Travel Tribe Channel
host: Jordan Chmiel Twardowski
living abroad, cultural immersion, travel experiences, food and cultural differences
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Transcript:
Jordan
This week on the Travel Tribe X podcast. We are joined by Derek Sivers. Author, circus performer, entrepreneur, founder of CD Baby, and who I would consider a modern philosopher. We discuss his article, Why I Left America, as well as explore some of the concepts of this chapter intertwined with the world in his book, How to Live. Highlighting the value of travel, immersing yourself in other cultures, and my favourite, spreading your seed. Enjoy this week’s episode of Travel Tribe X.
Jordan
Today. I wanted to bring you on the podcast because I think you have really good insights and really good perspectives. One of the perspectives you have, which I had a chance to read about, is your view on traveling and living abroad. You recently wrote an article about why you left America. So I want to start off with a little short part from your book, How to Live.
Jordan
It begins like this, “how far should you travel? Look to nature’s example of floating dandelion seeds and sticky birds. Plants and trees spread their seeds as far as possible. And so should you spread your DNA worldwide. Not just biological DNA, but the other things that make you who you are. Your ideas, values, and relationships. To live a full and rewarding life, intertwine yourself with the world. Move somewhere far away, plan to stay, bring no baggage, leave your expectations and certainties behind”. If you can walk us through your decision process when you thought about leaving America for the first time.
Derek Sivers
Sure. I was living in Santa Monica, California, right near the beach. To me, Santa monica was perfect. The weather is always perfect. The people are a nice combination of ambitious but friendly. Los Angeles has all the opportunity in the world. You can be world famous and incredibly rich if you want to be, from that place. There’s nothing holding you back there. It just felt like why go anywhere else on earth? It felt like the best place on earth. I broke up with my girlfriend there and suddenly I realized that not only was I free, but, we learn when we’re surprised. We learn and grow when something upends our expectations. Santa Monica had become really comfortable to me. It was not surprising me. I was doing my work, but I had this other image of pushing myself out into the world to be constantly upended almost on a daily basis. And you don’t have to travel the world to do that. But that is a nice shortcut to being surprised every day, is to travel the world. But I didn’t want to just travel as a tourist. I don’t Instagram, I don’t need to impress anyone. I wanted to really go and get to know a place and integrate myself. So I just came up with a new plan for my life, which was to leave America and push out into the world and live everywhere else. Since I’d spent, I was almost 40 at this time. So it’s like I’d spent the first 40 years of my life in the U.S. I want to spend the next 40 out.
Jordan
And what were some of the most memorable surprises that you stumbled upon during your time abroad?
Derek Sivers
In Singapore, I spoke to a business class. No was it entrepreneurship? I don’t remember, but it was at a business school. I was speaking to a class about business and they asked me to come in as an entrepreneur and talk about starting a business. I started out by saying, “who here would like to start their own business?”. No hands went up, and I said, “nobody?”. Reluctantly, one little hand went up. I was really confused because if you were to ask this question in America, every hand would go up. Every single person would raise their hand. Of course, everybody wants to start their own business. So I thought they were just being shy. I started picking on people that didn’t raise their hand. I said, “why don’t you want to start your own business?”. She said, “well, why would I take the risk? I’d rather get a safe, good paying job”. I asked somebody else, why don’t you want to start a business? He said, “well, my parents endured a lot of hardship with their own little tiny noodle selling business so that I don’t have to”. I asked somebody else, and they said, “well, I wouldn’t want to disappoint my family. My family is counting on me to support them when I’m older. That’s too risky”.
Derek Sivers
Then I realized that, growing up in America, I know that we’re not the center of the world, but the American media can make you feel like you’re in the center of the world. That’s when I realized how far off to the edge we are. Not just as Americans, but I was a California American. That’s like the extreme end of individualism, entrepreneurship, risk taking, all these kinds of things are off on the edge of the spectrum. So that was my first re-shifting and realizing that they weren’t wrong for being the way they were. I was just off to one extreme.
Jordan
One of the things that when we bring guests on here and they tell us some of their stories of going abroad, they talk about this inspiration to leave, which you talked about. But one of the other things that comes up is the fear of leaving. There’s a lot of fear especially because of the unknown. Did you have any fears before leaving? And if you did, how did you deal with that?
