← 🎙️ Interesting Humans Podcast
🎙️ Interesting Humans Podcast
Ep. 55: Gary Arndt: The Famous Travel Blogger Who Changed a Nation's Visa Law
00:58:28
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- [00:01]
A
All right, guys, welcome back. Here I've got Gary Arnt. What an episode this is going to be, folks. We know that traveling the world, it always appears to be sunshine and rainbows. Like, I want to get a job in travel. But he's going to give us a different perspective today. And I'm. I'm excited to hear this. So, Gary, let's. Let's jump right in. Tell me. Tell me a time you've had a close call.
- [00:28]
B
Probably the best one would be in 2010. I was in Bangkok, and the country was undergoing these huge protests called the red shirt protests. And they were. The red shirts were primarily people from the rural outer parts of the country. They all came to Bangkok, hundreds of thousands of people. They were protesting the government. The prime minister had been taken out, and there was a military couple. And one day they were going to protest the current prime minister's house, which happened to be not far from where I was staying. So I thought I would take my camera, I was a photographer, and go photograph this because it sounded interesting. So there was this one side street, they're called Soy's, in Bangkok, off Sukhumvit Road, which is like one of the main. The main streets in Bangkok.
- [01:18]
C
Yeah.
- [01:18]
B
And there were thousands of protesters on one end of the street and hundreds of cops in full riot gear on the other end of the street. And I was between them, just a foreign guy with a camera. And there were other members of the media there, and they all had, like, armbands on, saying media and literally military helmets and stuff like that. I had none of this. The only thing I had that they didn't have was an umbrella, one of those little tiny folding umbrellas. And the reason why that's relevant. So the protesters would move up the street. The cops had moved back protesters, and what they were going to do at the prime minister's house was dump human blood on the front of his house. And so they took samples of blood from probably tens of thousands of people. And they had gallons of blood that they put in plastic containers. And I got pictures of all of this, and they're carrying them around, and it looks like fruit punch, but it's blood. And so as they're starting to move, as what happens in. In Southeast Asia, you know, in the. In the afternoons, there's a brief rain shower. And so when the. The shower hits, police don't move, the protesters don't move. But all the other foreign media scatter for shelter real quick. Except me, because I was the only one that had an umbrella. And there was this one protester who was in full tactical military gear, right? He's in black. He had the helmet on and everything. And he walks up to the cops and just kind of stands in front of him. Kind of like a Tiananmen Square type thing where the guy stands in front of the tank and it's. It's not raining hard, but it's raining. And while I'm sitting there, kind of, he turns around and looks at me and I get one of my best photos that I've ever taken. And during this whole thing, I kind of felt like, you know, this is a very tense, in charge situation, right? You got a bunch of angry people and a bunch of cops with batons and shields. And while it had nothing to do with foreigners, it was a purely domestic affair. I don't think anybody would have cared if you're stuck in the middle of it. And so I felt like there was a 5% chance, maybe 10, that things could hit the fan. And so I kind of was thinking, like, well, if that happens, where do I run? There was a parking ramp. I thought, you know, okay, I could run up that or I could jump this fence or something. Thankfully, nothing happened, but it was, like, really, really intense and, I gotta admit, kind of exciting. And later I read in the news, after they march all the way down to the Prime Minister's house, they dump the blood. And some journalist had the foresight to collect a sample of it. And this is the blood from, like, lots of people. And they tested it and it had everything. Hiv, hepatitis.
- [04:32]
C
Right?
- [04:32]
B
Just everything you can think of. It was nasty. And that was. That was probably one of the biggest, you know, things I went through. There was another one. I was in the nation of East Timor. And when I was there, they had just gotten over a civil war. And the morning I was leaving, I woke up and something was. Was happening. I didn't know it was happening. And there was, like, all this activity. There were. There was a lot of UN peacekeepers there. Australia had a military presence there. Something was going on. So I'm in this guest house and I got to get to the airport. I call a cab. I get in the cab and the driver just goes to me, bang, bang. Very bad, very bad. I don't know what he meant. Like, there was a shooting.
- [05:21]
C
Oh, my gosh.
- [05:23]
B
I get to the airport, it's filled with military troops from Australia. No one said anything. So I still don't know what's going on. I get on the plane and I fly to Darwin in North Australia. And as we get off the plane, a cop comes up and stops everyone getting off the plane. Not a very big plane. Not a whole lot of people coming from East Timor. And he says, the president and the prime minister of East Timor have been assassinated. And if you know anything, if you saw anything, please contact authorities. Well, it turns out they weren't killed, they were shot. But they didn't know this at the time. It was kind of the fog of war thing. And I spent the next couple weeks following this story. And what was amazing is, like, everybody who was filing stories, nobody was at East Timor. And I saw the same thing in Bangkok. I saw the same thing in other places where if you happen to be there when something is happening, like, the reports you get versus what's happening on the ground is often totally, totally different.
- [06:33]
A
Yeah, Yeah, I can imagine. So you've done 204 countries, slash areas.
- [06:41]
B
Yeah, countries and territory. So there's a list for extreme travelers called the Traveler Century Club. And the problem is, like, if you. If you go to France, you're thinking of the country in Europe where they wear baguettes and. Or eat baguettes and, you know, wear berets and sit at cafes. But the problem is French Polynesia is just technically as much a part of France as Hawaii is United States. That's France. But if you go to French Polynesia, that's not France. Right. It's a different thing. Even though it may politically be part of France. French Guiana in South America, also part of France. So they divide the world up into kind of more sensical things like Antarctica, not a country. So if you say how many countries you've been to, if you go to Antarctica, it's like going nowhere. So they divide the world up into 326 different areas. And of those 326, I've been to 204. So I've been to every US territory. I've been to Guam, American Samoa. I've been to the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Northern Marianas Islands, into almost every British territory, you know, South Georgia and the Sandwich Islands, St Helena, Gibraltar, you name it. So I've been. I've seen a lot of the world. I basically spent 13 years on the road traveling.
