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Again, that's longangle.com. Hello, and welcome to another episode of all the hacks, a show about upgrading your life, money, and travel. I'm Chris Hutchins, and I am excited to have you here today because I'm talking with one of the most well-traveled people I've ever met, Brandon Presser. He's an award-winning travel journalist who's been to 130 countries.

He's written over 50 guidebooks. He regularly contributes to Condé Nast Traveler in Bloomberg and hosted the Bravo Television Series Tour Group. But most recently he released his latest book, The Far Land, and it is a crazy true story about 200 years of murder, mania, and mutiny in the South Pacific.

It's definitely worth a read. In our conversation, I'm going to try my best to pull out all the travel tips and hacks I can. We'll talk about planning a trip, where to stay, having authentic experiences, how best to use reviews and guidebooks, why the type of Q-tip a hotel has matters.

And we'll get his take on the best places you can go for your next trip, including a few unexpected ones. Brandon has traveled so much. I don't know how we're going to get into all of this before we run out of time, but I will try my best. Let's jump in.

Brandon, thank you so much for being here. Thanks so much for having me. Yeah, I am really excited for this conversation. And I want to jump right in and just ask, what do you think most people get wrong about the way they travel? Man, big question. Over the last 10 years, as we've seen social media really ramp up, we see that everyone can post all their experiences and find experiences to covet on Instagram.

Travel has become a bit of a performance for a lot of people. Look at me in this place. And I think that's the biggest pitfall that people make, because if you're seeing travel as a commodity or as you performing in that space, you're not actually engaging in that destination.

And so if someone were thinking about how to spend an upcoming trip, they were like, "You know what? I'm going to take a week off in the fall." What would you tell them to start doing even before they know where they're going to have the right kind of trip?

I think the biggest mistake that people make, but when they're about to travel is they pick a place and not a reason. So I would start your trip planning by thinking about what you want to get out of that trip and then find a shortlist of destinations and marry that shortlist to the purpose of your travel.

So I want to go to Italy might end up being a hollow experience because the thing that you actually want to get out of the trip is going to a place where there's not a lot of other tourists or going to a place where you really want to have an experience where you're meeting people, making new friendships that might not happen for you in a one week trip there.

And if it would, it probably might not happen in the place that you might by default go. You're like, "I'm going to go to Rome and meet people." That might not be the easiest spot to kind of blend in. Exactly. There's nothing wrong with having your bucket list and hearing about a trip that someone else took and wanting to go there too.

You know, word of mouth is the most powerful tool in travel. But if you're just sitting down to say, "I have a week in September and I want to fill it," start with how you want to fill it, not where. And do you have some examples of things to kind of inspire people about how they could fill it?

Yeah, I would start with something like, is it a trip where you want to expend a lot of energy? Do you want it to be a really active trip? Do you want it to be physically active, socially active? Or are you on super burnout and you need a place where you don't want to talk to other people and you just want to be on a beach, in a cabin, on a mountain, in the desert?

Think about that first. Is this going to be like a big social and physical spend? Or is this like a reboot? And a trip can be both too. Just put the big spend first and put the reboot second so that you come home fresh. I like it. Why do you love travel?

I mean, you've done a ton of traveling, but you haven't hit the whole world, but you're closer than most. I'm working my way through. I was the kid that would ask my parents for a trip when they were like, "What do you want for your birthday?" I didn't want a toy.

I wanted a trip. And I was a kid who had no attention for reading. All I wanted to do was look at atlases. I think I've had this very ADD brain for years that finds something super interesting, jumps on it, learns everything there is to know about that thing, and then jumps to the next thing.

And travel has been the only industry in space that has allowed me to let my ADD free. I'm obsessed with learning things about different cultures. I think through travel, you ultimately learn a lot more about yourself. And so for me, it's about seeing the world in an ordinary way.

I want to go to places and see what the everyday life is for someone there. I don't need to check off the Taj Mahal or the Sydney Opera House off of a list. I just want to see how other people are experiencing the world, how other people's minds work, what motivates people, what are people's hopes and dreams, what do we have in common, and what are our differences?

So that seems like a great goal. And I feel like the more you travel in general, the more you're able to appreciate that. How would you go about making a meaningful itinerary for a trip? We've come so far away from checklist travel, especially in the American media. It's like, "Oh, don't go to the Louvre.

Don't go to the Taj Mahal." It's okay if you want to see them. Go see them and have a look if that's part of your motivation. But I think what you need to be thinking about as well is that it's okay not to have everything figured out and not have everything structured.

I've talked to people who've not been to destinations that they're about to go to, and they're really excited for the trip because at 8 a.m. they're doing this, and at 9 a.m. they're doing that, 10 a.m. they have this planned, 11 a.m. they have this planned, and it's this whole list of checklist travel in a different way.

We think of checklist travel as going to see the big ticket, but then people are like, "I have my food experience, and I have my museum experience, and I have it all lined up." And the best thing about travel and the thing that you will talk about to your friends when you get back, I guarantee, is not on that list before you travel.

It's the moment of serendipity where you're at a restaurant, and you hit it off with the waiter, and you all go somewhere after, and you're in this cool place that you never thought you would be, meeting people that you never thought you would meet, and you connect on Instagram afterwards, and you stay in touch.

You need to let your trip breathe because if you're too planned out, you're not actually piercing the veneer, the tourism veneer. Are there any great examples from your many travels of letting that happen and what unfolded? Yeah, I was on a surf trip in Northern Norway, and it was a great experience because I got to meet a lot of other people.

I was traveling by myself, and we were all doing the surf camp together, so it was like instant friends, and then I tacked on a few days in Oslo at the end just on my own, kind of snooping around, and I went to this restaurant, and I was just eating by myself, and I was looking over to these people my age that were sitting next to me, and I just turned to them, and I was like, "What are you guys up to?" They just seemed like a group of fun friends, and they're like, "Oh, we're going to sing karaoke after this." We ended up staying out all night.

I had a 7 a.m. flight the next morning, and they were like, "Go get your stuff. Just leave it at my apartment. We're going to go out all night." And we sang karaoke. We went to these bars that I didn't even know existed that were open all night long after parties.

It doesn't always have to be a party either, but it was just such an unexpected experience. I had my built-in friends in northern Norway for the surf camp, but yet the people that I stay in touch with are actually these random people I met in a Vietnamese restaurant in Oslo.

And do you think there's something aside from just leaving space in the itinerary or leaving time open that you can do to help make sure experiences like that have a higher chance of happening? Yeah. I think solo travel, you have a lot of energy pointed outward. You're curious. You're by yourself.

You're more open to having someone come up to you and talk to you. If you're by yourself on the street, that's usually when someone's like, "Hey, I need help with directions to this." Keeping that energy open, I know it sounds a little bit hooey, but that's part of it.

Also, because we live so much on our phones, it's really jarring to actually go up and talk to someone. But it's become jarring in a good way at this point where people are like, "Oh, you want to ask me a question? Sure." Strike up a conversation. I think one of the things that I'm always thinking about is generosity.

When you go to a destination, you come back with stories where you're like, "Oh, this family, I met them and they invited me into their house." Or you can get these Airbnb experiences of going into people's homes and cooking with them or whatever it is. I think if we think about it in the opposite way, how can we be generous to the people that we're visiting?