Derek Sivers
In short, no, none at all. I was so ready to get out. No fear. That said, I did plan to start easy, when I said that my idea was to spend the next 40 years out of the US. It was, well, let me start with England. That’s as easy as can be. Well, I guess Canada, that doesn’t even count. But so it was, start with England, then Australia, then somewhere else in Europe, then Brazil. So the idea was to get progressively more and more unlike the country I began in.
Jordan
What would you say was the biggest difference or the craziest country for you, I guess cultural wise, or that kind of really stands out?
Derek Sivers
Well, Japan, obviously. I actually just got back from two weeks in Japan again. I’ve been going there many times since 1992. But it’s such different values. It’s interesting now, going back with a kid. All my other times in Japan, I was solo or just with another person my age, but I brought my son, who’s ten years old. We spent two weeks there. There were so many things that he was not allowed to do. Don’t touch this, don’t touch that, don’t go there. You can’t go to that. No, must not. Whereas here in New Zealand, it’s so free range. It was just interesting seeing from a day to day experience, how different that was for him and how different it would be to raise a kid in Japan, where just so many things are forbidden and children are not trusted. People are not trusted, I mean, just in general. I felt this in Singapore too, that we don’t trust you. You must do everything exactly like this because we don’t trust you. Whereas here in New Zealand, people are trusted.
Derek Sivers
I saw that in Iceland too. There was the biggest waterfall in Iceland. I think it’s called Gulfoss. There’s a path that goes right up to the waterfall and there’s hardly even a gate. There’s hardly even a fence. There’s a little wooden fence. But you could just easily walk over and fall into the waterfall. Whereas if you go to Niagara Falls in the U.S, there’s giant barriers to prevent lawsuits or whatever. They need to completely block you. Anyway, trust is a big one that you feel on a day to day basis. But the strangest place, of course, was Japan. I only spent a few days in Mongolia. I don’t know if I could count that. I think at the deeper cultural level, Japan is about as different as can be for now.
Jordan
Yeah, I had a chance to spend some time in Kyoto, and that was one of the few places that literally took my breath away. It was looking at the Golden Pavilion. It was just so gorgeous, and I loved how organized everything was. It’s got a deep, deep, rich culture and history. So I really like Japan.
Derek Sivers
You and I talked just a bit before we hit record. My situation in life is that I set out at the age of 40 to go live all around the world, and I wanted to live in basically every country as much as I could until I die. Then I had a baby with someone who, right after our baby was born, she declared that she never wanted to travel ever again. I want to be in my kid’s life every week. I don’t want to be that dad that’s gone all the time. So my travel plans were interrupted. I think by now I would have spent some time in Zanzibar, Azerbaijan, Peru and places like that, that would be quite different. As of now, I haven’t. Instead I read about them, I learn about them. So here I am naming Japan as the weirdest place I’ve been. I’m sure if I were to spend some time in Turkmenistan or Sudan, that I’d find even more different beliefs than I’ve encountered so far.
Jordan
One of the great opportunities of this podcast, I get a chance to listen to some of these stories. For example, someone who road tripped throughout Africa and you do hear about, for example, Sudan, really surprised me. Because the people are super friendly or stuff like that. It’s a way for me to travel without having to travel getting to host these podcast episodes.
Derek Sivers
Sorry, was that Francis? Did you meet Francis Tapon? Is it him?
Jordan
No, this is a different guy. His name is Dominic. They did a road trip from Cape Town, South Africa, all the way to Egypt, I believe.
Derek Sivers
Dude, you should look up Francis Tapon, I think is his name T-a-p-o-n. He wrote a book called Hidden Europe, which is about Eastern Europe. Then after writing that book, he spent a couple of years going to every country in Africa and ended up marrying a woman from there. He has a rough draft of his book about that, but hasn’t published it yet. He’s a fascinating dude. You should have him on the show or just anybody listening to this. Look him up. Find that book called Hidden Europe, Eastern Europe. It’s so interesting. I read it and loved it, but I didn’t take my usual book notes. If you go to my website sive.rs/Book, you’ll see my notes from all the books I’ve read since 2007, and there’s like 350 books there now. But you won’t find his book there because I decided not to take notes on it. It was just such a wonderful travelogue full of his observations and opinions that I just kicked back and enjoyed it and didn’t take any notes. But loved his book, and I highly recommend it and look him up online. I really hope he publishes his book about his travelogue through Africa.