- [08:08]
C
Yeah.
- [08:09]
A
Remarkable. So weather doesn't follow travel itineraries. Right. Obviously. What. What was a time or some times when you, you know, got. Got stuck in or couldn't depart from or just severe weather. What'd you get? What'd you see there?
- [08:31]
B
I've never got stuck in a typhoon, a hurricane, I had a couple small earthquakes. The biggest thing was probably when the tsunami hit the Japanese one. And I was in Hawaii, I was in Maui. And this is like a tsunami is like a slow rolling disaster if you're right next to it. Like they were in Japan, you have very little warning. But with Hawaii, they could see it coming across the Pacific. And so I was like following this, getting updates from. Because I've been to a lot of these islands. I've been almost every. I've had been every country in the Pacific. So I knew kind of where to look and I was getting reports from people and it was like, well, I don't, I don't think this will be a big deal. And in Hawaii, none of the locals were freaking out at all. This was not a big deal. In fact, one guy I know went to the harbor in Lahaina and climbed a tree to go watch it come in. And ended up happening is a couple of boats got knocked around and that was it. But like, the European visitors, they were terrified and they all went. They took a car, went inland and went up a mountain because they thought the island was going to be inundated. And. But in the end, not a whole lot happened. Yeah, because it was so far away and the wave, you know, kind of dies down as it propagates out. It was a long way away from Japan, but that's as far as natural stuff. That's the only thing I could think of in terms of being in a place where something like that happened.
- [10:07]
C
Yeah.
- [10:08]
A
What about, like transportation? I'm sure you've been on everything from buses to trains to, who knows, stuff that we don't even know is out there. Any kind of experiences there where you're scared, probably scared for your life, I would imagine.
- [10:24]
B
No, I'm not. Not really scared. It's just a lot of unpleasant stuff. I remember I took a bus from. Was it Luxor to Hurghada in Egypt? And basically I had to sit on a spare tire for the entire trip. Oh, here's. So I was in Cambodia and I had to. I wanted to go to this one temple that was on the border of Thailand that just became a World Heritage site. And Thailand and Cambodia had been fighting. Like some people were killed. Like it was a border skirmish. And so this guy who had been taking. I was in Siem Reap, which is the, the kind of the jumping off point for Angor, Angor Watt.
- [11:11]
C
Okay.
- [11:11]
B
And he, he was driving me around in his tuk tuk, and I said, well, would you want to take Me to Previer. And he was like, yeah, I could do that. It was good money for him. And so he took me on his motorbike. I guess I should have brought this up for a dangerous thing, too. So it's a pretty long trip there. And by motorbike, this is not like a cruising vehicle. This is a motorbike.
- [11:35]
C
Right.
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B
So he's driving, I'm on the back, and my ass is getting pounded by every bump he goes over. And we eventually. So we get there, and there's soldiers everywhere who are mostly doing nothing. But I later found out there were a couple people killed, I think, that day from a landmine or something that they accidentally stepped on.
- [11:58]
C
Yeah.
- [11:59]
B
And there was a whole bunch of propaganda posters, which, ironically, were all in English, not Khmer, because they were trying to promote this to the rest of the world. And on the way back, we ended up hitting one of these brief rains. Rainstorms. We drove through it. I got totally soaked. And when you're on a bike, that's not that big of a deal. You'll dry off pretty fast, except for your ass, which remains wet because it's on the seat. And so my butt's getting hammered at the back of this seat because there's no cushioning back there. And you know how your skin gets in a bathtub if you're in it too long and your fingers get wrinkly? I think that was happening to my butt, and it was painful. Like, hours of this really started to hurt. And eventually the sun set, and I told him was like, we. We gotta pull over. And so we pull over at the side of the road. And I should add that my rider's dad was a cop in Siem Reap, and his dad gave him a gun for the trip. And it was in a compartment under the seat of the motorbike, if you've ever seen him. How they lift up. There's usually a small compartment in there.
- [13:13]
C
Mm.
- [13:14]
B
So as we're sitting there, two guys pull up in a car, and they start talking in Khmer. And I have no idea what they're saying. They're talking to my driver, and they're talking and talking. And as they're talking, my rider pulls up the seat of the bike and has his hand in there, so I assume his hand is on the gun. And they keep talking and talking, and eventually the car leaves. He puts the seat of the bike down. He says, come on, we gotta go.
- [13:44]
C
Oh, boy.
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B
And it didn't matter that my butt still hurt. I was in pains, like, all right. We're going and we weren't far from Siem Reap at this point. I think we were maybe another half hour out. So he just rushes into town, drops me off, I pay him, give him a generous tip and. Yeah, so that was, that was kind of a close call.
- [14:04]
C
Yeah.
- [14:05]
A
And most of your travel was. Was it work related? Was there pleasure mixed in? What did that look like?
- [14:11]
B
Well, a bit of each. I had a popular travel blog and I was a photographer, so that became my business. But I started, I mean, I had an Internet company that I sold in the 90s, so, you know, I had some money saved away when I started traveling. So it wasn't like I was working for a company or anything. This was all just like I literally sold my home. I was living on the road.
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A
That's fascinating. Is that still around, that travel blog?
- [14:38]
B
Yeah, but I've just converted it into the website for my podcast now. But all the content's still there.
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C
Yeah.
- [14:43]
A
Tell me, what's your show about, your podcast?
- [14:47]
B
Everything. The name of the show is Everything Everywhere Daily.
- [14:50]
C
Yeah, I love that.
- [14:52]
B
It's a daily educational show. And so when the pandemic hit, all the travel and tourism industry basically vanished in a two week period in March of 2020. And I needed to do something. So I didn't want to be completely reliant on the travel industry, but I wanted to use all the experiences I had traveling. So I launched a daily podcast. Episodes are relatively short. Not an interview show, it's a monologue show. And every day is something different. History, mathematics, geography, science, technology, whatever. That's cool. And I just kept the name of, of the website that I had, Everything Everywhere because it's a super generic name and it still fits the show.
