Welcome to Episode 107 of my “Travel Tales From Beyond The Brochure” podcast.
So, in August I hit both my 100th country and my 50th birthday – I arrived in Norway with three days to spare. Given these two momentous milestones, I figured it made sense to do a podcast that covered, well, at least my country count. We don’t need to talk about my ever-advancing age.
I had originally planned to do a pod looking at each of my countries by first visit, and a brief synopsis of how I felt on that first visit. But then I realised that would take quite a long time, would feel a tad repetitive, and would get quite boring really. So instead I got my friend V to ask me questions about my visiting 100 countries. A couple of those questions are standard and cheesy, a couple are really quite random (but that’s what you get when you crowdsource from teenagers), and a couple are quite deep and thoughtful. Very few of them are what you expect.
Topics discussed in this episode are:
- A brief recap of my recent ultramarathon
- Christmas trees
- I’ve been to 100 countries, but what *is* a country? And what isn’t?
- The obligatory rant about borders
- Colonialism and poverty tourism
- Not everywhere is great but be careful how you phrase it
- Good manners and showing respect
- Food culture and putting things in your mouth that maybe you shouldn’t (not a euphemism)
- Best, worst, and most off-brand countries
- What next?
- The joy of toilets around the world
- Where to survive a zombie apocalypse
- The most ‘human’ place in the world
You can listen via the feed above, or via Spotify, or on your podcast app of choice. Let me know if it isn’t, by the way, and I’ll see what I can do. In addition, a PDF transcript of this episode is available.
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I was interviewed by the lovely Victoria Pearson, but you can call her V.