I think that you also garner a lot of goodwill in that regard as well. Can you give me an example of being generous while visiting? Sure. I always pack little gifts for people that I've not yet met. It's like a little something from home, like a candy. We all have this sentimental feeling about the candy that we grew up with.

I grew up in Canada and there's candy in Canada that you can't get in the US. Candy from where you're from is a really fun thing to exchange with people because it's oddly personal. Stuff from where you live, even like a cool postcard. I often bring little blank business cards with me.

And if I meet someone really cool, I'll write them a note and leave my email address. And you can control the message that way. You can leave them a phone number for WhatsApp if you want to hear from them a lot or Instagram if you want to hear from the West.

But doing things analog, it shocks the system and it starts inspiring devotion. I think back to a trip I took to Syria, where almost everyone seemed to want to invite you into their home. I will say my wife and I were traveling together, and so it's not just a solo traveler thing.

And sometimes people can be a little put at ease by having two people. They're like, "Oh, this isn't a random dude on the street. It's a couple. I can trust them and invite them over." We had all kinds of experiences. For some reason, when I was like, "Oh, I guess if I'm paying to go to someone's house, does it feel less authentic?

Is it like the commercialized version of it?" How do you think about trying to make those experiences happen naturally versus maybe saving the time and buying the serendipity? Yeah, that's the catch-22, right? I've had guides that I've hired to do mountain climbing or to visit a city, and I have struck up genuine friendships with those guides.

So I suppose it's not that different than hiring someone is essentially what it is to be invited into their house and to cook with them or to learn something from them. It's an opportunity to connect with someone. It's just a shame that it has to be so transactional. I don't think that there's necessarily a way to have magic happen or have serendipity happen if you're trying too hard.

One of the things that I'll try to do that feels like a little bit more unscripted is try to find a run club in a city that I'm going to. And usually, those are free. Usually, they're on weekends. And that's always a good opportunity because at least you have something in common from the start.

You both like to run. And then often, you need to refuel after your run. So maybe there's an invite with the person, people that you were with to go for brunch after an early morning run. I would start there. I would start with something that feels true to you, a passion point of yours, and bridge a more organic relationship with someone because you share something that you like.

We were in Sweden. And evidently, there's a lot of gamers in Sweden. And we walked by a store that had every board game. And I couldn't help but think, "My wife and I love board games." We didn't actually have time that day. But your example of a run club could be going to some board game night at a board game store or whatever your hobby is.

I bet there is a group of people that partake in that hobby in most major cities. So if you're listening and you don't love running, I'm sure there's another group that you can find of people that might become people to hang out with. Yeah, definitely. It doesn't have to be exercise.

It doesn't have to be running. Past version of me as a fixer used to take different producers, journalists to different countries to show them a few cool things. Maybe they wanted to use it as a filming location, or they wanted to scout a photo shoot. I took an editor from Vanity Fair once to Iceland.

And I did just that, except it wasn't running. It was knitting. And we found a knitting bee. And we just hung out with these women knitting for a whole afternoon. We baked... Ended up baking cakes with them. Find that point in common and start from there. I like that.

Talk a little bit more about being a fixer in Iceland. What is that experience like? And how would someone who doesn't know anything about a country find the person like you in that country to hire to help show them the ins and outs? I'm guessing you didn't just have a website where you're like, "I'm the Iceland fixer guy.

Come hire me." I know all that happened word of mouth. But I worked at Lonely Planet for about 7 full years doing back-to-back guidebooks for them. And the thing about Lonely Planet is essentially you just get paid to marinate in a destination for a very extended amount of time.

And every day, you're going out looking for something new and cool. And through that, I built a portfolio of destinations where I could consider myself a real expert. It wasn't just because I had done one trip there for a month. It was because I was clocking years in these places and spending all of my time getting to know all the right people, getting to eat in the right places.

And through that, I nurtured relationships where people were like, "You're the Iceland. We're looking at doing a movie there. We want to shoot a TV show there. We're looking for a few people, this, that, and the other." And I was like, "Let's go. Let's fly over. I'll rent a car.

I'll drive you to all the places you need." And that's how it happened. I'm just thinking of a practical way to apply this. Go back, look at the people that wrote Lonely Planet books. Look at all the authors. Do you think if you got a random email from someone, maybe even someone listening to this and said, "Hey, I'm planning a trip to Iceland.

Would you help answer some questions? Or even could I hire you for a couple hours to help me think about what I should do?" Is that a hack to go find journalists or authors of guidebooks and reach out to them and see if you can hire them for their expertise?

Yeah, I think that's a great idea. However, the first question that you need to ask someone if you're going to find them in the back of a guidebook was "How long ago was it that you spent an extended period of time there?" Because travel content expires. It's like dairy.

You have to keep updating. It's this relentless perishing of data, which I find so gratifying in a way because every time you go back to the country, it's totally new. You can't rest on your laurels. Restaurants are always changing. Infrastructure is changing. The economy is changing. There's a virus.

There's a war. Things are always happening. So, absolutely, you could totally flip to the back of a guidebook. And if you find their email address, you're going to reach out. Question number one, "When were you there?" Alright. You spent a lot of time writing guidebooks at Lonely Planet. I don't know the exact number, but it was over 50.

What about that process do you think people should know about how you write the guidebooks, about how you do the research that might give them a different perspective on how to use them? So, I can only speak to my experience at Lonely Planet, but guidebooks are not cursory. They are deep dives into a destination with real destination experts.

And the things that are not in the guidebook are the things that were not worth putting in a guidebook. I'm not going to fill a guidebook with the restaurants you shouldn't go to. It's a waste of paper. I am giving you all the tools to build the perfect trip that you see fit.

That's perfect for you. It's like a choose-your-own-adventure. Remember those books? Yeah, I loved it. It's like that. Yeah, it's okay. Let's start at the beginning. We're going to go here. I'm going to tell you a little about this. Oh, does this pique your interest? Okay, jump over to this chapter.

And now, we're going to talk about this part of the country. So, I would be sent sort of army style to touchdown. And I'll use Iceland as an example. Six months, I'm on the ground. There's two of us writing the book. We cut the country in half. I am going to every farm, every place that has a bed, every restaurant, every fjord that you can hike on.

And it is just a constant aggregation of data. And then at the end, you're looking through it and you're like, "Okay, this chapter needs to be about 10,000 words. So, I think I have room for X number of restaurants." Okay, these were the ones that were the best across all budgets and across all tastes.

And you're doing these holistic data entry over and over and over and over until you have refined what you think is the most perfect, well-rounded document for every traveler to dip into. Wow. Having done that experience a handful of times, how do you use guidebook or online reviews differently now?

So, the world of guidebooking has changed so much because of social media. A lot of my research in 2007 was high impact. I was charting new trails in Borneo to visit longhouse clans that had never seen outsiders before. And then social media happened and then suddenly everyone had agency over showing the destinations in which they lived or the places that they were going.

And it became this modified word of mouth where you could see everything that your friend was doing while they were in a destination. You could almost take notes. And so, I think the value of the guidebook has gone down over the years as more and more people travel, as the expenses around travel have been reduced and Airbnb grew.

So that we could find easier places to stay on our own. There is this connectivity that has made guidebooks not obsolete, just one of many options when at one point they were crucial. I think that something like Yelp or something like TripAdvisor are good aggregators of data. They're good for making lists.