- [15:39]
C
Yeah.
- [15:40]
B
And the show's gotten, you know, real popular since then, so.
- [15:45]
C
Yeah.
- [15:46]
A
That's awesome. In 2005, the craziest place I've been to is Mongolia. Do you have that one on your list?
- [15:55]
B
No, Mongolia is one of the places I have not been.
- [15:57]
C
Yeah.
- [15:58]
A
So what brings. What I want to ask you is about food. Because that was about the sickest I've ever been. And I didn't know why there. Found out probably years later, but it was, it was in a process in. They're not as regulated there, the food industry and they use formaldehyde more regularly. And I had no idea why I was sick. Just non stop for two weeks. But tell me about like have you eaten anything crazy? Do you remember times getting super sick? Any particular countries or places?
- [16:35]
B
So the only time I Ever got sick was in Kuala Lumpur, and I'm pretty sure I got it from eating at a Kenny Rogers roaster.
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C
Wow.
- [16:45]
B
Other than that, I've never been sick. And my theory to this is that because I traveled so much and for so long, your body just becomes adapted to it.
- [16:56]
C
Yeah.
- [16:56]
B
And I've read, I don't know if it's true, but I think there's truth to it, that even if you go anywhere, Even domestically, within 48 hours, your gut biome is going to adapt to different things. And your gut biome is constantly. Like, I never really got sick at all. So I think your immune system, like a muscle, is being exercised constantly. And other than that, one example I can't think of. And I've eaten tons of street food and I get this question all the time, what's the weirdest thing you ate? And when people really say that, what they're really asking is, because what constitutes a weird food? It usually means an animal or an animal part that people in the west don't eat.
- [17:33]
C
Yeah, that's it.
- [17:35]
B
Like if I said, oh, it's a slightly different type of cabbage that I had in China, well, that's not weird. So it's usually something like that. And I've had chicken feet, you know, on the side of the road. I've had pig's intestines on the side of the road on a skewer. But that's just chitlins. Right. I mean, there are people that eat that. And the thing is, everybody in the west used to eat that stuff 100 years ago because you'd eat every part of the animal. And now that just goes into dog food. And that stuff doesn't bother me in the slightest. I eat liver all the time at home. I've had kidneys, I've had all sorts of offal heart. So it never really was weird to me.
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C
Yeah, yeah.
- [18:24]
A
It's just normal. It's just another thing.
- [18:26]
B
Had hagus in Scotland and quite frankly, if nobody told you what you were eating, you would never know. You'd think it was ground beef. Really?
- [18:35]
A
Wow, that's wild. I heard of a guy once who had natural or still alive bite off of a bird head in Nepal. That about made me sick.
- [18:50]
B
The truth is, a lot of those types of things are done just for tourists. It's not something that. Yes, maybe they occasionally do it, but the tourists get the big thrill out of doing it and that's why.
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C
Yeah. Wow.
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A
What about border crossings? Any. Any recollection of, like, ones that may have been Frightening. Didn't go as planned.
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B
They're mostly just a pain in the ass when they don't go.
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A
Well.
- [19:23]
C
Yeah.
- [19:23]
B
Like, you're just delayed forever.
- [19:25]
C
Yeah.
- [19:26]
B
And like, not. I've never really. Okay, here's a couple. One, when I first entered Israel, I did it on foot, and I went from Aqaba, Jordan, to Eilat in Israel, and I had been to a whole bunch of Arab countries beforehand. I had a bunch of stamps in my passport, and I even had, like, an Arab scarf with me and everything, so. Oh, man, this is going to take forever. In fact, on Twitter, I was like, what do you think the over under is on how long this is going to take? And I was thinking this was going to take me eight hours. What? Thankfully, it only took me like, 90 minutes. And one of the things that I think helped me is the fact that I was documenting everything in a blog and they could go look at it and see, oh, this is what I was doing, taking pictures and going to see this stuff. The other one that is kind of interesting is I went from. So I was. When I started my travels, I was hopping around the Pacific Ocean, and I went from the Solomon Islands to the nation of Kiribati, which is spelled K I R I B I T I. There's no S in it, but the T I is pronounced S. So it's Kiribati is how it's pronounced. And at the time, Kiribati was the only country in the Pacific that required Americans to get a visa. So when I was in Fiji, I made a special trip to the capital, which is on the other end of the main island. Visited the Kiribati Embassy Monday morning, did everything, filled out the paperwork, got it done. Now, most countries, when you get a visa, it's a sticker that they put in your passport. Not Kiribati, at least not then. It was literally a rubber stamp and a ballpoint pen where the guy filled it in. So from Fiji to there. I was in the Solomon Islands and I got caught in a rainstorm. I was on this remote island called Renell, and everything got soaked, including my passport. And passport pages, if you've ever felt it, are kind of waxy. They're not like paper paper. And all the ink from the Kiribati visa bled off the page, most of it. But most importantly, the ballpoint pen part, you could still kind of tell it was there. And I didn't bother to look at it when I landed. And I had contacted the Minister of Tourism beforehand to make Sure. I got all. Everything right. That sounds impressive, but it's a really tiny country. Had a hotel reservation, had my flight out reserved. And Tara was a small atoll. You can't hide anywhere. So I arrive at the airport, present. My passport guy will not let me in. And I was like, why? I have a reservation. I got these emails from your minister of tourism. Everything is fine. You call the embassy if you'd like to. To verify that I did this. You know, I got stuck in the range. Nope, nope. And the. The airport general manager, again, small airport, was observing all this, and he felt really bad and. Because what do you do? You're in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. They were going to put me on the flight back to the Solomon Islands, which would have screwed up all my connecting flights.
- [22:47]
C
Yeah.
