I just got back from visiting my 60th country, and it was Cuba. I work full-time at a travel company, and each year, we get to staff a tour. I’ve been with my company for quite a while at this point (going on 11 years here in a couple of months), so yes, I’m very lucky and yes that’s how I’ve been able to rack up so many countries. And as I’m writing this blog about my trip to Cuba, I realized that I’ve only been sharing my travel stories with you all starting at Estonia and Cuba since those were my most recent trips. But there’s a life, and a world, and 58 other countries that got me to this point. I think it’s important to explain how I even got here and why it was so important to me to make travel a priority in my life… I promise I’ll get to my trip to Cuba, but here’s the backstory first.
Back in my 20’s I worked in the Music industry, in Los Angeles, and had this nagging feeling in the back of my head that all I wanted to do was travel, and I hadn’t done a lot of exploring yet. The only countries I had been to up until that point were the U.S., Mexico and Canada (and that’s really only because we lived a few hours away from the border in New Mexico and my grandmother’s house was in Montana). I didn’t even “cross the pond” until I was 23. I think I really started going overseas when I was 24 or 25. My brother was living in Turkey, and in college I couldn’t afford to be away from work -let alone travel- so no one in our family had made a point to go over and visit him. He told me that if I could figure out a way to pay for a ticket to get to Istanbul, then he would pay for us to spend a week in Egypt. Of course I figured out a way to buy that plane ticket. While I was there, he encouraged me and challenged me to pick a place I had always wanted to go to… and to go by myself. Egypt was always #1 on my list of places to go, and because I knocked that out so early- I thought, “well I’ve always wanted to go to Australia”. I had invited my boyfriend at that time, and he said he couldn’t afford it, and then I invited my Dad and he said, “you know, I have a mortgage to pay here!” So, there I was, I had picked my first solo destination. When I got back from Australia and Fiji, later that year, I knew I wanted to be able to travel Internationally on a regular basis, but that trip was just too damn expensive. And this was before Influencers were galavanting around the World. I knew I wouldn’t be able to pay for annual getaways on my own, and I didn’t want to “see” the World by being an Artist Tour Manager. If you are touring for concerts, then you travel long distances to see the inside of arenas. I wanted to get out and actually see the places I was going to. I had turned 27, and it was probably the most tumultuous year of my life. I wasn’t happy working in the Music industry, I needed to find a job that paid more, and I needed to figure out a way to have travel be a part of my life.
Around that time, my brother moved back to South Korea. He had lived there for a few years, to teach English to kids, and then moved to Turkey to teach adults. He met his wife there, and they wanted to go back to Korea to pay off bills and save up for their wedding. I was at such a crossroads, and he had suggested I apply for a teaching gig through EPIK (English Program in Korea). He said I’d have a free ticket to Korea, a free ticket home annually, and would be able to travel around Asia for super cheap. He suggested it would be a safe landing pad, as I’d have a job and would be able to pay my bills- but I could also take the time and space to think about what I wanted to do next. I had tried to salvage what I could in the Music industry- I worked at the Live Nation office in Hollywood, CA, and had been in talks with the Head of Emerging Markets about moving to Beijing or Dubai. He lived in UAE, and was out in Los Angeles for a week and I took a meeting with him. I knew I had to make my decision about which route to go and would have my decision made by the end of that meeting. I really wanted to move to Dubai, but when I got to the meeting he was really pushing for India. I even remember him saying something like, “well if you’re really open to anywhere and willing to go wherever for the company, then we need you in India”. I just couldn’t do it. I didn’t want to add more locations to the mix, as Beijing and South Korea and Dubai were already a lot to think about. I walked out of that meeting knowing I was going to be enrolling in a TEFL certification course over at UCLA.
I lived in South Korea for a year and a half. It was neat being an expat, and I traveled to a few different spots in Asia (Tokyo, Shanghai, and Southeast Asia) but I knew deep down that I was a “home” girl. I wanted to be based in the U.S. but have a job that would pay for me to travel both domestically and internationally. I was already living in Korea for a year, when I signed on for a 2nd year. However, all of that changed when I discovered a former colleague from Live Nation / House of Blues was working for a travel company based out of Denver, CO. I saw some pics she had posted on Facebook- she was traveling all over the Alps and talking about how much she loved her job. She originally moved out to Denver to work for a hotel, so I messaged her asking what hotel job she got that had her hiking up and down the Swiss Alps. She said she moved over to a travel company, and that I strangely would be a good fit there due to some of the day-to-day things I used to do back at Live Nation. That night I went through my teaching contract, as I had heard there was a narrow window of time to get out of your contract at the year and a half mark, but I needed to know whether I was still within that date range. I can’t remember the exact day that I went through my contract, but I want to say it was a Thursday and the deadline to get out of the contract ended up being the following Tuesday. I had a weekend to really think about what I wanted my life to look like for the next 6 months and beyond.