If you decide that an Airbnb is not for you in Koh Samui, Thailand, you can go on TripAdvisor and make a complete list of every boutique hotel, every luxury hotel, every whatever place to stay and go from there. Do I hold value in the stars? No, because as someone who has actually been to every single hotel in Koh Samui, Thailand for Lonely Planet, I can tell you that the stars don't make sense because you travel there, you spend five days in one hotel and are you ranking it or how are you rating it against the hotel next door?

You're not. So, I don't trust it as far as deciphering which hotel is better or worse. In fact, I would be concerned if a hotel only had five stars. It's not making an impact. I want one person to hate a hotel in those reviews because the walls were green or it didn't have air conditioning because it was open to the elements.

I want a hotel to be bold. I want it to be memorable. I don't want it to be like my house. I think everyone's probably stayed at a Marriott. And when you go stay at just a standard Marriott... Look, Marriott as a brand has lots of different hotels. But just like the standard Marriott, it's hard to not know exactly what you're getting.

So, I could imagine someone being like, "Well, this is 10 stars because I thought it was exactly what I wanted. And it met the needs, but it certainly wasn't pushing the boundaries on anything by any stretch." How do you know if you're kind of planning in advance and trying to pick between five hotels?

We've agreed that the stars don't make sense. But you had all the data but couldn't go to the country. How would you try to figure out where to stay? How would you try to sort through the information that exists to you knowing that it's imperfect? Well, I always say in learning about other places, you learn a lot about yourself.

And I think part of that is honing your instinct. A lot of travel requires street smarts. It requires a lot of big decisions in real time. Where am I going to stay tonight? Am I getting on this train to go to Bucharest? What am I doing? And I think that trusting your gut when you're reading about places or when you're looking at photos is really important.

And I know that's a bit of a cop-out answer, but you're going to get a vibe when you start looking at photos online, when you're reading different things about different properties online. I would try to find those honest photos. I would use the TripAdvisor to click the user photos because they're not polished.

You can get a real sense of the room. I would not be allergic to calling a hotel or emailing with a hotel. I think a lot of people think that your hotel experience starts the minute you check in. That is not true. If you are booking a hotel, your hotel experience starts the minute you booked it.

All of these hotels have concierge services at a certain price point, or at least they have a friendly person to check in. And if you don't want that experience, you can book a home or an apartment rental. If you're booking a human to have with your hotel experience, use them.

People never use the concierges at hotels, or people think that they can only use it on Saturday afternoon when they're in their hotel because they're looking for a place to eat Saturday or Friday night or six hours before they think they need it. Email your hotel. Email the concierge at the hotel that you're going to stay at a month before you're going to stay there and say, "I'm really interested in finding a run club, a knitting club.

I'm really interested in knowing more about your rooms. I'm a light sleeper. And I'm a little worried about city noise. What are some of the room numbers you recommend so that I won't be woken up in the middle of the night?" It is their job to provide you that service before you've even arrived.

It's definitely something I think most people don't think about. The best hotels I've stayed at have emailed me in advance and said, "Hey, we have a person here. If you have questions, ask." I'll share a couple of the ones I like. So I don't necessarily have any faith that TripAdvisor stars are good, but I think the review content is.

So I'll often go and be like, "Oh, a lot of countries, some hotels have sunscreen, just free at the pool and some don't." You could go to TripAdvisor and search "sunscreen" in the reviews. One thing I sometimes do is you could just go to Instagram and search for a hotel and just look at what people are posting in the hotel.

People post some weird stuff. I've definitely seen the weird people that like to post photos almost naked in their bathroom. But there's also people that post the vibe of the hotel on a Friday night in the lobby, which is probably not something you might see in a TripAdvisor photo.

So that's another one. I've probably done this once. I can't remember where, but there's a place I was going and I just didn't know how to answer the question. And I think it was maybe about "Is the Wi-Fi reliable? Is it fast enough to do some work meetings or something?" And I just found people that were there that looked like they would be able to answer the question.

And I just DM'ed them on Instagram and asked them a question. I was like, "You're here right now. Is the Wi-Fi reliable?" And they're like, "Yeah, it's super fast." I was like, "Cool." So I think social media gives us that channel as well. Any other hacks you have for getting knowledge about a trip?

Yeah, so one of the big things for me is I'll go on Google Maps or I'll go on Google Earth. And I think a lot of people, their eye goes to the stars and the reviews on Google Maps about a hotel. What I'm looking at is I'm going to zoom out and I want to see the businesses that are next door.

So I want to know if it's a city hotel, I want to know what's in the neighborhood. If it's a resort on a beach, this is when it's super important. How close is that resort to the airport? For good and bad reasons. You're going to have to take a transfer.

But also, do you want your relaxing beach resort to have a plane going over your head every five minutes? I want to see if there's a pet hospital next to your resort and you're going to be listening to barking dogs all night or things like that. When I used to teach travel writing, Lonely Planet opened a deli office.

I think this was back in 2012. And they reverse outsourced me to deli to teach upcoming Indian writers how to do a Lonely Planet guidebook, but for the Indian market. And I had days of training with them where I'd put up a slide of a hotel room and I'd have everyone write a review.

And of course, this was a trap because they would just say, "Oh, the sheets are red and the wallpaper is nice. And this looks like this." I'm like, "Okay, first mistake, five senses. Your review needs to have all five senses. What are you hearing? What are you tasting? What does it look like?

What are the smells?" And I think you need to apply that to your hotel choosing too. So one of the ways to see is what's around the hotel, you're going to get a sense of noise. People are really precious about noise. This could be a huge deal breaker at a hotel.

So I want you to think critically about that also. I like that. The holidays and the end of the year are always a good time for two things. Helping those less fortunate than us and finding ways to lower our tax liability. Nothing brings those two things together better than being charitable, which, by the way, actually has a huge impact on your happiness and is why I'm so excited to be partnering with Daffy for this episode.

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Again, that's allthehacks.com/daffy. What have you learned about how do you determine what is nice if we've agreed stars and ratings and all those things don't matter? Yeah, so I have stayed at about 3,000 hotels, which is a bit crazy to think about. Almost 10 years. If just one night each, it's almost 10 years.

For Lonely Planet, I was staying in a different hotel every night. And we used to get a lot of questions at Lonely Planet. How can you tell if a hotel is good if you're only there for a night or this, that, and the other? And I would joke that it only takes 18 minutes to suss out a hotel.

And the things that you're looking for are design and service. And they have to come together. So, you can build a beautiful hotel that has great design, but if you can't staff it with individuals, it's going to be a bad stay. And vice versa. You can have a hotel that's completely falling apart, that's uncomfortable to stay in, and you can have friendly people, and it's still going to be a miss.

It's like storytelling. You need a good story, and you need to tell it well. Otherwise, it's not working for you. So, the first thing is you want to check those two boxes. And design doesn't necessarily mean that it looks good on Instagram. A lot of hotel rooms are designed without ever someone staying in them.

The cord to plug in your phone, it's too far, the plug from the bed, so you can't look at your phone in bed. You can't find the lights. There are too many lights. The room should be intuitive. I'm looking at design in that regard first. Second, I want my hotel room to make an impact.

It doesn't need to be hot pink, but I want to feel like I'm on holiday. I would like it to embody the destination a little bit. It doesn't need to be a Disney-fied version of Italy. It doesn't need to look like a cheesecake factory. Like, I want to feel like I'm somewhere different.

