ATHLLC9759751966
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00:01:34.640 | Hello, and welcome to another bonus episode of All The Hacks, a show about
00:01:41.800 | upgrading your life, money, and travel.
00:01:43.840 | If this is your first time listening to the show, you are welcome to stick around
00:01:47.080 | for some travel inspiration for your next trip.
00:01:49.440 | However, you may first want to check out the last episode of the show a couple
00:01:53.040 | of days ago, where prolific travel journalist, Sebastian Modak, and I talked
00:01:57.520 | all about travel from planning the trip to tracking your lost bags, to having
00:02:01.560 | amazing local experiences and a lot more.
00:02:04.280 | Towards the end of that conversation, I thought it would be fun to offer up some
00:02:07.760 | inspiration to all of you by going continent by continent and sharing some
00:02:11.840 | of our favorite places we've traveled around the world.
00:02:14.440 | So I decided to pull that part of the conversation out to make this episode.
00:02:18.320 | It left me so excited to travel to a few new places I've never considered.
00:02:22.160 | So I really hope you enjoy it.
00:02:23.720 | Let's jump in.
00:02:24.720 | I get a lot of emails from listeners saying, "Hey, what are your favorite
00:02:29.080 | places to go?
00:02:29.800 | Where should I go?
00:02:30.720 | I've been to 60 some odd countries, not the 80 some odd you've been."
00:02:34.040 | And so I thought, "I'd love to run through continents.
00:02:38.400 | You've lived on four of them, but I also know I think you've hit all of them and
00:02:41.920 | even Antarctica, which I have not.
00:02:43.720 | We don't need to go too deep, but just to give people some inspiration."
00:02:46.880 | At the very beginning, we talked about how might you get some inspiration for
00:02:50.040 | places, maybe we just throw some inspiration out, give a line or two about
00:02:54.640 | why some could be places that are obvious, right?
00:02:58.560 | Like I can already tell you I'm going to include Japan and there's no secret that
00:03:02.200 | Japan is like a travel destination.
00:03:04.000 | Were you up for it?
00:03:04.680 | Yeah, let's do it.
00:03:05.520 | Okay, so I say we start at home.
00:03:08.120 | I'm going to make you go first.
00:03:09.440 | Start in North America.
00:03:10.960 | Okay, I'll go first with North America.
00:03:14.520 | I got to do it.
00:03:16.720 | And listen, I know people are going to be like, "Yeah, duh."
00:03:18.920 | But I'm going to say New Orleans, but I'm going to say not the New Orleans you
00:03:24.000 | think of when you think of visiting New Orleans.
00:03:26.320 | I think you need to go to New Orleans and never step foot onto Bourbon Street,
00:03:30.720 | barely even enter the French Quarter and experience New Orleans like someone who
00:03:35.320 | lives in New Orleans.
00:03:36.120 | And that means, yeah, sure, go for Mardi Gras, but go for the actual parades and
00:03:40.840 | the parties and the stuff that happens in people's backyards.
00:03:43.320 | Go for all the other festivals that happened after Mardi Gras and the other
00:03:46.800 | fairs.
00:03:47.320 | I think it is a magical, magical city that's unlike anywhere else, not just in
00:03:51.800 | North America, but the world.
00:03:53.480 | I think geographically, Central America is in North America, if we're talking
00:03:58.360 | continents.
00:03:58.880 | Is that correct?
00:03:59.680 | Sure.
00:03:59.920 | Cool.
00:04:00.160 | So my whole family took a trip to El Salvador, and we found this small family
00:04:06.640 | run eight room hotel on the beach.
00:04:09.600 | It was almost like a bed and breakfast, but it was kind of operated a little bit
00:04:12.800 | more like a resort, but definitely run by a family.
00:04:16.200 | I'll try to put the name of the place on the show notes.
00:04:18.560 | Surfing was interesting.
00:04:20.000 | We'd walk down the beach to the little town right near there.