- [22:47]
B
So the guy said, I tell you what we can do in six hours, the flight you were going to be taking in four days to Fiji will be here. You can get on that flight. You just stay in the airport. I'm like, fine. So while I'm there, I'm really pissed off. I write a nasty letter to the Minister of Tourism, and I was like, nobody wins here. I don't get to spend money in your country. I don't get to write about it. You know, what did you gain? Nothing. And I was like, I don't see what the point of all this was. It was completely unnecessary. I sent it to him. Forget about it. Get on the plane, go to Fiji, go back to Honolulu. So it turns out the email I sent him got forwarded to the president of the country. And three months later, Americans didn't need a visa to go to Kiribati anymore.
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C
Wow.
- [23:42]
A
Wow.
- [23:43]
B
I think I was. I had a hand in help shaping a law in a country. So if any Americans go to Kiribati and you don't need a visa, you got me to thank for it.
- [23:53]
A
That's incredible. If you had to take a guess, how many people actually go to that country? I mean, is it 100 a year, roughly? If you just a guess. I mean.
- [24:00]
B
No, not a hundred, maybe low thousands. 2000 maybe.
- [24:07]
A
Is there terror?
- [24:08]
B
I mean, so remote. What?
- [24:11]
C
Yeah.
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A
Is there, like, tourism there? Like, what goes on there?
- [24:17]
B
Very little. Yeah.
- [24:19]
C
Yeah. Wow.
- [24:22]
B
And it's. It's. It's just a hard place to reach. And that's true of almost every country in the Pacific. Some countries like Tonga, Samoa, Fiji will get visitors from Australia and New Zealand. But beyond that, the problem is for an American to go there. You know, Hawaii's closer. A Lot easier to visit. And you probably got to fly through there anyhow, so, you know, they just stop there. And that's true for so many different places that I visited, where, you know, people. People don't bother to make the next stop. A lot of places that are considered over tourism is a concern. And basically it's not that there are too many tourists. There's too many tourists visiting the same place at the same time. And it's usually places that have an international airport and a cruise ship terminal.
- [25:19]
A
Ah, interesting. How about animal encounters? You ever come across anything that freaked you out, scared you? What kind of stuff?
- [25:29]
B
No, it's not freaked out. You know, I went to photograph polar bear up in northern Manitoba. Churchill, Manitoba is probably the best place in the world for this. And we were there in what was an unusually good year for seeing polar bear. Not so much for the polar bear. They all come to this spot near the Churchill river because it's the first place where the ice freezes on Hudson Bay, where they can go out and hunt seals. And that year the ice was late. So we saw 43 polar bear in one day. I have some amazing photos of it. You know, I've done safaris in South Africa where we saw lions and leopards and water buffalo, elephants, giraffe, you name it. One of the coolest experiences for me, I've always had bad luck photographing moose. Like, I just never had an opportunity to see one. And then I was in northern British Columbia, and I was at this one lodge where the guy had a float plane. And he said to me, well, we're gonna go pick up some fishermen. Want to come with? I was like, yeah. So as we're flying in to this lake, there's tons of moose on this other end of the lake. And this other guy we're with, like, man, let's, let's go check it out. So we get a canoe, we go over to the other end of the lake. By the time we get there, the moose are gone. Like, oh, well. But as we're coming back, there's this big bull moose in the water. And he's feeding on weeds. And he puts his head in the water, chews him, brings his head up, and water just starts falling off his antlers. And he kept doing this over and over and over. And we slowly get closer. And that is. That's one of the best experiences I've had. And it was just very unexpected. And it was in a setting that most people don't usually get to see. You know, seeing a moose in water. Doing that is something that's very, very rare.
- [27:22]
A
And you were right there for a shot to photograph and everything. Oh, that's incredible. When you look back at how many places you've been, is there anything that haunts you?
- [27:41]
B
Cambodia is a very rough country, at least when I was there. And, you know, I remember seeing a lot of kids will beg. And there are always stories about families that would even maim their kids on purpose so they could get more money begging. This is. It's kind of a funny story, even though it's not funny, but it's funny.
- [28:04]
C
Yeah.
- [28:05]
B
There's this place in Phnom Penh called the Tulsang Prison. And this was basically a torture center when the Khmer Rouge was in power. And I think the thing is, like, 28,000 people entered. It was a former high school. 28,000 people entered the prison, and only 28 ever left alive. Everyone that went in there died. So there's a tour I was on. You visit the Killing Fields one day in the morning, you visit. Visit this place in the afternoon. And it's. It's. It's like visiting Auschwitz, you know, or a concentration camp.
- [28:36]
C
Yeah.
- [28:36]
B
And you leave this place and you feel pretty horrible. And there's this guy outside who was hor face was horribly burned, horribly disfigured. And you just saw all this horrible stuff in there. You come out, you see this. I give the guy a couple bucks. I go back to the guest house where I'm staying, and there's this British guy staying there. He said, well, what did you do today? I said, well, I went to the Killing Fields in Tulsang Prison. And then he starts smiling, which is a very odd reaction for just visiting this place. And he asked me, he goes, did you see the guy out front with the scarred face? And I go, yeah, I did. And then he says, do you know how his face got that way? I was like, well, no. He was cheating on his wife, and his wife caught him in bed with another woman, and his wife poured battery acid on him. And that's how he got that way. And now he earns more money than most people in Phnom Penh from begging because he's disfigured. Like I said, kind of funny, but not funny. But it's funny.
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A
Right?
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C
Right.
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A
Wow, that's crazy. What did they all die from in there? The. The 27, 990 people that died or whatever it is.
- [29:56]
B
Like a bullet to the head, do.
- [29:58]
A
Like that kind of stuff?
- [29:59]
C
Yeah, yeah.
- [29:59]
A
Like not old.
- [30:01]
B
They were just executed.
- [30:02]
C
Yeah.