Jordan
It’s always really fun to hear the stories about people going to these hidden countries, I call them hidden gems that have lots of traditions and values and different foods that we’re not accustomed to. So I’ll definitely check that out. There’s one thing I want to talk about. You were talking a little bit about culture, and I wanted to share one more quote from your book that I really liked. And it says, “Ask questions until you understand why things are the way they are. Culture is often historical, like a person’s outlook on life is shaped by what they’ve been through. A culture’s values are shaped by its recent history. Learn the local mindset. Don’t ask how they do things. Ask how we do things. That small difference is important. This is your new home”. When I travel to new places, I feel like a chameleon. I’m trying to immerse myself as quick as possible. From your personal experiences, are there any kind of strategies or ways to even help bring walls down of local people?
Derek Sivers
Going to people’s homes, hoping that they invite you into their home. That’s a huge one. I think if you only stay out in restaurants and hotels, you don’t really get a sense of it. Getting out of the city, cities are by nature a little homogenizing because there are so many international travelers. But if you go out to the suburbs, out to the small towns, you get a more untainted view, undiluted insight into culture. So ideally, if you could get out into the smaller towns and have somebody invite you to stay at their home, I think that’s the best way. That said, festivals can be a really concentrated dose of a country’s culture. You really get to see a lot of culture concentrated into a small space if you go to festivals. That could include weddings, parties, birthday parties. You observe a lot of culture in an hour, in a birthday party or a wedding or a festival. So there’s that. But I think the staying in someone’s home to me, when I think back about the experiences, it really made me feel like, Oh, wow, okay, I get this more now. We’re staying in someone’s home.
Derek Sivers
But then lots of conversations, real open conversations with people that explain their mindset. Like the thing I said earlier about the Singapore Business School, that was just the start of it. After the kids in that class said these things, then I started talking with a lot of Singaporean friends and just more and more and more understood the mindset of Singaporeans. In the two and a half years I lived there, I probably met one on one with about 300 Singaporeans. So it was 300 conversations with 300 different people of different age groups and races and socioeconomic classes and all that stuff. So through all of that, I really got into the mindset of what it is to grow up in Singapore and be from Singapore.
Jordan
Yeah, that’s fascinating. I was just kind of thinking when you were saying go to people’s homes. So I was like, How would I go in people’s homes? But we had a podcast on here, it was actually a couple and I really like what they did. It was a Japanese woman and an Indian man, and what they did was they brought their local clothes and spices and foods with them and what they wanted to do was to ride their bike from Thailand all the way to Iran. So what they would do is they would ride their bike and they would find local people to stay at their houses. And what they would do for them, they would dress up in their in their authentic clothes from back home and cook them a meal from from back home. It was a way for these local people or rural people who never get a chance to travel, they got a taste of Indian culture and Japanese culture, which they probably most likely wouldn’t have gotten. It was just a very heartwarming story to hear. For example, when they were in Iran, people would just constantly invite them over to their house for tea or for whatever. You also talk about in your chapter, about spreading your seed and leaving things from you behind wherever you go. Do you have any specific examples of anything that you do specifically, or if it’s just randomly whenever you go anywhere abroad?
Derek Sivers
I think specifically, no. Just being in a place and meeting people and talking with people, not just in a quick transactional sense, but if you can reach out and find somebody that wants to meet with you and have a good conversation, one or two hours of just one on one talk with this person, you are, by doing that, sharing some of yourself. Like I’m doing right now with you and you’re doing right now with me. I’m learning more about you and you’re learning more about me and it’s like I’m leaving part of myself with you. The way that I think. My thought process, the way I see the world, it sticks, it’s in there. It’s now in your perception of the world. I think about the people that I’ve met and talked with in Japan, in Switzerland, in Finland, they stayed with me. They’re in my head. At any point. I can think back to that conversation, in the sauna with a guy in Finland. Yeah, that’s in there. I think just by talking with people, you’re leaving a bit of yourself. The book, How to Live, was designed to take every approach to life to its logical and maybe ridiculous conclusion. So I did actually mean go have babies with people from around the world. I meant that very literally. I do believe that that would be a very good thing to do. My son’s mom is from India. She’s from Tamil Nadu in the southeast region of India. So my son is half Indian and so I have been doing this a bit myself.