00:04:23.400 | It was awesome.
00:04:24.200 | And then after, I can't remember how we ended up getting to Nicaragua and just
00:04:29.440 | staying in the rainforest and exploring.
00:04:32.160 | And everyone always says go to Costa Rica.
00:04:35.160 | That seems to be like the primary destination, but I would recommend either
00:04:39.040 | of those countries.
00:04:39.960 | We had a great experience just exploring around where we were staying and kind of
00:04:44.880 | a local, I mean, I don't even know what to call this place because it's like you
00:04:48.960 | could call it a resort, but you could also call it like a plot of land someone
00:04:51.960 | built a few houses on and the family operates it.
00:04:53.960 | Love that.
00:04:55.400 | Anything else outside of the US in that area?
00:04:58.480 | I know we've got a lot to get through, but you know, you've also seen a lot.
00:05:01.280 | Yeah.
00:05:02.200 | This was one of the 52 places, actually.
00:05:04.040 | Actually, no, not specifically because I, Panama was on the 52 places list, but
00:05:08.320 | there's a little town called Santa Catalina on the Pacific coast of Panama on
00:05:12.360 | the West coast.
00:05:13.000 | It's about a six hour drive, maybe from Panama city.
00:05:16.920 | When you think of the bohemian surfer paradise, this is it hidden away.
00:05:24.040 | Tons of locals living there too.
00:05:25.880 | So it's not the kind of place that's been colonized by foreign surfers.
00:05:30.520 | Place where just like time slows down.
00:05:33.320 | I spent just hours just sitting on this huge beach.
00:05:36.840 | Also happens to be right off of Coiba, which is a national park with some of the
00:05:41.560 | best scuba diving in the world.
00:05:43.080 | So after days and days of just hanging on this beach, eating fresh fish every day,
00:05:47.520 | I went for a dive in Coiba and at the end of our second dive, I look up and there's
00:05:54.560 | just a giant whale shark just circling right above us.
00:05:57.560 | One of the most incredible experiences I've ever had.
00:05:59.680 | And it was all in this place that just felt like a place that had been hidden
00:06:03.720 | from the rest of the world forever.
00:06:05.280 | I hope it's still like that after I wrote about it, but I think it is because it
00:06:09.160 | felt like I entered a portal into another dimension, honestly.
00:06:12.160 | In college, so like a long time ago for me, I went to Tamarindo in Costa Rica and
00:06:17.320 | it felt like that.
00:06:18.240 | It was one of the fondest memories of travel I have, but I don't want to go back
00:06:22.360 | because I've heard it is not like that anymore.
00:06:24.280 | I've heard it's not like that either.
00:06:25.960 | Yeah.
00:06:26.240 | Okay.
00:06:26.760 | So South America, I'll kick off because I don't have a lot.
00:06:30.320 | South America is one of the places I haven't traveled a lot, but I enjoyed
00:06:35.600 | Cartagena, I thought it was like an incredibly fascinating city.
00:06:39.160 | Full disclosure, I went on my bachelor party.
00:06:41.040 | However, it was a city where you just feel like you're in a different place.
00:06:44.840 | We didn't just do bachelor party things, right?
00:06:47.040 | Like we went and explored the castle.
00:06:48.560 | We took a boat out to a random island.
00:06:50.960 | We just hopped around the island.
00:06:53.040 | It was awesome.
00:06:54.040 | And I would recommend it to anyone.
00:06:55.960 | Yeah.
00:06:57.000 | So I'm half Colombian.
00:06:58.560 | So full disclosure, my mother's from Colombia.
00:07:00.360 | I second that recommendation, but I would also encourage people to explore beyond
00:07:04.240 | Cartagena too.
00:07:05.040 | Cartagena is great, especially for a first timer.
00:07:06.680 | There's a lot of tourism infrastructure there and stuff too, but check out some
00:07:10.120 | of the other cities.