And then I think I want service to be genuine. I don't want over-polite service. I don't want over-attentive service. I think that there's a balance to when you want someone for help, that they're there to help you and that they know the destination. I want the hotels to be staffed by people who are knowledgeable.

That can enhance my experience. Otherwise, I'm just going to go stay in an Airbnb. I think smaller, I'm looking for cleanliness. Rooms generally get tired after seven years. You have to replace a mattress. Mattresses are 10 years old and they expire. I want that mattress replaced after seven. I want to be taken care of.

I want the amenities in the room to be thought through. And I don't want people to skimp on a crappy Q-tip. I want a good Q-tip. It's things like that. Is that a metric? Instead of five stars, you should have your own sliding scale of Q-tip quality metric. Yeah, for me, it's Q-tips and club sandwiches because every hotel around the world has both.

I want to know if that club sandwich is how well it's going to be served, how well it's cooked. I want to know how far the kitchen is based on how warm or cold it is, how fast it comes. And a Q-tip is the best thing in a room because everyone knows that they like a nice sturdy Q-tip.

And if it's flimsy and there's not that much cotton on it, they don't really care about you at this hotel and that money is the bottom line. Wow, I like that. Who has the best Q-tips and club sandwiches? Man, that's a really good question. I have found, and this is maybe a little bit of French snobbery in me, but countries around the world that have been touched by French influence always have it figured out much better.

I've eaten an incredible club sandwich in Madagascar, for example. And where? So in Tena, in the capital, I stayed at this guest house that had amazing food, truly amazing food. And it's just the care and that sort of French style of hospitality where every detail is important. You have that joie de vivre.

It really made it a very memorable stay. And it was only supposed to be kind of like a layover stay. I was in the middle of Madagascar on a trip and then had to connect through the capital to do another portion. And I didn't think I was going to get much out of it.

And then it just turned out to be this wonderful place. You have to send us the name of this place and we'll put it in the show notes. Any other places known for their club? I've had some of the best Western food in Japan. And that is because there's this deep-seated element to Japanese culture where they scout the world for interesting things and then they reappropriate it and improve it.

And ramen is the best example of that. Chinese by origin. They brought it over to Japan after World War II. It got really popular. The broth, four days of pork broth steeping. And they made it into something that was really their own. And I think I see them doing it a lot with baked goods, French breads, different things like that.

You will have the best pastries of your life in Tokyo. There are countries that everyone talks about and are overrated. And then there's countries that everyone talks about and you should still definitely go and just keep going. And I think Japan is like the essence of a country that everyone talks about and you should still keep going.

I 100% agree. I think there are places around the world of incredibly wondrous places that everyone already knows about. You should still go. You don't have to be a contrarian. Machu Picchu. It's incredible when the clouds lift off of it in the morning. It is amazing. I want you to go do it.

Just because a lot of other people have doesn't mean you should skip it. What else is on that list of places that even though everyone seems to go there, you think are still standout destinations? Japan is always at the top of my list. When people ask me what are my favorite places, I just would encourage people not to treat it totally as this otherworldly thing because then you don't have the opportunity to connect and have that meaningful experience.

I don't treat it like an alien world. There are a lot of things that are similar but improved like the club sandwich I was mentioning before. The attention to detail and care is a different form of hospitality, the way that things are presented, the aesthetics. I once did a story for Bloomberg where I went to Kyoto and I wrote a whole story about what if you did only new things in Kyoto because everyone's hardwired to think Tokyo new, Kyoto old.

But what if we flip the script and we did Tokyo old, Kyoto new. And I found these incredible photographers, performance artists, people that were changing the way sushi is made. And it was maybe one of my best four days in Japan ever by doing Kyoto new. Wow. And then Tokyo old as well?

Tokyo old, you can go to the northeast part of the city. It was the only area that wasn't really bombed during World War II and it didn't suffer as much during the Great Kanto Earthquake in the 1920s. And all of that is really well preserved. Rent a bicycle, go through Yanaka, that neighborhood.

I wrote The Lonely Planet Guide to Japan and I created a pilgrimage that people do on New Year's but I created it so you could do it anytime. And you're looking for seven shrines of seven different deities. And it's good luck to do it on New Year's to go to all seven.

But I laid them out in one of the older neighborhoods. You could do it anytime. And the point was just getting you through some of these back alleys so that you could see some old ceramics shops. And I didn't want to name the shop because I wanted you to find it on your own.

I like that. And do you feel like for someone going on this experience, just walking into the shop, you don't need to know which one, you don't need to have a reservation, you can just explore in a place like that? Yeah, I think sometimes when there's a really cool neighborhood that you want people to check out, it actually doesn't damage to pick the one ramen place in the neighborhood that has 10 great ramen places.

And I've tried all of them and the differences are negligible. There's so much joy in the feeling of discovery that I'd rather just lead you to the cool neighborhood and then let you figure it out from there. And I think that's what actually a lot of people want these days.

Right now, I'm late for lunch on the West Coast and a bowl of ramen is exactly what I want these days. I know so many people that plan a trip to Japan and it's I'm going to Tokyo and I'm going to Kyoto. Throw out a few places that someone going to those two cities should tack on.

Sure. I think if Kyoto is your vibe, and you're a little worried that it's going to be overrun with tourists, I would go to Kanazawa. In the feudal times of Japan, Kanazawa was the second most powerful area. So it's giving you a lot of the Kyoto vibes that you're looking for.

Less tourists, a little bit smaller scale. And right outside of Kanazawa is Kaga. And it's a region that has a lot of hot mineral water. So it's one of the most popular onsen destinations where you can go for a soak. This area has some of the coolest ryokan hotels, which are these little inns that usually have a hot spring attached.

And it's a completely inclusive, immersive stay where you're always wearing your yukata robe. And you have this set dinner and everything's planned out for you. And you're just constant hospitality and everything's taken care of. Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of people are really into Hokkaido, you know, leaving Honshu, the main island, going to Hokkaido, going to Kyushu.

Shikoku is often left off of people's itineraries. And this is the Japan that hasn't been glamorized. There's a lot of really cool inns, Minshuku, where you can stay. And you'll have that experience where you're going to cook with the person who runs the inn, but because they need your help, not because you're paying them to have that commoditized cooking experience.

Sounds awesome. We are anxiously awaiting the reopening of Japan for another trip back. It was our last trip before the pandemic. So hearing you talk about writing The Lonely Planet for Japan, which I imagine was months of time getting to explore everything about the country, it makes me just think, "Wow, you have the best job in the world." And I'm sure many people listening here would agree.

From that perspective, what's the downside to having a job where you basically get to go live in incredible places on someone else's dime, eat at the best restaurants, go try out all these amazing hotels? There has to be something that keeps everyone from wanting to do it. There is a really tough pace to keep.

And I know all of us are pretty stressed by our jobs these days. But the pace that you have to go into a destination, try your best to uncover everything that you need for your story, and not miss anything, but also not miss your deadline is really tough to balance.

And for me, I've had a hard time balancing that at different points in my career. What's funny about travel is that you have to pack every day to move to a different place. And so you have to be super mindful about the big and the small. Travel writing is one of those skill sets that you need to know big picture, you need to know your destination, the context, how it sits against other destinations and paint a world in your story.

And then you need to know that the bus leaves at 2.45 so that you don't miss it. And that you need to get all the things from your room so you don't leave a bunch of stuff in your room. It only exists in the two extremes and nothing in the middle.