- [30:02]
A
They're not making it old. It's not old age or anything like that.
- [30:05]
B
No.
- [30:06]
A
Dying in prison from.
- [30:07]
B
When I say prison, I say that loosely. It was really just a torture center.
- [30:12]
C
Yeah.
- [30:13]
A
Okay, so like a killing camp, an extermination camp. I got it the time. Did you do any of that stuff up in, like, Auschwitz or Birken? Like, any of that stuff?
- [30:23]
B
Yeah, I did a trip to Auschwitz, and the biggest thing there, I mean, you can be overwhelmed by a lot of it. It's the callousness that other tourists are taking selfies and stuff while they're there, and they have no sense of, like, okay, this is not the place. You do that.
- [30:46]
C
Right.
- [30:47]
B
If you want to go to the Brandenburg Gate or, you know, some other thing that's a tourist landmark, go nuts. But you shouldn't do that here. And they just have no sense of propriety that this is, you know, someplace you shouldn't be doing that.
- [31:04]
C
Yeah.
- [31:05]
A
What about. What about favorite stuff? So did you. Do you have a favorite part of the world cuisine? Food.
- [31:13]
B
Best cuisine is, I think, Japan, hands down.
- [31:16]
C
Yeah.
- [31:17]
B
Another great place that I love is Spain and Argentina. The asado, the beef, the barbecue that they have in Argentina is just fantastic. Spain has so many different variants of food. Spain is really a collection of different countries in many ways. You know, one of my favorite beverages in the world is Basque cider, which is very hard to find, but I did eventually find a guy who could order it for me, and I bought a case of it when he first found out, and I still have bottles of it. Yeah, you'll find. You know, you can find good food anywhere. I think Arab food is very underrated, even though it's very simple. Yeah, you get a thing of pickled vegetables at the table and some sort of roasted meat.
- [32:06]
A
Sure.
- [32:08]
B
But, yeah, I think. I think Japanese food is really superb.
- [32:15]
A
So have you eaten at the famous one in Tokyo? What is it? Hero. Hero dreams of sushi.
- [32:22]
B
That didn't come out until after I was there, but I did go and have sushi at the ski fish market. They've since changed their fish market. This was the old fish market where all of the. The catch would come in, and in the morning, guys would go there and bid on tuna and stuff like that. And this is literally some of the freshest tuna in the world you're going to find. And a lot of people said that the skegee fish market, you'd go there and have sushi for breakfast, was some of the best in the world.
- [32:52]
A
That's probably The.
- [32:54]
B
I went to. I went to the Ginza district and I also found a real high end sushi restaurant just because I wanted to go experience that. And it was great because there were these two older Japanese women that were there and they had kimonos on and everything. And, you know, they, they took the time and the chef to, you know, because I was not Japanese, to tell me how to eat it. Maybe the best meal I ever had was at this random hotel in the island of Yakushima in the south of Japan. And nobody there spoke English and I didn't speak Japanese, but they had a restaurant. And I came down at dinner time and it was pretty obvious that that's what I wanted. And so they just gave me this set meal from the menu and it was fantastic. And I'm not even sure what I ate, but I ate everything and it was great.
- [33:39]
C
Wow.
- [33:40]
A
So technology, when you were out like venturing or out in the wild, did you ever get, like disconnected at some point, whether it was GPS or phone and like feel lost at any point?
- [33:55]
B
Not lost, but technology changed radically while I was traveling. So I started traveling. I sold my house in 2007. So I began traveling in the period between Steve Jobs announcing the iPhone and the iPhone actually coming on the market. And I remember when I arrived in Japan, I bought an ipod touch at the Apple store in the Ginza district. And I just thought this was the greatest thing since sliced bread. But there were no apps, there was no cellular roaming coverage. That didn't come until much later. I was using Internet cafes and WI fi when I could find it for ages. Now it's trivial. You can get a roaming plan for your phone. You can get an esim. You can. I remember later on, years later, I'd arrive in London at Heathrow. I'd just go to a vending machine. I got a SIM card from like 3Mobile. It gave me a month of unlimited data and talk. Worked in a whole bunch of different countries. It was £20. Boom. It was simple. And things in that department have gotten much, much easier. You don't even see Internet cafes that much anymore because there's no need because everyone has a phone now. And. But even like early on, I remember being in Egypt and there were a bunch of men sitting outside this store ogling phones. And it was like how guys used to look at cars or motorcycles and they were all looking for the new phone. And that's become. They've just become ubiquitous everywhere.
- [35:32]
C
Yeah, yeah.
- [35:35]
A
In an assumption. Money doesn't matter. Give me the three trips that, that you'd go on in the next six, six months to a year. Three of the absolute best trips. Again, money doesn't matter.
- [35:49]
B
I probably want to do something I haven't done. I would go to Antarctica again in a heartbeat. That's not cheap. Maybe a trip to Everest Base Camp.
- [36:04]
A
That's on my list. Funny.
- [36:06]
C
Wow.
- [36:06]
B
Yeah, maybe, you know, some extended safari in Kenya or Tanzania. Yeah, something like that. Yeah.
- [36:15]
C
Yeah. What?
- [36:16]
B
But I should say a lot of the best trips out there do not require a lot of money. And people are often, they, they think that you need a ton of money to travel and it's not as much as most people think. You can travel extensively for much less than most people realize.
- [36:36]
C
Right.
- [36:37]
A
Just walk me through Antarctica. From leaving your house to getting there and coming home. All the steps, all the travel, all the transportation, all the details.