00:07:10.760 | Medellin, which is where my family's from, is not the Medellin of the eighties that
00:07:16.320 | people associate with Escobar and everything else.
00:07:18.800 | It's a incredibly dynamic, fast growing, super fun city with incredible nightlife
00:07:25.000 | and has the energy of a city on the move.
00:07:28.520 | You really feel it.
00:07:29.320 | It's also just physically beautiful.
00:07:30.720 | There's also parts on the coast of Colombia, the Pacific coast that for a
00:07:35.520 | long time were largely off limits because of conflict that are now kind of opening
00:07:40.240 | up to tourists for the first time.
00:07:42.000 | There's just so much to see in Colombia.
00:07:43.160 | I second that recommendation.
00:07:44.520 | To have something different though, I'm going to go actually a little bit into the
00:07:48.680 | Caribbean for this one.
00:07:50.000 | I think there's a lot on mainland South America that I could recommend.
00:07:52.680 | Ecuador is incredible.
00:07:53.880 | City of Quito is worth spending a lot of time in if you can, but I'm going to go
00:07:58.040 | actually right off the coast to the island of Bonaire, which is one of the Dutch
00:08:02.760 | Antilles, Aruba, and then Bonaire is there as well.
00:08:05.840 | And Bonaire is another place that I feel like has slipped under the radar for a
00:08:11.240 | lot of people for a long time.
00:08:12.640 | And I think no matter how much I talk about it, at least I'm not going to ruin
00:08:15.880 | it because there's something special about it.
00:08:17.480 | Just another place where you can really slow down, beautiful beaches, some of the
00:08:21.080 | best scuba diving in the world, if that's what you're into.
00:08:23.440 | And just like also a very fascinating cultural milieu of African influence,
00:08:28.120 | Dutch influence, mainland South American influence, really cool place to just like
00:08:32.320 | rent a house on the beach and hang out for a week and pick up fish from the market
00:08:36.720 | every morning, cook it in the evening.
00:08:38.400 | Good place to unplug for that.
00:08:40.560 | It might be right next to Aruba, but I had the exact opposite experience in Aruba.
00:08:45.600 | I felt like it's just become the most commercialized, Americanized.
00:08:49.040 | So it could not be more different.
00:08:50.720 | It's literally like two sides of a coin.
00:08:52.640 | It's really interesting that and I think differences at Bonaire, while having nice
00:08:56.520 | beaches, it doesn't have those like huge sandy beaches that make for a great
00:09:00.920 | setting for huge resorts.
00:09:02.480 | Right here, it's more rocky beaches.
00:09:04.200 | It's a little more rugged.
00:09:05.800 | And because of that, it hasn't had and hopefully never does kind of
00:09:09.800 | infrastructure boom that Aruba has had.
00:09:12.480 | I feel like if we don't speed up, we're not going to get through this.
00:09:15.600 | So I'm going to encourage us to do a more rapid version in Europe.
00:09:19.000 | OK, let me go first for Europe.
00:09:20.720 | Yeah, I'm going to say the town of Plovdiv, Bulgaria.
00:09:24.280 | It's the second biggest city in Bulgaria, one of the coolest towns I've ever been
00:09:28.920 | to, just like full of creative energy, young people.
00:09:32.040 | There's an area called Kapana or something in Bulgarian, but it means the trap
00:09:35.880 | because once you get into it, it's like very hard to find your way around.
00:09:38.760 | It's like this very densely packed cluster of buildings, but it's like full of bars
00:09:43.680 | and cafes and cool bookstores, a lot of creative people, a lot of creative energy.
00:09:47.640 | They call it the other city of seven hills.
00:09:49.840 | So if Rome has seven hills, so does Plovdiv.
00:09:52.120 | But these hills are like smack in the middle of town.
00:09:54.440 | So you can go on a hike through the woods in the middle of the city, come out the
00:09:58.240 | other side and be in the second biggest city in Bulgaria.
00:10:00.720 | Such a cool place.