And I think 99% of careers are in the middle. So you have to really hone your ability to think super macro and super micro. So you mentioned that you're always packing every day when you're writing these books and trying out these new hotels every day. I want to talk a little about packing and the hacks around what you bring on a trip.

Because 3,000 hotels, you've packed your bags more than I think anyone has ever packed their bags ever in their life. You've probably thought about every single item you bring on a trip, every type of clothing, everything more than once. What are things you've learned in that process? When I was really into this one particular bag, it was called the over-under bag because it was a rolling suitcase that was a bit squishy.

And it was two different sizes depending on a zipper. Going on the trip, it could be a carry-on. And then if you bought things while you were there, it could expand to a bag that went under the plane. I was really obsessed with this bag for a long time.

Also, you want to have a soft bag if part of your trip is going to be on a small airplane. So it's great to have the Rimavan and those kinds of bags that have a hard shell to protect everything within. But you can't bring them on safari planes or puddle jumpers in the Caribbean.

So I would always travel, especially for Lonely Planet, with this squishy over-under because I didn't know what I was going to get myself into. But I always was prepared. So that was my first thing. And do you still carry it? Yeah, I still have it. What else are you bringing?

Shoes, cameras? What kinds of things do you bring to make a trip perfect for you? If there's one thing that you want to whittle down, it's shoes because they take up so much room. They are filthy. So if you can have a versatile shoe that can read, you can go to a nice restaurant in a certain shoe, but you can also do a really long walk.

I would invest in that and invest in a very comfortable version of that. That's the first thing. You don't want to fill your bag with five different pairs of shoes. Is there a shoe or two you've found that do that? I like Palladiums a lot. They're really durable. And I think they were made for the French army using leftover tires.

And now they're like a super durable shoe. You can go on a hike. And they're cool enough looking that you can definitely wear them to a bar. Awesome. What about taking photos? Talk about how you balance capturing a trip with really experiencing a destination. Yeah, photography is tricky. I think that a lot of people live their lives on social media.

And when you're in a place, you'll find that people are looking at the destination through their phone. For some people that works, that's not really my bag. I tend to be very present in what I'm doing. And I forget sometimes to post on social media. I'm not like huge on social media, but I do enjoy making people jealous every once in a while with a fun photo.

I'll take a lot of photos to jog my memory for when I'm writing up an article after I get home. And there have been these moments that I wanted to capture when I see something truly unique. And it's usually not the sunset at the Eiffel Tower of which there's already 50 better versions.

But I like capturing those moments of serendipity. The best example I can think of was on a trip to Kyrgyzstan a few years ago. I was with a group of semi-nomadic people and they had a really busted up old car that they were driving around in. And they were eagle hunters.

And we got out of the car, parked, and the father put his eagle on his arm before he let it go hunt. And it's this photo of this. He's wearing these 2,000-year-old seeming skins. The eagle is on his arm cawing. And there's this beaten up car from 1972 right beside him.

It's this bizarre moment of juxtaposition. And I just had to have it. It couldn't just be a memory for me. It had to be a photo. It's not a quantity thing for you. It's trying to find the moments that are really different and something that you'd want to look back on and remember.

Yeah, I don't want a photo that someone's already taken a better version. I want to capture my moments of serendipity. That's what I use photography for. Cool. Getting the crew together isn't as easy as it used to be. I get it. Life comes at you fast. But trust me, your friends are probably desperate for a good hang.

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So please consider supporting those who support us. You've traveled a lot. What are your favorite hacks that we haven't hit on already? I really like helping people plan their trips. And I know that we touched a little bit on some of the kind of big picture things, but one rule that I like to apply to a lot of trip planning is an hour on a plane for a day in the destination.

And you don't have to follow it exactly, but it kind of goaltends a little bit. If you're going to fly across the country, across America, and it's going to take four or five hours, try to have four or five days because you're going to spend so much time in transit.

Flying is tricky. You have to be there early. You're going to be on the flight. Bank some time in the destination or pick a closer destination if you only have two days. You know, if you're only doing a Friday, Saturday, Sunday, pick a place that's an hour's flight. Don't try to go to Paris for two days.

You're just going to end up tired and not getting out of it what you wanted. So one hour in the plane for one day in the destination. I would design an itinerary like the way you read a fairy tale, where it starts off where you're setting the world. So you're understanding the world in a broader way.

And then there's turmoil. And that means a difficult experience. Give yourself a challenge. Give yourself --get out of the box, try something new. It can be a physical challenge, a big hike, an overnight camping, something that maybe is a little bit unusual for you, and then have a happy ending.

So put your best hotel at the end. Put your most expensive hotel at the end. You don't want everything else to feel disappointing because it came after the best thing you did. Is there a place you think people are overspending or underspending? Are they spending too much on food when they travel or hotels when they travel?

And if they spent their money in a different way, they might have a better trip? It's interesting to look at nationalities and how they spend. A lot of different cultures will spend way more on hotels and then way less on food, like Americans, for example. But then you see Israelis, for example, actually spend way more on food than they do on hotels.

So there's a lot of cultural differences that dictate how we're spending our money in our different destinations. Americans really like to have the comfort. They like to have their nice big bathroom and a clean toilet and a nice bed. That's super important to them. And so I can't really judge how people are going to spend their money when they're away.

But what I can say is that there are a lot of big value destinations, places where your dollar is going to go way further than the place you thought you wanted to go. I love Iceland and I'll tell you everything you want to know. I've written books about Iceland.

But if you're looking for those chiseled fjords and tundra and wildlife for big night skies, and you think that it's going to be Iceland, I would challenge you to think of somewhere that might seem less sexy like Newfoundland in Canada. It looks like it broke off from Iceland. And I think it really did.

There's all the fjords. You're going to get the whales puffing in the bay. You're going to get icebergs floating by. Incredible accommodation, incredible food, the fish. Oh my god. The biggest fishing banks in the world are off the coast of Newfoundland. And you're going to spend kroners in Iceland.

You're going to spend Canadian dollars, which is like monopoly money for an American in Canada. Wow. Are there other places like that where you'd say, "If this is what you were looking for, here's an awesome thing you haven't considered"? Yeah. If you're thinking about mountains and Alps, and you want to go to Switzerland or France or Italy, and you want your Lake Como and you want to have your Heidi experience, go to Slovenia instead.

It's right next door. It's still in the Alps. You're getting those snow-capped mountains. You're getting the lakes. You're getting food that is basically cheaper Italian food. You're going into people's homes and they're smoking salamis in their basement. And you're having wine that shares veins of loam and soil with some of the most famous Italian wines.

But very few people think to go to Slovenia. I'm going to let you keep going because I now have two new places to go on my list. So what else do we hit up? I think that people want to go to Australia because they want to see the other end of the world.

I love Australia. I think the color of the sky in Australia is different than it is in America. That's the first thing that you'll notice. And it's this place of incredible desolation when you get out of the cities. And a lot of people think that they want to go up the East Coast, Queensland.

They want to go to Cairns. They want to see the Great Barrier Reef. But go to Western Australia. That's where it's at. Because if you want that orange desert, the Uluru sand, and you want the Turquoise Bay, they actually collide in Western Australia. So if you're on the Ningaloo Reef or you're in Exmouth, Shark Bay, all that bright orange sand from Uluru hits the coastline at the clearest water you will ever see halfway up the coast between Perth and Broome.