Jordan
It’s actually funny, when I was reading your book, I think the first chapter was on independence and I’m like, yes, that’s so true. This is so right way. And then I read the next one I’m like, wait, those can actually contradict each other. Then I realized like, okay, these are all maximums.
Derek Sivers
Hence the subtitle 27 Conflicting answers, and one weird conclusion.
Jordan
Yeah. I liked it though. Also as we talked about spreading your seed both literally or I guess metaphorically as well, taking things away with you when you kind of leave places. What do you think were kind of some perspectives or values or anything that you gained by traveling or immersing yourself abroad that you think you would not have had if you had not left the US?
Derek Sivers
Oh, God, so much. Some of them were first hand. But let me start with the second hand ones. I really do think that you can get a lot from reading books and watching movies and such. The movie Persepolis is an animated movie by a woman that grew up in Iran and left and went to France after the revolution. She made a beautiful first comic book and then it was turned into a movie about it. So find either the comic book or the movie called Persepolis. It gives you a wonderful insight into what it was like to grow up in Iran in the 1970s. So even though I haven’t been there yet and I would love to go, that insight really helped. Then there’s a great book about French culture called AU Contraire. That is so, so good. It gives you so much insight into why the French are the way they are. Where it comes from. What’s the origin. It helps explain the mindset. Same with another book by, I think her name is Kate Fox, called Watching The English. Watching The English is also a masterpiece. I think AU Contraire is the best I’ve ever read, and Watching The English is the second best book I’ve ever read about a culture. So even if you hadn’t been to those places, reading a book like that can really help explain the mindset to you much more than showing up on an airplane and taking a picture of famous places could do for you. So those are the second hand ones first.
Derek Sivers
The first hand ones I think were, let’s say, the Singapore understanding of this mindset of doing what’s best for your family. Like as a former musician, I would meet people who would tell me that they used to do music and I’d say, “oh man, you need to follow your dreams. If music is what you want to do, you should do that”. And they’d say, “well, no, I want to do what’s best for my family”. I’d say, no, you do what’s best for you. Then I realized later that that was my American individualism speaking. That in their philosophy, it’s more important to do what’s best for your family and maybe even your country. That’s more important than what you want. It doesn’t matter that I want to be a poet. That would not earn any money for my family. So I’m not going to be a poet. I’m going to get a job at a bank because that’s better for my family. In that philosophy, that is the right thing to do. Whereas somebody in L.A. would tell you that that is totally the wrong thing to do. That you need to follow your dreams, because that’s the L.A. philosophy. A little similar with Japan. I have spent a lot of time in Japan. I’ve gone many times over 20 years. Wow. 30, 30 years now. I’ve understood the Japanese mindset of seeking harmony. It’s a lot of people in a small space. And so they developed a philosophy of getting along, of keeping the harmony.
Derek Sivers
When you’re in Europe, the importance of history, whereas in America we don’t care about history. Who cares? Nothing before I was born matters. In Europe, it matters a lot. Then you start to understand why and how it shapes the whole world view. So things like these. Sometimes it’s hard to put your finger on an exact thing, but you start to soak in the the mindset and ideally really understand them. Don’t alienate them going like, they’re weird. But take it on and understand that this could have been you. You could have been born there. You could have believed these things and and you still can.
Jordan
One of the most influential values that I picked up on while living, especially in Korea, was collectivism and eating together as a group. You don’t go to a restaurant and you order for yourself, you order for the whole group and you eat together. Whenever you have snacks or candy or whatever, you’re always asking everyone if they want some. I remember going home and my brother pulled out Snickers bar and just bit it. I was offended. I was like, “how dare you not ask anybody else?”. Before going to Korea, I would never even have thought of that. I’m like, oh, it’s a Snickers. Why the heck would I, ruin his enjoyment? I think those those are shifts that happen when you’re abroad. So usually at the end of our podcast, we have a Travel Tribe Toss Up. We just ask three rapid fire questions and maybe you can answer what comes to mind. The first question is, which places have you gone to that took your breath away?
Derek Sivers
India.
Jordan
I like that. Okay. Very good.