- [36:48]
B
I didn't have a home, so. But basically you get to Ushuaia, Argentina. It's the southernmost city in the world and that's not hard. You go to Buenos Aires, you get a flight, and I think it makes one stop along the way, but you arrive in Ushua and then I should say the vast majority of trips to Antarctica start in Ushua. I think it's like 80 to 90%. There are some that may start from New Zealand, but that's where most of them are going to go. And from there you're going to cross the Drake Passage to go to the Antarctic Peninsula. There are some ways you could fly there. They land on the ice, those are more pricey. There are even ways you could get to the South Pole, and that's very pricey. That's probably in the neighborhood of $100,000 if you want to, and maybe 20 to 30,000 if you want to go to the North Pole. But from usia, you're on a ship. These are expedition vessels. Usually no more than 200 people on the ship. They're not. I think there are some larger cruise ships, but they cannot land in Antarctica. They just go there and look at stuff and sail back. I would always recommend, if you're itinerary, there's usually one or two cruises a year that will stop in South Georgia Island. So the cruise I was on, we stopped in the Falklands, we stopped in South Georgia, Antarctica and back. I think it was an 18 day trip. And South Georgia is always the highlight of any season. South Georgia has probably the largest penguin breeding ground in the world. And literally, I remember the first day, the first landing we did, we took the Zodiac from the boat to the beach and there was like a quarter million penguins. And it's loud and it stinks because it's penguin poop and dead birds and it's penguins as far as the eye can see. And they have no fear of you whatsoever because there are no predators that live there. So you can just walk around them and they don't, they don't care. They'll come right up to you and check you out. But South Georgia is, is a really amazing place.
- [38:53]
C
Yeah.
- [38:54]
A
And then so what happens? So you it's boat to Antarctica. Antarctica, did you say?
- [39:00]
B
Yes, there are a couple rare things. I mean, there aren't many, but you can fly there.
- [39:07]
C
Yeah.
- [39:08]
B
But the problem is if you fly there, you're landing on an ice sheet and you really don't see anything interesting. It's just ice. It's just ice as far as the eye can see. All of the interesting stuff. If you want to see land and penguins and seals, you're going to see that in the Antarctic Peninsula because that's the northernmost part of the continent and much of that, or at least parts of it are not encased in ice. So that's those. Unless you're an emperor penguin, which, you know, breed inland, you're not really going to. That's the only place you can see this stuff.
- [39:40]
C
Yeah.
- [39:41]
A
How long is that, that boat ride?
- [39:45]
B
I think it's like two or three days and it can be horrible. You can experience some of the worst seas imaginable. The first day, so just this was just crossing from Argentina to the Falklands. I was in my cabin and I had my glasses on the nightstand next to me and the ship was really rocking and I got very seasick. And when I got up that day, my first step out of bed, my first morning on the ship, I stepped on my glasses because they had been thrown off the nightstand and thankfully I had a spare pair of glasses that I always carried with me. But that was not a great way to start the cruise.
- [40:25]
C
Yeah.
- [40:26]
A
Oh, what's that level?
- [40:30]
B
I was going to say another great trip I took on the same ship in a different year. I went from Cape Town, South Africa to Morocco, along the west coast of Africa. That was a month long ship journey and we stopped at various countries along the way. Namibia, Angola, Republic of Congo, Sao Tome, Principe, Benin, Togo, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Senegal, Gambia, Western Sahara and Morocco. And that was a really very interesting way to see that part of Africa because you don't. Most people don't usually get to see it that way.
- [41:08]
C
Yeah, yeah.
- [41:10]
A
So you Saw it by water, is what you're saying, or were you back and forth?
- [41:13]
B
Well, we landed and we would go do stuff every day. You know, we went to a village when we were in Togo, went through Lome, visited the, the voodoo market, stuff like that. And so we did different things.
- [41:26]
A
What you talked about, that seasickness, it. I mean, you said the seas were horrific. And for how much you've done travel, for you to say horrific, it's got to be horrific. What, how, how much worse was it than getting seasick on a normal fishing charter trip or something like that?
- [41:43]
B
Seasick is seasick. I went. So I did a thing once where I went to go swimming with great white sharks in South Africa. And this is off of Gansbaai, which is east of Cape Town. And I think everyone on the, on the ship except for the crew vomited at least once.
- [42:06]
A
Oh, no.
- [42:07]
B
And the only time you didn't feel sick is when you were in the water, in the cage when the sharks were coming in because you weren't bobbing as much.
- [42:16]
A
Is it, is it just a constant up and downness or was it side to side or just every.
- [42:21]
B
Yeah, and it's just something if you're not used to. I mean, it's. It unless you're doing stuff, you know, nautically on a regular basis, you're just not going to experience it. Yeah, yeah, I gotten seasick a couple times. I remember I was in Australia and I took a ferry or as a large catamaran from the Whit Sundays out to. I don't know what you'd call. It was like a little floating place where you could stay for the day. And I got sick on that too.
- [42:51]
A
Have you learned any tricks? They say like, keep looking. What is it?
- [42:55]
B
Look, keep looking there at the horizon.
- [42:57]
A
Does it work? Is it.
- [42:59]
B
Yeah, I mean, to an extent, but yeah.
- [43:03]
A
Let's go back to Antarctica for a little bit. So you land, you land and then, then what happens?
- [43:08]
C
You have a.
- [43:08]
A
Do you have a tour guide or what does it look like? What is that?
- [43:12]
B
Yeah, so the various companies that do tours in Antarctica, they organize it amongst themselves. So you rarely ever see another ship. And no two places are ever at the same place at the same time. So this day, you stop at this place and, you know, they take you to shore. You get to spend several hours, you know, usually, I don't know, two, four or five hours exploring, and then you get on the Zodiac and come back to the ship. One of the coolest things we kind of did was one day the guide or the. It was actually just the guy who was running the Zodiac for us was like, hold on, let's do this. And he goes looking for a particular piece of ice that's floating in the water. He's looking for a very clear piece of ice that has, like, no bubbles in it. You can make this yourself in a freezer, actually. You just need to directionally get all the bubbles to one side. So eventually we find this piece of ice that's really clear. We haul it in our Zodiac, and he brings it up to the bar on the ship. And that night, all the drinks were made with this glacial ice that we found.