That's amazing. You write about a lot of this. You wrote a whole article on where to go in 2022 that I'll link here. Any other places to highlight from that list that someone thinking about maybe a trip in the fall this year should consider that they probably weren't already thinking about?

Yeah. So I'll let you in on a secret. I actually consult on a lot of those lists for a lot of different magazines. So I contributed to a list for Harper's Bazaar this year. And I also contributed to the list for Bloomberg. And they're very different readers. Bloomberg tends to skew male, active.

Harper's Bazaar tends to be their mistresses. And so I pick very different places depending on the audience. I try to tailor those lists to whoever's paying attention. Creating those lists has been hugely difficult for the last few years because of geopolitics and COVID. And I think what we're seeing in travel right now is a return to travel 101 where people miss the places they like to go.

We're seeing a lot of interest in France and Italy and Greece and the UK and Ireland. People really want to go back to Japan. Whereas before the pandemic in the year leading up to the pandemic, I was in Uzbekistan, the Gambia. I was dipping into places that were on the verge of being on our mental maps.

So I would encourage people to go back to the places that they miss first, fulfill that need, and then start looking at the new. And I know that's not a super sexy answer, but I think there's a lot of places that are perfectly pronounceable that we should be checking out.

Next week, I'm going to Madeira, for example, a Portuguese-owned island off the coast of Africa. And I think that strikes the perfect balance of familiar and new because Portugal has been trending for a few years now. It's a place that everyone in the travel media world has hit. Madeira is a little off-kilter, right?

It's going to give you that Portuguese sensibility, but you're going to get these volcanic crags and you're going to get passing whales and you're going to stay in a quinta instead of a hotel. You're going to stay in a little inn that's tended to by local individuals, and you're going to eat fresh seafood, and you're going to see a different version of a place that you know.

I think I have whales on my radar, too, this year for another story. Again, a slightly off-kilter version of something you probably already know, the UK, but we're going to go into little villages and crumbling castles. And there's a huge whiskey industry that has really grown over the last 20 years.

And now they're ready to compete with scotch. And I want to go see what that's about. Everything is like version 2.1. Is there an argument to be made that if the hottest places in travel right now are the Spain, the Italy, the France, now is the year to go counter.

Go to Uzbekistan. Go to the places that no one's wanting to go to. Is that where maybe the best deals are to be had in the next year or two? Yeah. I think we're running into something a little tricky, which is that there is this sort of latent xenophobia that we're finding because countries are concerned about how other countries handled COVID.

And we're seeing supply chain issues. We're seeing this sort of fake fuel issue. And everyone's girding their loins. And what we're going to see is that travel will be easier based on where trade already occurs. So Canada, America, Mexico is going to remain a really easy artery to travel within.

Europe will be easy for Europeans. Asia is sort of multipolar. So you're going to see easy travel within the Middle East, easy travel within South Asia, East Asia. It's going to remain easier to travel in our regional bubbles. And prices will go up if you want to bust through that bubble.

So if you can find that inexpensive plane ticket to Uzbekistan, seize the opportunity because unfortunately, I think that will only get worse. So you mentioned Uzbekistan as a great place. What's on your list? I think you've hit, what, 130 countries. Are there places that somehow you've just never had the opportunity to go to, but really want to?

And when are you going? So yeah, I have been to about 130 countries. And I do not want to be accused as a country counter because I've been to Iceland 37 times. I have three trips to the Tahiti plan this year. I like to go back to a lot of places that I know.

And I like to dig even deeper. I do try to find opportunities to visit somewhere new, but I want it to be organic. I don't want to go somewhere and not have a plan or a point of view or an idea for a story. I like to go everywhere with a mission.

My mission tends to be finding information and personalities for an article. And so when things start to bake in those places, I prioritize that new place. I am really interested in countries that are about to pivot from oil to tourism. I think for a lot of places are just totally off the map because they've never been interested in garnering tourists until now.

So a country like Angola off the coast of Southwest Africa, because they've done so much offshore drilling, the interior of their country is pristine. And we've seen so many parts of Southern Africa get turned into agriculture or forms of monetizing the land. But this is a country that is wild in the interior.

And I want to go before it develops. So I tried so hard to go to Angola. And I don't mean that in a strange way. I physically tried so hard because we were in Namibia and there was a river between Namibia and Angola. And we had a hand dug canoe and a guy I'd met traveling from Sweden and I attempted to row to the other side to go say hi to some people that were in Angola.

And we literally could not cross the current of the river. And we tried so hard. So Angola has a special place for me as one of the few countries that I could maybe even throw a rock to, but I physically was not able to get myself into. Now, I have no idea what the legal ramifications of crossing the border in an unauthorized place would have been separate, but was not possible physically.

I have been on the Kunene River myself and touched into Angola, but I don't count it. I was actually trying to say hi to some people too and touched down. But in my mind, I was like, I can't count this as a visit. I need to go to Luanda and start from the beginning.

Do you have a requirement to say you've been to a place? Obviously, you can't just be touching the ground. You need to spend a night there, a meal there. What's your rule? My personal rule is that, first of all, I need to be choosing to go there. So a lot of people who've had a layover in a country, they say that they've been to that country.

That doesn't count for me. It needs to be my end destination. It can be part of a three-country trip or something like that. But I have to spend a night in that place. It used to be that you had to get a stamp. So many countries don't use stamps now.

So you mentioned you write a lot for Bloomberg now. And there is a series of articles that you've written. And I went deep on them. And I imagine when I start talking about them, people listening will too. I don't even know how it all started. So I'd love to hear the story.

But best I understand it, you spend a few days to a week doing a hospitality job at the intersection of really high-end luxury and report on the inner workings. I read about you working on a private jet at a high-end hotel, being the maitre d at Nobu, working on a luxury yacht.

How did that happen? And how has that experience been? The origin story is totally random, and we did not think it was going to turn into a column. A friend of mine used to work for Norwegian. And they started long-haul flights between North America and Europe. And they were so well-priced.

And they were all new planes. And even though the premium economy was pretty comfortable and inexpensive, he was pitching it to me for an article. And I was like, "Listen, I love this. It all sounds great. It's not reinventing the wheel, though." And he was like, "What if you worked as a flight attendant on one of our planes?" And I was like, "That sounds cool, but crazy.

I mean, how? I'm not trained." And it took three months of getting all these different approvals. And we did it completely above board. And sure enough, I worked as a flight attendant on a long-haul flight from London to New York. And I interviewed my colleagues. And I reported authentically on what it was like to be on that plane.

And the traffic on that story was absurd. We'd never seen numbers like that for a travel story at Bloomberg. And then we thought, "What if I did another job?" And the next job that I did was I was a butler at the Plaza Hotel in New York City. And that story did even better.

And from then on, in-house, we called it the butler stories. "Oh, what's the next butler story that you're going to do?" Because the vibe of it was service. So service heroics is essentially what it is. And I go all over the world to the world's most coveted brands. I embed myself in the product.

I serve the wealthy elite of the world. And I report on what it's like to do so. So I was a personal shopper at Barney's. I was a maitre d' at Nobu. I was a ski instructor in Aspen. I worked on a superyacht in the Caribbean, a private jet in Texas.

