for the show

01:05:56.400 | in Apple Podcasts or Spotify, I would really appreciate it.

01:05:59.840 | And if you have any feedback on the show, questions for me or just want to say hi,

01:06:03.840 | I'm Chris at AllTheHacks.com or @Hutchins on Twitter.

01:06:07.960 | That's it for this week. I'll see you next week.

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