- [44:30]
A
Wow.
- [44:31]
B
In Antarctica.
- [44:32]
A
Oh, that's. That's awesome. What a cool story. So you would sleep on the boat?
- [44:38]
B
Oh, yeah.
- [44:39]
C
Yeah.
- [44:40]
B
There was an opportunity if you wanted to. They had like one or two opportunities where you could camp overnight in Antarctica in the snow, in a tent and a sleeping bag, if that's what you wanted to do. And I should say you go there. I was there in January, which is the summer in the Southern hemisphere. It's not as cold as you think it is. I was walking around the deck of the ship. So I'm from Wisconsin and I've lived all my life pretty much in Wisconsin or Minnesota. The temperatures were around freezing 32, maybe you'd get up to 34, 36 degrees, maybe a little colder. But that's not cold, Right. It's not below zero. It's not negative. And I was walking around the deck of the ship with just a sweater and sandals. And there were people from, like, Australia and Israel that were on the ship and they were in parkas all the time.
- [45:36]
C
Yeah.
- [45:36]
B
And like, this was the coldest thing they'd ever experienced. And I'm like, I don't know what to tell you this. It gets a lot worse.
- [45:44]
C
Right.
- [45:45]
A
Are you still traveling now in your career?
- [45:49]
B
I haven't been. I haven't left the country since 2020 because of the pandemic, basically. I started the podcast. It's a daily show, so that keeps me busy every day. And then the podcast exploded. And I'll probably. I'm probably going to go somewhere, but it's not going to be like, I used to travel where I was moving constantly. I'll go somewhere. I'll get a short term apartment rental. I'll stay there for a month and just work there.
- [46:18]
C
Yeah.
- [46:19]
B
And then come back.
- [46:22]
A
That's really cool. And you could do your podcast there because you could do your podcast everywhere, right? Anywhere. Yeah, everything. Everything everywhere. Where Would you go anything on, on your bucket list?
- [46:34]
B
I was thinking of going to like last, last winter I was planning to go to Australia and I never did it. I might do something like that again. Part of it is when I was in Australia, the Australian dollar was at parity with the US dollar and now it's at like 60 cents. So I kind of want to get my revenge. Prices in Australia are pretty high, but if you're paying in US Dollars, it's much more reasonable. So if I'm earning US Dollars and spending Australian dollars, it's not so bad.
- [47:03]
A
Wow, that's a good point. How about some like, travel tips? Any. Anything stand out? Great stuff you've learned along the way. Little hacks for people they can sink their teeth into.
- [47:16]
B
You know, the more I traveled, the more I realized a lot of that is just kind of nonsense. You know, there are, there are travel writers I know that get into like, oh, you should roll your clothes instead of folded. It's like, it doesn't matter. Just throw your in a bag. You know, I, when I started, I got all these quick dry travel clothes and stuff and like, yeah, jeans and T shirt, doesn't really matter. Anything you need you can buy when you're on the road. There are literally Americans, like, well, do they have toothpaste in other places? Like, yes, they do. They got soap. You don't have to worry about bringing everything with you. They have laundry detergent everywhere. It's universal. Bring a pen with you if you're traveling because you sometimes have to fill out a form before you land in another country. And the airline doesn't have pens and they often don't have pens when you land.
- [48:15]
C
Great.
- [48:16]
B
I have this tiny little pen that I have. I have a little pocket. I put my passport and stuff in. I keep it in that and that helps. There's my travel tip, which is, other than that, other than that, travel is really comfort. So when I remember the very first place I visited when I started traveling, I began going west. I went to Hawaii and then I went to French Polynesia. And French Polynesia was the first time I was on my own. I was in a place that know didn't speak English and you're a bit apprehensive. You know, how am I going to communicate? And after a while, you just get used to it. And you could dump me anywhere now and I don't think I'd bat an eye. You figure out a way to communicate. Learn a couple words and phrases anywhere you go, please. Thank you. Hello. People appreciate the effort. English, by and large, is the international language of tourism. So if you know English, that's, that's a huge plus. Already cell phones have made. It's like cheat mode for travel. The fact that you can pull up a map for anywhere, the fact that you can get things translated, there are now things that will translate on the fly. It can be voice activated. It's so. It's become so easy. So a lot of the fears people have of traveling, I think are vastly, vastly overplayed alone.
- [49:44]
C
Yeah, that's.
- [49:46]
A
That's a great tip in and of itself. I like the pen one. Have you ever relied on embassies through any of your travel? Whether you had to or just voluntarily you want to do.
- [49:56]
B
The only time I ever went to an embassy was. Well, what was a consulate was in Cape Town. That's because I needed. My. My passport was full and I already had extra pages put in and I needed more as we were doing this trip up West Africa because I was gonna be stopping in a lot of places. And I went in and said, well, it'll be 30 days before we get you a new passport. And I'm like, I don't got 30 days. And I told him what was happening. So, like, we're not supposed to do this. You're only supposed to get one set of extra pages, but we'll put a second set of extra pages in. So for a while, I had the thickest passport in the world, literally. And that's, that's the only time I've ever gone to an embassy. Really? Yeah, there's no need to, for the most part.
- [50:41]
C
Yeah.
- [50:42]
A
I hear some people hit, hit the embassy just to get some boots on the ground intel as far as like where the place to stay away. A lot of that's on websites now. Sometimes it's updated, sometimes it's not just tips.