I just actually finished another one. I'm on deadline to write it all up. And that one will be coming out at the end of April. And it's been one of the coolest things in my career, to be honest. And I used to think that I was trading in obscure geography, and that I always wanted to be the first person that had boots on the ground and an emerging destination.

But writing these stories has given me incredible access to some places that have been so private to the world before. Are there some examples of some of the most interesting things you've seen or learned? I will fully endorse anyone listening to go read them, but throw out a few of the good juicy bits to get people excited.

I think the first thing that comes to mind is what really propelled this into a different stratosphere, which was for the Plaza Hotel. I was on break, and I was chatting with my fellow butlers. And I was just like, "What's the deal with Eloise?" There's the Eloise Children's book about how she lives in the Plaza Hotel.

And he was like, "Oh, yeah, it's a really big deal. Everyone loves Eloise here." One time, a room called and asked for a butler to bring up the Eloise book and read them a bedtime story to read Eloise as the bedtime story. And I was like, "Okay, sure, that's a little quirky." And when we got to the room, there was no child in the room.

There were four adults in their 30s all in the same bed, like Charlie Bucket's grandparents. And they were all like, "Okay, read us the story now, please." And he read them Eloise for 90 minutes. And they were like, "Thank you, that's all." And that was the perfect amount of quirkiness to launch the series into popularity.

And every time I do one of these jobs, I'm sniffing around for that Eloise moment. I don't need to tell you about the sex, drugs, and rock and roll because yeah, it's a private jet on a super yacht. Are you surprised people are doing sex, drugs, and rock and roll?

No. Are you surprised that someone is reading four adults a children's book as a bedtime story? Yeah, that's more fun. So I'm trying to find the humor in it. There's humor. There's still absurdity. I read that someone had Fiji water installed in their house, including their shower. Someone that spent 10s of thousands of dollars to raise the height of the sink in their bathroom at a hotel, which I think you said they literally needed to involve construction equipment.

Yeah, actually, that is one of the other things that I think about often. It was a hotel in Chicago, and a couple was going to Chicago for a 3-day weekend. And the wife called the hotel and was like, "Do me a favor, measure how high the vanity is off the floor." They were like, "Okay, yeah, we'll get back to you." And, "Oh, it's 45 inches." And she's like, "Hmm, that's not going to do.

It needs to be 52." And they were like, "Okay, well, we'll raise it, but it's a marble vanity, so we're going to need to get new marble, and it'll cost about $55,000." She's like, "Okay, sounds good." So they raised it. She stayed for three nights, and that's all she wrote.

And the reason was she didn't like bending down too far to wash her face. I don't even have words. Like, the number of vacations you could take for the cost of raising that sink. I don't know why she didn't find another hotel that maybe had a higher sink. It seemed cheaper or easier, but wow.

You worked as a maitre d' at a hot restaurant in New York. You worked at a hotel. You worked in a lot of the kinds of places that me, you, people listening, will end up going to or wanting to go to. What did you learn when it comes to ways that we might apply some tricks or some tips or some tactics to get the reservation at the hard-to-get-to table or to get the upgrade at the hotel or get the good treatment on the plane from the flight attendants or something like that?

At Nobu, I spent an afternoon with the reservations team because I was really curious how to hack that on a personal level. And they said that the best time to call is at around 4.15 p.m. because a lot of people do last-minute cancellations. And they will do it when they see their dinner coming on the horizon.

They realize they're going to be late or someone can't make it. And that happens before 5, but usually a little bit after 4. They said right in that 4.15 sweet spot was if you call day of, you could probably get a table. I've heard everything from restaurant reservations to even daycare, where it's like, "Even though we have a waitlist, we usually just take whoever calls first." So I imagine that was maybe similar at Nobu.

There might be people that say, "If something opens up, give me a call." But they're going to prioritize whoever just calls in the moment. Definitely. I think you can certainly give them a ring and say, "If anything opens up, give me a call." And then you need to be proactive.

You need to call at 4.20 or 4.30 and say, "I'd really like to come in. What can we make happen?" I think the less constraints you put on that reservation too, the likelier it is that you'll find a place. What about tipping? Is the go up to the maitre d and offer a tip to get a table?

Is that a real thing? No, I think that's a dated TV show kind of thing. I don't think that's going to work. But they do leave tables open for VIPs. They are ready at a moment's notice. If Blake Lively walks in the door and she wants a table, they're going to give her one.

So, it's really more about who you know. One thing that you could do -- everyone's going to hate that I say this -- is everyone's always thinking about concierges at hotels and the cities that they're going to visit. Make friends with a concierge at a hotel in the city you live in.

Because a lot of times, what people will do is they will hold tables for concierge friends at a Four Seasons or at a St. Regis or something like that. So that when they have a big spender come and stay at the hotel, they can funnel them a table right away.

So, go to a hotel in your hometown and try to make friends with the concierge there. And that'll often work. How would you suggest doing that? How would you make friends with the concierge? I honestly think that you could just go in and ask. A lot of times, a concierge will say, "Oh, I'm sorry.

We only serve people in the hotel," or something like that. But a lot of them are really skilled. And they're really well trained in the art of the concierge service, especially the ones with the clés d'or, the golden keys that are on their lapel. And sometimes they really want something to do that is germane to their skill set.

And so they will help you because these days, they're underused. It's a lot of, "Oh, can you send my bags up to my room?" Or the things that they don't get much joy in doing, which is illuminating the destination for their guests. Okay, so that's the plan. Maybe make a reservation at a hotel restaurant and get there an hour early and spend some time with the concierge.

You mentioned earlier bringing gifts while you're traveling. Not tipping, but is there a gift or something nice to bring to service people that might be better than a tip in any case? Yeah. All the flight attendants told me that they responded really well to bribery. And you could make an argument that if you learn your service names, and you learn your flight attendants' names, that it endears them a little bit more to you.

But they really respond to candy. They don't get to eat the stuff that's on the flight. They eat something different. And there are systems in place where pilots and flight attendants are all eating different things just in case the food is bad and everyone gets sick. There's always someone on the plane that's able to control the situation.

They tend to eat pretty poorly. It's a lot of easily transportable stuff, bags of chips and things like that. So I bet if you brought a healthy snack for a flight attendant, they would really appreciate it. I would also dress the part. And this is something that I think a lot of people have said before.

I always wear black on an airplane because if something spills on me, you can't see it. And it makes you look cleaner. Black always tends to read chic. Colors tend to read pajamas. And people don't really dress up for plane travel the way they used to. And I think if you present yourself more agnostically, your ability to say right before everyone's boarding, "Oh, is there room in Comfort Plus or Premium Economy?" They will size you up because if they're moving people to the front of the plane, they want them to look good.

Has that worked? Have you been upgraded on a flight in the moment? I definitely have. And sometimes it's just asking at the right moment. If there's a line and they're servicing 50 people in front of you, there's no chance in hell. But if no one's there, the plane's boarding, you can tell by looking at the seat plan on your app of how many seats there are.

If you can tell that it seems like there's not a lot of people boarding, yeah, just ask. I mean, especially for something like Comfort Plus on Delta. If there's an empty seat, it certainly doesn't hurt to ask if the gate agents are not busy. In the intro, I talked about this book you wrote.

And I want to make sure we touch on it because it's pretty crazy. I looked at your Amazon author biography, and it's like 40 Lonely Planets and a book about murder, mutiny in the South Pacific. And I was like, "Oh, that's okay." And I dug in. And first off, I learned that there's a part of the world I've never even heard of, the Picarin Islands.