I decided to cut my contract short and headed back to the US in the Fall of 2014. I applied at the travel company and started there that November. Never in a million years did I think I’d be at a place for 10.5 years, and counting, but there’s flexibility in my schedule and times where the work is super busy and other times when it’s more lax, so I think that’s what has been working for me the most. And my job has afforded me the ability to go on trips- both domestically and internationally- a couple of times a year. The craziest detail is that that’s what I was looking for when I got back from South Korea. I literally put it out there in the Universe that I wanted a job, based in the U.S., that would pay for me to go on domestic and international trips. And when I go to these destinations, I’m on a tour and I’m getting to see the most important sites in each city. I quit working in the Music industry because I was afraid I would be putting in the time to go to incredible far off destinations, but not actually getting to see a whole lot once I was there. I definitely don’t regret my decision to switch career paths. I’ve now been to 60 countries, 6 continents and circumnavigated the globe at least once with the amount of planes I’ve been on.
Last year, I was traveling around Africa and posting pics from Victoria Falls in Zambia. A guy I went to high school with reached out to me on Facebook asking me how I was able to do it- get out and travel and go to places so out of the ordinary. He told me he had never been out of the United States and was too scared…
Here are a few tips I shared with him, and am happy to share with you if you are wondering how I’ve been able to make travel happen:
- If you want to just get out and go somewhere- go solo. If I waited for a man, or a family member, or a friend, or a colleague to go with me, then I would’ve most likely never gotten off the couch. It was important to me to state earlier that I wanted to go somewhere and asked my boyfriend and my Dad if they’d come with me, and both said no- and then I just went by myself. Sometimes people don’t want to go, or their schedules don’t line up with yours- and that’s okay. Do what you want. Start with a destination you’re super excited about, or one to get your feet wet. London, for example, is a great place because you get to experience jet lag, use your passport, see and eat some different things, but you won’t be super overwhelmed by the culture or language.
- My mom is always aware of my travel destinations, and I never go somewhere she’s not okay with. Yes, I’m a 40-year-old grown woman but I’m also going to make sure I’m respecting my Mom. I always make her aware and send her my passport information, hotel info, flight info, and itinerary before I go abroad. The funny thing is, she’s always been supportive and happy to hear about where I’m going, but do you want to know the one place she’s ever told me I couldn’t travel to? Washington DC- this was back when I was in college, and there was a sniper out by one of the freeways and that was the only time she ever told me she wasn’t comfortable with me going somewhere.
- If you don’t feel comfortable with solo travel, and don’t have anyone in your immediate circle who wants to go with you- join a tour group. Here’s the key to all my travels- I work for a tour group travel company, and I’ve learned that the majority of places I want to go to, are best visited through group travel. Obviously, I just back from Cuba, but I’ve also been to Israel, Jordan, and South Africa for work- and I would not have gone to any of those destinations solo. All the places I’ve been able to travel to recently, have been the highest on my bucket list, but none of them would have been attainable for me if I hadn’t gone with a tour group. Why? Because I want to make sure I’m heeding any precautions a local Tour Director has, and I want to make sure I’m being accounted for wherever we go.
- I ask my colleagues for insight before I plan travel to certain destinations– As you can imagine, I work with people who have also done quite a bit of traveling, and I have gone to them for advice on certain places. I have not been to Morocco or Qatar yet, and that’s because I’ve reached out to colleagues who have been and they said those are not destinations to travel to as a solo woman traveler. I’ve since learned that Qatar has tours that you can book from the Airport, if you have an 8+ hour layover, and talked to a woman who has done that, and loved it, so now I have a better idea of how I’d want to plan my travels for a destination like Qatar. Despite my love of travel, there are places I will not go to without talking to others and learning about the safest ways to check out the country as a woman.
- I’m not going gangbusters when I’m actually out traveling– once I’m in a new country, I’m in bed as early as I can be and up as early as I can be. Obviously, this blog is all about how I don’t drink alcohol anymore, but I used to have a policy with myself that I wouldn’t get drunk if I was traveling by myself. If I could have a glass of wine at dinner, in or near my hotel, then I’d do that, but I wasn’t going to go out and rage and put myself in any extremely compromising situations. I don’t travel to find random dudes to hook up with and I don’t go out and party by myself. The truth is, if I’m by myself then I’m typically back in my room after I finish dinner. Keep in mind- if you’re doing any excursions or activities, all of those take place first thing in the morning. I had to get up early to see alligators in New Orleans, and to take a helicopter ride around the island of Mauritius. Also, some of the most amazing things you can do as a traveler take place first thing in the morning- if you want to go to Angkor Wat, in Cambodia, that requires being up and meeting your tuktuk driver around 3 or 4 am. On my recent trip to Prague, my colleagues and I were up at 4 am so we could go get our photos taken in the Old Town at 5:30. And those are some of the most incredible memories I have ❤
Booze Free in Music City 
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