- [50:55]
B
The problem is the State Department has an incentive to be over cautious. So they will issue warnings. I remember this very vividly. I think this was around 2000, 12, 10. Around that period, State Department issued a travel warning for Europe. Something might happen in Europe, and that was it. And they issue these because if something does happen, then they can say, see, we told you. And I don't know. I know a lot of people who are extreme travelers, many of whom have traveled more than me. Everyone ignores these. Absolutely everyone. No one pays attention. They are meaningless. If you look at a place and you look at crime rates and the example I always like to use is Honduras. I don't know if they're still this way. But for a period, Honduras had the highest homicide rate in the world. And they're like, people would look at it, oh, I'm not going there. It's dangerous. Well, in reality, all the homicide was taking place in the capital city, Tegucigalpa, and then it was really happening in a couple neighborhoods where there was a lot of gang activity. But that number reflected on the entire country. If you're out in a rural area, it's not dangerous. People are afraid of Mexico. A lot of the crime and the cartel stuff is all happening in the north. It's not really happening so much. If you go down to Cancun. Yeah, but we. We paint with a broad brush because the further we get away from something, the less we know. Whereas if you live in the United States, there very well may be a murder in your city. That happens at some point.
- [52:44]
A
Sure.
- [52:45]
B
People don't pack up and leave because somebody was killed. They know. It's like, oh, well, that was a domestic dispute. Well, I don't go to that part of town. They can. They can rationalize it because they understand the situation on the ground, whereas they don't stand and understand it in this other place. So they just paint everything. His broad brush, you know. Great example. There was an Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone several years ago. Ebola is a pretty nasty disease, and people were canceling trips to South Africa because of what was happening in Sierra Leone. Sierra Leone is closer to London than it is South Africa, but it's Africa. And so people lumped the. In Africa, if you've not been there, is really, really, really big, like fly. I remember flying from Frankfurt to Cape Town once, and it was like crossing the Pacific Ocean. It's big. And lumping all that together is absurd. And that's what people do because they have no sense of distinction between the different parts of Africa. There's no nuance. They just lump it all together.
- [53:54]
C
Yeah.
- [53:56]
A
Is there anything that's a definite check off your list that if a good friend of yours said, hey, come. Come with me here, wherever that place would be, you're like, now, I'm. I'm not. I'm never going back there again.
- [54:10]
B
No. There's no place I wouldn't. I would never return to. That's.
- [54:15]
A
That's cool.
- [54:16]
C
Wow.
- [54:17]
B
Well, a lot of people that say that it's because they had a bad experience in a place. And an experience could be, maybe they got pickpocketed, maybe they had bad weather for whatever reason. I remember the first time I went to Fiji. I met this absolutely stunningly beautiful woman from Austria. I had a great time. Next time I went to Fiji, I did not meet a stunningly beautiful woman from Austria. And it wasn't the same experience.
- [54:44]
C
Right.
- [54:44]
B
And your experiences end up coloring your perception of a place. And when people say, oh, this place is terrible, I was there. Yeah, they may have had a bad experience, but it doesn't mean that it's bad for everybody.
- [54:59]
A
Yeah, that's really good.
- [55:02]
C
I love that.
- [55:03]
A
All right, so you're so sort of like this next chapter for you, then. You're going to continue podcasting. You're going to do some travel. You haven't been out in the country in a while. What else? Tell. Tell me a little bit more about yourself and some dreams, aspirations, goals you have.
- [55:19]
B
That's. That's the biggest thing right now. The show is doing really, really well. I've caught lightning in a bottle. I'm working to grow the show. I. I think there's still room to 10x the audience, and it's going to require a lot of work and investment on my part, but that's what I'm doing. And, you know, a lot of people, you know, I get that. Oh, don't you want to go start traveling again? And I always have to remind them I've traveled a lot.
- [55:47]
A
Right, sure.
- [55:48]
B
I'm good. Like, whatever filling up to that level is, I think I hit it and then overflowed it a little bit. So I'm not that eager to necessarily get back on the road again. I will, but now I'm doing something that, you know, this will probably be the last big thing I do in my life. I'm in my 50s, so I might as well see it to completion. And, you know, if I can do that, then I can travel as much as I want and not have to worry about it.
- [56:18]
C
Yeah.
- [56:19]
A
What, what kind of guests are you looking at for your show? Who do you need? What kind of guests? What kind of guests you want? Are you.
- [56:28]
B
There are no guests.
- [56:30]
A
Okay, so you don't have any guests at all. It's just mono all the time.
- [56:33]
B
Yeah, it's a. It's a monologue show. I write a 2000 word script every day.
- [56:39]
A
That's so awesome.
- [56:41]
C
All right.
- [56:41]
A
And it's everything everywhere, I want to.
- [56:43]
B
Make sure, because everything everywhere, daily, every day is something completely different. If you don't like what's on today, you'll probably like what's on tomorrow.
- [56:52]
A
Yeah, there's a good chance you'll like tomorrow. What was the last thing. What was I haven't seen in your content. What was some of your, one of your craziest or coolest things that you've done on your show?
- [57:05]
B
Oh, that depends on who you ask. Today's episode was all about hair. The evolution of hair, the content of hair. Hair and different animals, how it's different, why people have different color hair, different textures of hair.
- [57:17]
C
Yeah.
- [57:18]
B
Tomorrow's episode is going to be on Operation Dragoon, which was the other landing in France in World War II. The landing in southern France was supposed to take place on D Day. It never happened. It didn't take place until August. And it's often overlooked with all the other events that happened in 1944. But, you know, I do stuff on technology, science, interesting people.
- [57:43]
C
Yep.
- [57:44]
A
What guides what, what guides your topics?
- [57:48]
B
Whatever I'm interested in.
- [57:49]
C
Yeah.
- [57:50]
B
I have a list of 950 show ideas that I've developed over the years. And I take sometimes for that or sometimes it's just something that, an idea that pops into my head.
- [58:00]
C
Yep. Yep.
- [58:02]
A
That's awesome. All right, well, you'll have a new subscriber here. I'll be, I'll be following your show. So I appreciate your time here today. It's incredible.
- [58:12]
B
Thanks for having me.
- [58:13]
A
What an awesome story and I appreciate you sharing it. All right, we'll be in touch soon. I'm going to hit stop here. And like you said in the beginning, you know the game.
- [58:28]
C
Ready.