00:10:02.080 | I like can't wait to go back.
00:10:03.560 | It was one of the places on my 52 places trip, actually, that I was like walking
00:10:07.600 | around and I was constantly thinking like I could rent a place here for like six
00:10:11.720 | months or a year, just hang out, just read and go to the local coffee shop in the
00:10:15.480 | morning and right in the evening and had that kind of a Plovdiv.
00:10:19.160 | I felt that way about Budapest, like being there.
00:10:22.600 | I was like, we could just move here and it would be amazing, but I'm not going to go
00:10:26.000 | there. I'm going to go to Bosnia.
00:10:28.520 | There are two things that we were in Croatia and we thought, why don't we just
00:10:32.200 | rent a car and drive across the border and just see what happens?
00:10:35.120 | And we drove up to Mostar, which is this like wild city that just feels like
00:10:40.840 | amalgamation of like every culture in the world.
00:10:42.960 | Almost the food was amazing.
00:10:45.200 | There's the most fascinating people watching because there's this bridge that
00:10:48.840 | is famous for jumping off of and you can just relax and sit by the water and you
00:10:52.840 | watch these people trying to get people to join the Mostar bridge jumping club,
00:10:57.240 | which I was just close to doing.
00:11:00.160 | It didn't do it. If I go back, I'm like, I'm doing it.
00:11:02.760 | I'm doing it. This is my plan.
00:11:04.160 | But the one thing I will suggest people do.
00:11:06.800 | So there is this famous general from the Soviet Union, Tito.
00:11:12.600 | He built this bunker and I think it's probably the largest.
00:11:16.360 | I mean, I could be wrong, but it might be one of the, if not the largest bunker in
00:11:20.160 | the world. It's gigantic and it's set inside just a random like neighborhood
00:11:26.640 | kind of experience. You go into this neighborhood, you go into this house and
00:11:29.840 | in the garage, there's just this false fake door.
00:11:32.280 | You go in the door and all of a sudden you're inside this gigantic bunker that
00:11:37.040 | they've kind of turned into an art gallery.
00:11:39.160 | I don't even know how to explain the experience.
00:11:41.520 | We had heard about it and we just basically asked every local we could to
00:11:45.960 | figure out how it worked. And someone knew someone who had a tour.
00:11:48.760 | I think it's slightly a little easier to go on now than it was at the time.
00:11:54.840 | But that is my recommendation is to go explore that.
00:11:57.240 | In today's dollars, the bunker would have cost over $4 billion to build.
00:12:01.800 | It's literally one of the most gigantic things.
00:12:04.240 | I think the hundreds of rooms.
00:12:05.560 | I wish I had more of the information about it off the top of my head.
00:12:09.280 | But that tour and experience was just so fascinating and the kinds of people were
00:12:13.120 | on it. We had conversations about why they were there, how they learned about
00:12:16.680 | it, because it didn't feel like a tourist experience, though.
00:12:19.000 | I would put it as a tourist experience.
00:12:21.080 | Thanks.
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00:13:33.640 | Must be 21 plus, not available in all locations.
00:13:37.000 | All right, Africa.
00:13:40.400 | I guess a lot of options here.
00:13:41.800 | I'm going to go with the city of Dakar in Senegal, another city that within a few
00:13:46.960 | days I was like I could live here for sure.
00:13:49.160 | Music everywhere.
00:13:50.800 | Just another city where you just feel the energy of it the moment you step off the
00:13:55.160 | plane. People are so friendly, so hospitable.
00:13:58.000 | So many little places to get a whole fish grilled up on the beach.
00:14:02.000 | I think the whole grilled fish is a common thread between all my choices so far.
00:14:05.560 | It's a great universal of travel is the whole fish just grilled to perfection.
00:14:09.640 | And in Senegal, you get that, too.
00:14:11.200 | Yeah, like music everywhere. Amazing history, both tragic and not in terms of the
00:14:15.720 | history. Really cool nightlife with live music everywhere.