Derek Sivers
Sorry. That was rapid fire in its duration, but not in its pondering time. Actually, no, sorry. I’ve got a better specific answer. Okay, scratch that, Borobudur, Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Borobudur is an ancient Buddhist temple, and only if you stay at this one specific lodge that is within the grounds of Borobudur, and you stay there the night before, then you have access to enter Borobudur at four in the morning before the sun comes up. And be in it as the sun starts to come up. It’s really magical. I highly recommend it. Look it up. It’s got all these hundreds of stupas in this big square and you walk around it. If you’re a travel junkie and you want to go somewhere breathtaking, if that’s what you’re looking for, go to Yogyakarta, Indonesia, sometimes spelled Yogyakarta and nearby that is Borobudur. B-o-r-o-b-u-d-u-r like Borobudur in Yogyakarta, sometimes spelled Yogyakarta, Indonesia. You must stay at the lodge that’s inside the boundaries of the Borobudur Temple so that you can go on the 4 a.m. tour, which is just so wonderful. I think that’s the only thing in my travel history that I would call breathtaking.
Jordan
That’s lovely. I love that. Second question. What is the most unique or memorable food you have tried?
Derek Sivers
In Japan, in Kamakura, which is south, I had something once, I was dating a Japanese woman at the time who said, “here, try this”. I tasted it was like, Oh God, what the hell? I said, ’what is that?”. She goes, “oh, it is cuttlefish soaked in its own intestines”. I was like, okay, that was nasty. That was gross, but a more interesting story is when I was in Iceland. Right there in central Reykjavik, there was a sushi restaurant with the rotating sushi carrousel where you just pick up little plates and you go, oh, that plate looks good. So I had some of this, I had some salmon, I had some tuna, I had some shrimp. Then there was this one that looked like a different kind of tuna, like a darker tuna. I was like, Oh, okay. And I ate it. And it was all right. It was fine. But later, when I was paying, I said, “so what was this one? That darker tuna?” They said, “oh, that’s whale”.
Jordan
Oh, gosh.
Derek Sivers
I ate whale sushi unknowingly.
Jordan
It’s interesting how they’re all seafood related. In South Korea, we went to a fish market and the bottom of the market, you go and get live fish and then go upstairs the restaurant and they cook it for you, whichever you want. My friend and I wanted to try something different. They gave us the stingray, fermented stingray. So we brought it all upstairs and she told us to smell it before, and it had a very, very strong odor. So you go upstairs and they ask you, do you want to grill? You want to put it in soup? We gave them all the food and we told them, grill it. They come back with this fermented stingray is still raw. We’re wondering, why isn’t this grilled? Oh, you eat it the way it is. Okay, we get our chopsticks, we take a little piece and we eat it and immediately gag reflex wanting to barf because it tastes like ammonia. It has that smell to it. The Koreans next to us were just laughing. Seafood is always a risky food to try. All right. Thanks for sharing that. The last one most embarrassing cultural story that you’ve had happen to you over your travels, if any.
Derek Sivers
I don’t get embarrassed. It just as a general life rule. So sorry. I think I don’t have any answers for this. I think it’s okay to just shrug it off. I don’t really care what anybody thinks of me. If I do something that’s completely culturally inappropriate or wrong and somebody tells me, just, oh, okay, sorry. I think sometimes they can see that you’ve got good intentions if you’re being friendly, respectful, smiling and apologetic when you mess up and not being brash and the opposite. I think there’s really nothing to be embarrassed about. It’s like, Oh, learning experience. You could zoom out and say, so much in life we learn from those “embarrassing” moments. When you just ask really embarrassing question and that’s how you learn. So, no, I don’t get embarrassed. So sorry. No story there.
Jordan
I like it. Well, keep it like that. I like it. Good. All right. Well, I want to thank you so much for coming on today. I want to thank you for the material you put out there. It’s really inspirational and I really enjoy it. If people are interested in checking out some more of your articles or books or resources, where can they find your material?
Derek Sivers
Oh, you know the answer. Go to my website. Just go to sive.rs and email me. Anybody listening to this should send me an email and introduce yourself. I don’t really do social media. I don’t like the noise, but I love hearing from strangers around the world especially. So go to sive.rs, see my website and especially see the link to email me and introduce yourself.
Jordan
Fantastic, and I will confirm that you do respond to emails. I thank you so much. I appreciate it and stay in touch. Take care. Derek. Cool.
Derek Sivers
Cool. Thanks for having me. Bye bye.
Jordan
Well, that does it for this week’s episode of Travel Tribe podcast. Join us each Tuesday as we release new episodes with great adventurers. Until then, remember, the most dangerous thing you can do in life is to play it safe. Stay adventurous.