Talk a little bit about what drove you to write this book, what it is, who it's for. I found it fascinating. And I talked to my wife about it, and she's like, "Can I read that next?" So I'd love you to share a little bit more. Yeah. When I worked at Lonely Planet, we definitely traded in obscure geography.

We'd all traveled the world. And we were all looking for these weird points on the map that no one else had heard of. And Picarin was a name that kept coming up because you can't get there using commercial conveyance. But people live on this remote island. And it is one of the most remotely inhabited islands in the world.

And only 48 people live there. It's in the middle of the South Pacific, halfway between New Zealand and Peru, if that gives you any sense of how vast and forgotten this place is. And the only way to get there is by cargo freighter. And a freighter services the island four times a year, once every season.

And you can travel on the freighter if there's room. And you can stay until the next time the freighter comes to make a delivery. And I had traveled extensively through Papua New Guinea on my own with the help of someone who works in the industry. And she reached out to me one day a few years later and was like, "There's an opportunity to send one journalist to this very forgotten island." And I knew it because of my time at Lonely Planet.

So she arranged for my transfer on the cargo freighter. And I ended up spending some time there living amongst these 48 individuals who, of course, there's no hotel. Because how do you get there to stay in a hotel? There's no restaurant. So you're just living in these people's homes.

And I went thinking I was going to write an article for Travel and Leisure magazine. And I did. But when I left the island, I was just completely obsessed with everything that I learned while I was there about the people who live there today and about the history. And usually, when I take on a project for work, I fall in love with the destination.

I marry it. I make the article. And then I go and fall in love with something else. And Peg Karen was this place that I just kept thinking about and thinking about. And all the characters involved in the founding of the island and all the characters that live there today could all have their own articles.

And I realized I needed to write like a 100,000-word article, which, of course, is a book. So it wasn't until after I got back from Peg Karen that I was just like, "Okay, I gotta keep researching. I need to know the truth about this place. I need to know all the details about how it was founded 200 years ago and why it's such a crazy place to visit now." Peg Karen is the kind of place that once you know three sentences about it, you're going to be instantly obsessed because the island was founded about 200 years ago when these British sailors mutinied against their captain, threw them overboard, stole the ship, and disappeared with their Tahitian brides.

And for 20 years, no one knew where they went. They thought the ship had vanished, essentially. And then they were discovered living on an island that was previously uninhabited. But of all the men and women that went to the island, there was only one man left when they found the island 18 years later.

And it turned out that it was like a real-life game of Survivor where they were, instead of voting each other off the island, they were murdering each other. And there were alliances that formed. There was jealousy and secrets. And one by one, they plotted and killed each other. When they were escaping an oppressive world, they then created an oppressive world.

And before they were all murdered, some of them had kids with each other. And then it's those descendants, those seventh-generation descendants of the original mutineers that still live there today. And they're haunted by the trauma of the island's founding. And so my book zippers the two timelines together. So it seesaws back and forth one chapter present day, one chapter 200 years ago.

And as the story goes on, the two timelines get more and more intertwined. And suddenly, they're completely overlapping. And there's this pendulum swing of cause and effect. Against the two, of course, it sort of ends with a bang, because by the end of at least the 200-year-old timeline, everyone's dead.

That's wild. The book's fantastic. Rarely, if ever, do I know of a book that's like a thriller mystery, enthralling story, but just also happens to be one of the craziest true stories of all time and weaves in a travel narrative as well. It's fantastic. Definitely check it out. I could do a whole nother episode just learning about that island, though.

I don't think it fits in with the theme of the show. So to wrap up, we talked about a lot of places. I want you to pick a place that you feel like you're familiar with, which unfortunately, for all the guidebooks you've written, might be too many. And leave us with a few things.

A place or two that people should go eat. A place or two that people should get a drink. And just an activity that they might not think to do. I want this to be really useful. I want there to be value here. And I want to pick two places because they're both really popular.

I want to start with Iceland because it's really close to the US and to Europe. And it's a really big impact destination because once you touch down, it looks like another planet. The thing is, is everyone does it wrong. I want to tell you, take a month and see all of Iceland.

We don't all have a month. So if you have four days, spend one of them in Reykjavik. People often do the opposite. They usually base themselves in Reykjavik and then do one day in the countryside. Flip the script. Stay outside of the city. Venture into the city for one day.

It's a teeny tiny city of 250,000 people. There's some cool cafes and whatnot. But the reason you're there is not for the urban environment. You're there for the nature. I think you should forget the golden circle, which is just a marketing thing. Go your own way up to the Snæfellsnes Peninsula.

It's a loop. You can loop the peninsula. There's really cool places to stay like Hotel Eielson. It's spelt like Eagleson. It's a beautiful little boutique inn. I highly recommend it. There's a great restaurant right across the street from that hotel. That's a whole evening unto itself. I think you should explore some of the public pools.

There's a lot of Blue Lagoon and all these commoditized luxury spa experiences. The public pools have the same geothermal water and they're $8 rather than $80. That's an opportunity where you get to meet locals. People go to the pool every day and they want to talk. Awesome. What's the other place?

I think we're all desperate to go back to Japan or go to Japan for the first time. I love it there. I just feel passionate about Japan. And I would love for people to focus on Tokyo in the southwest part of the city. The Yamanote Line is a ring line that goes around the city by rail.

And a lot of people tend to stick to that line. I would encourage you to get out of it in the southwest quadrant. You want to be in Setagaya. That's the part of the city you want to be in. You're going to find super cool neighborhoods out there like Shimokitazawa, Daikanyama, Jiyugaoka.

These are places that you should just go, put your feet down, walk the streets. You're going to find really cool little restaurants, tea houses. This is everything that Brooklyn wishes it could be. Anything specific to check out? So when you're in Shimokitazawa, for example, what you want to do is you want to go to everyone's favorite coffee shop called Bear Pond.

They make the best espresso, I promise you. Everyone who's gone has absolutely loved it. And take that walking around. Everyone in Japan is okay with walking with your beverage now. They used to not be. And you're going to want to walk through that neighborhood. You're going to want to look at the street fashion.

You're going to want to go into the vintage boutiques. You're going to want to see the clothes are just so well-maintained and super stylish. And if you want to understand what's avant-garde street style, it's there. If you pop over to Daikanyama, it's a little bit more high-end. There's a bookshop in Daikanyama, Tsutaya.

It's three white buildings connected by bridges. Maybe the best bookshop in the entire world. There's a cafe inside of it as well. Beautiful magazines, beautiful books. There are things that you can bring home and put on your coffee table. That's awesome. I am ready to go back to Japan.

Before we wrap, where can people follow all the stuff you're doing, writing, posting photos and everything? Go to my personal website. That's brandimpressor.com. I tend to post my new articles there. I have a link to my book, The Fire Land, there as well. You can follow me on Instagram @brandpress.

Awesome. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much for having me. This is so much fun. I really hope you enjoyed this episode. Thank you so much for listening. If you haven't already left a rating and a review for the show in Apple Podcasts or Spotify, I would really appreciate it.

And if you have any feedback on the show, questions for me, or just want to say hi, I'm chris@allthehacks.com or @hutchins on Twitter. That's it for this week. I'll see you next week. you