00:14:19.480 | Just a really amazing, dynamic, modern city that I think a lot of people, I think
00:14:26.040 | people overlook African cities in general.
00:14:27.920 | If people are traveling to Africa, they're thinking nature, they're thinking safari,
00:14:31.480 | they're thinking all these things, which is true.
00:14:33.360 | It's a reason for it. It's spectacular in terms of nature.
00:14:35.840 | But I think the cities have a lot to offer.
00:14:37.640 | This is like one of the youngest populations in the world that are on that
00:14:41.040 | continent. Right. So there's just an incredible energy and incredible forward
00:14:45.160 | momentum. And you really feel it in a city like Dakar.
00:14:47.440 | So that would be my pick.
00:14:49.200 | I like it. I'm going to go a little off the rails here or actually on the rails.
00:14:54.120 | That was not supposed to be a joke, but it just happened and suggest people check out
00:14:59.280 | the Tazara train.
00:15:00.640 | So it's a train between Tanzania and Zambia.
00:15:05.680 | We took this, my wife and I, almost a decade ago, a little longer.
00:15:09.840 | And it was like a three day train ride.
00:15:12.960 | And almost every person I've ever heard says the train breaks down a little bit every
00:15:18.360 | time. You usually end up stopping in a random village.
00:15:21.280 | Everyone can go explore and you get back on.
00:15:24.120 | You meet the most fascinating people on the train because people that take a train for
00:15:28.600 | three days in Africa have some interesting story to tell.
00:15:32.000 | Flights in Africa are really expensive, so it's a really affordable way to get around.
00:15:35.840 | And if at the end of that experience you want a little bit something different, that's
00:15:40.160 | maybe a little bit more relaxing.
00:15:41.840 | You end up in Dar es Salaam and you can take a ferry to Zanzibar, which is kind of this
00:15:46.280 | otherworldly, cool island with a lot of both sad and interesting history as well.
00:15:51.640 | And Zanzibar, I think, has.
00:15:53.680 | Not the some of the best beaches I've ever seen in my life.
00:15:58.320 | Yeah. Zanzibar just unreal.
00:16:00.400 | It's wild. So that's what I've got.
00:16:02.200 | Obviously, if you haven't taken a safari somewhere in Africa, it's an amazing
00:16:05.600 | experience. But I assume that's not something someone needs to be told about.
00:16:09.200 | Right. This is gonna be the hardest one because it encompasses so many places.
00:16:13.280 | What are your one to two hot spots in Asia?
00:16:16.360 | Oh, yeah, it is really hard, especially because I grew up there for the most part.
00:16:20.080 | I'm going to skip over Indonesia because that's like an obvious choice for me because
00:16:23.080 | that's where I spent my formative years.
00:16:24.640 | But I'll say plainly, Indonesia, it's endless in terms of the places you can go.
00:16:29.960 | Literally, there's 20,000 islands or whatever.
00:16:32.040 | That's a good place to start looking beyond Bali and other things like that.
00:16:35.640 | I'm gonna say Vietnam. I think the cities especially I'm thinking.
00:16:39.000 | Playing from north to south, Hanoi, Da Nang and Saigon, I think all offer very
00:16:46.880 | different things, and I think the cities are just incredible.
00:16:49.040 | You'll eat maybe the best you've ever eaten in your life on plastic stools on the
00:16:52.720 | side of the road. That's just a attention to detail with the food universally that
00:16:57.600 | you don't get in a lot of places.
00:16:59.040 | And for next to nothing, just a huge part of the culture.
00:17:01.840 | And I think it's incredible to witness.
00:17:03.520 | I think you haven't lived till you've tried to cross a road in Hanoi during rush
00:17:07.480 | hour and felt the adrenaline rush of that.
00:17:09.880 | The trick is to keep moving and don't make any sudden movements.
00:17:13.040 | The motorcycles will go around you.
00:17:14.680 | Yeah, it's just I mean, again, another common thread, I think, between some of
00:17:17.560 | these places I'm picking is just cities that feel so alive and you like can't help
00:17:22.080 | but get caught up in that feeling and the current of the place and kind of places
00:17:26.000 | where you can just sit down on a plastic stool and sip a coffee and watch the world
00:17:31.280 | go by. And it's incredible to witness.
00:17:33.160 | So that would be one.
00:17:34.400 | Trying to think of something maybe nature based for the other one, I'm going to say
00:17:39.240 | Siberia. I think now, obviously, is not the time to go for geopolitical reasons.
00:17:43.080 | But if things with Russia ever change, the area around Lake Baikal, which is the
00:17:47.640 | deepest lake in the world, is otherworldly.
00:17:50.640 | There's an island called Olkhon Island, absolutely otherworldly place.
00:17:54.560 | You feel like you're in a dream, especially if you go in the fall.
00:17:57.440 | When I went, all the trees are bright yellow because of the changing foliage, wild
00:18:02.600 | horses in random corners, long stretches with no humans in sight.
00:18:07.240 | Just really feels like you've died and gone somewhere else.
00:18:10.560 | I struggled with this.
00:18:12.320 | And then I was like, oh, well, I guess the Middle East is in Asia.
00:18:15.040 | So I have two.
00:18:16.360 | One is like your Siberia.
00:18:18.520 | Syria was one of my most memorable places to travel, would also probably not go there
00:18:22.840 | right now, though there are reports of people traveling there.
00:18:26.080 | But we also went to Lebanon, which I thought was just.
00:18:30.200 | A wild, interesting place that both felt like it had the longest history.
00:18:36.520 | We went up to the mountains, we went hiking in the mountains, we went to a ski resort
00:18:39.920 | in the summer and hung out there.
00:18:42.120 | There's all of these, I think they're like monasteries surrounding this valley.
00:18:46.840 | You could basically see every season, every style of architecture, every style of
00:18:52.480 | experience from the mountains to the beaches, all in a very small country.
00:18:56.560 | We drove around the entire country.
00:18:58.280 | We drove to the south.
00:18:59.760 | We got calls from our friends in Beirut saying, you're not supposed to drive
00:19:02.640 | that far as an American tourist.
00:19:04.240 | That's not a good idea.
00:19:05.760 | We never actually felt unsafe as much as people told us we were.
00:19:08.920 | And then the most interesting thing to me is that there's this weird amalgamation
00:19:14.400 | of French and English and Arabic that exists in the country.
00:19:18.400 | And you'll hear people using all three languages in one sentence.
00:19:22.520 | Which is something that you just don't hear it that often.
00:19:25.520 | And I only speak two of the three languages.
00:19:27.360 | I could understand two thirds of what's going on.
00:19:30.400 | It seems like they get combined in the calmest and the most aggressive circumstances.
00:19:35.400 | So it's what people are just saying.
00:19:37.000 | Hi, it's hi, how are you?
00:19:38.760 | And then when people are angry on the street, cursing out of their car windows,
00:19:42.600 | you catch like bits of every language also.
00:19:44.880 | But it's a beautiful country.
00:19:46.280 | It has modern size.
00:19:47.560 | It has lots of remnants of wars and buildings.
00:19:50.760 | Your common theme was whole fish.
00:19:52.280 | I was like, gosh, I went to Bosnia.
00:19:53.600 | There's lots of buildings that have been bombed.
00:19:55.640 | I went to Lebanon.
00:19:56.280 | And so it's amazing to see places that bounce back after those situations.
00:19:59.760 | You know, so Lebanon was amazing.
00:20:01.600 | And then mentioned Japan a million times.
00:20:03.920 | But I think it deserves to be on the list and is probably going to be the place
00:20:08.480 | I will travel to more than anywhere else in the world,
00:20:11.560 | just because we always keep wanting to go back.
00:20:13.520 | Yeah, I agree with that for sure.
00:20:15.680 | But maybe I'll ask you this.
00:20:17.640 | You've been to Japan.
00:20:18.440 | You know, as we expand Japan every time, we're like, let's go to a new place.
00:20:21.440 | Let's go to new place. Any suggestions?
00:20:23.400 | I mean, I loved the area around like Kanazawa and Shirakawago,
00:20:27.320 | I think is that little village in the mountains in the Japanese Alps
00:20:30.000 | that looks like it's out of a fairy tale with the sloped roofs.
00:20:33.000 | It's unreal.
00:20:34.240 | We went there in the summer and it was just like dream world.
00:20:36.760 | And I think the trick there is it gets touristy during the day
00:20:39.960 | because a lot of people come on day trips, but hardly anyone spends the night.
00:20:43.640 | So if you spend a night there, you really feel this village
00:20:45.920 | that feels like it's from another time.
00:20:47.680 | And I also loved I went to the area around the Seto Inland Sea.
00:20:52.200 | So like Setouchi around Takamatsu for the art triennial that happens there.
00:20:56.240 | I wonder if they've postponed it again.
00:20:57.720 | I don't know, because the last one was 2019 when I was there.
00:21:00.000 | And that's just very cool because you have these little islands
00:21:02.880 | and each island becomes basically an outdoor art gallery.
00:21:05.920 | And so you take the ferries around from island to island
00:21:09.160 | and you're just like in this alternate reality where there's sculptures
00:21:12.480 | everywhere and everything's a museum, basically really special,
00:21:15.960 | special art event that happens in that area.
00:21:18.720 | So those would be my outside of the common path recommendations.
00:21:23.640 | But all that being said is I think I've only been to Japan twice.
00:21:27.520 | So I've got a lot more to see in the years ahead.
00:21:31.880 | We had another travel journalist, Brandon Presseron,
00:21:34.280 | who actually wrote The Lonely Planet Japan Guide.
00:21:36.600 | And so go back and check that episode out or reach out to him.
00:21:39.600 | He has like every tip on Earth for Japan.
00:21:42.960 | I feel like there's just more like Taiwan needs to be on the list.
00:21:46.320 | India, more than half the world, right?
00:21:48.880 | Yeah, I loved Cambodia.
00:21:50.000 | I could just go through this long list and there's just the food and the people.
00:21:53.400 | It's just incredible.
00:21:54.960 | And I feel like half the world goes to Lebanon and half the world
00:21:57.960 | ends up going on a similar experience in Israel.
00:22:00.280 | And I've done both and they're both fantastic.
00:22:02.600 | I think go to Lebanon first because I don't think you want the Israeli stamp
00:22:06.920 | in your passport going into Lebanon.
00:22:08.440 | I don't think that works well.
00:22:10.080 | So if you're debating between the two, I would start in Lebanon
00:22:13.600 | and do Israel next or just make sure you don't get the stamp in your passport.
00:22:16.600 | Most of the time, they won't stamp your passport these days
00:22:18.880 | because they know in Israel.
00:22:20.560 | But someone we were with had the sticker on the back of their passport.
00:22:25.080 | It's like they didn't stamp the passport, but they had like a little security
00:22:27.840 | sticker. Yeah.
00:22:28.640 | And it was not a fun border crossing for them.
00:22:31.400 | The food is like the highlight of the Middle East for me and the people.
00:22:34.920 | So eating with strangers is like my favorite thing to do there.
00:22:38.360 | Yeah. I'm going to let you take.
00:22:40.520 | I don't know whether to call it Oceania or Australia feels very biased
00:22:43.800 | to call the continent Australia, though.
00:22:45.480 | I think that's what I grew up learning and Antarctica, because my experience
00:22:49.880 | in that whole area is just like a one week city tour of Australia.
00:22:53.880 | So I'll let you take both.
00:22:55.280 | So for Australasia, Oceania, whatever we want to call it,
00:22:59.280 | I'm going to say South Island of New Zealand.
00:23:01.640 | It's not news to anyone that it's one of the most beautiful places in the world.
00:23:04.560 | But I would encourage people to look at the Great Walks,
00:23:07.920 | which are a collection of different trails that New Zealand has created
00:23:12.200 | over the past however many years.
00:23:13.760 | And there's new ones being added every few years.
00:23:15.880 | But they're basically like multi day treks you can do.
00:23:19.000 | And I would look for those in the South Island.
00:23:21.000 | I can't think of a better way to see that nature than by foot.
00:23:24.400 | Some of them are pretty rugged in terms of backcountry backpacking,
00:23:28.000 | but a lot of them also have huts along the way that you can reserve.
00:23:31.440 | So you're not fully exposed to the elements.
00:23:34.200 | I've only done sections of them and never overnight.
00:23:36.480 | I've only explored them as part of a story
00:23:38.520 | when I was looking around at different trails.
00:23:40.560 | But I would love to go back and do one of the Great Walks multi day treks.
00:23:44.240 | So that would be my tip.
00:23:46.280 | But anywhere on the South Island, especially along the West Coast
00:23:49.160 | of the South Island is just.
00:23:50.320 | It's in one day you go from rainforest to glaciers, to alpine terrain,
00:23:57.400 | and it's mind boggling.
00:23:58.920 | You don't even understand how a place like that exists.
00:24:00.760 | So that would be my tip for Oceania.
00:24:03.160 | And then, I mean, Antarctica, there's not a ton of options.
00:24:06.960 | My advice for Antarctica would be the smaller ship, the better.
00:24:10.000 | You're getting there by ship unless you're Elon Musk trying to get a private jet
00:24:14.280 | to the South Pole or whatever, but you're probably getting there by ship.
00:24:17.120 | So smaller ship, the better.
00:24:19.280 | And I think part of that is understanding the rules around tourism to Antarctica,
00:24:23.400 | the environmental rules, including the fact that only 100 people
00:24:26.600 | are allowed on land at any one time in terms of like landing sites.
00:24:31.480 | So what that means is if you're on a ship with 700 people,
00:24:34.520 | you're not going to be able to go out on every landing
00:24:36.920 | because they can only have 100 people at a time.
00:24:38.480 | If you're on a ship with 100 people, you're getting to go out every time.
00:24:41.520 | So that would be my tip.
00:24:42.760 | The smaller ship, the better.
00:24:43.680 | You just have a better experience that way.
00:24:45.480 | And my other tip would be like, don't even look at the luxury amenities
00:24:48.520 | offered on the ship because you're in Antarctica.
00:24:50.200 | And if you want to spend that time face down on a massage table,
00:24:53.360 | you're missing the point of being in Antarctica.
00:24:55.520 | So go for the operator that you think is going to give you
00:24:58.600 | the best actual experience on the ground, maximizing your time
00:25:01.840 | and interaction with a place that is the closest
00:25:05.840 | I think I'll ever get, at least to being on another planet,
00:25:08.320 | because it is just unreal.
00:25:10.200 | I don't have words and my job is words.
00:25:12.320 | But actually, I wrote like 3000 words on it.
00:25:14.480 | So you can read about it at LonelyPlanet.com.
00:25:17.560 | I'll link to that in the show notes.
00:25:19.480 | All right. Thank you so much for joining me for this bonus episode.
00:25:23.840 | I have a Q&A episode coming up soon.
00:25:25.920 | So if you have any questions you'd like me to tackle about travel,
00:25:28.840 | credit cards, points or miles, please send them my way.
00:25:32.120 | Or feedback, guest suggestions, or even if you just want to say hi.
00:25:35.560 | I'm Chris at AllTheHacks.com.
00:25:37.960 | You can also DM me on social.
00:25:40.200 | Thank you so much. See you next week.
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