LEARN HOW TO TRAVEL THE WORLD WITH TRAVEL WRITER ROLF POTTS ✈ 📖 😍 | Go Natural English

Hey naturals Gabby Wallace here

And I am super excited to bring you a very special conversation

with one of my favorite travel writers in English Ralph Potts

Ralph wrote a book that's been very influential in my life called

Vagabonding, and he's just published a new book called

Souvenir so join us as we talk about our philosophy on travel

Language learning and where you can really see the real America and much more you're gonna love our

Conversation so if you are an english learner and you would like to learn more

english for your travels or your other english related goals in life make sure that you come visit gonaturalenglish.com

Where you can learn more with the go natural English method the link is in the description gonaturalenglish.com

I'll see you there now enjoy the conversation with travel author Ralph Potts

Hey, Ralph, it's so good to have you here to have a conversation with you

I'm a huge fan of your work and reading your book

vagabonding years ago gave me the confidence to

Travel and explore the world independently, and I just want to bring you

to have a conversation and

talk a little bit about traveling and

Exploring and language learning and your new book as well

I'm super excited to hear what you have been working on recently and what you're excited about so

Thank you so much for joining me here. You bet I'm always love to talk about travel, so

Awesome very good, so yeah your your book vagabonding kind of opened the doors to travel

Just changing my mindset

I think you know a lot of people as you know have this idea that travel is for

Rich people or travel is for like when you retire

Or it's not for me. It's not for the common person

And after reading your book it really changed my mindset. I remember. I started traveling at that time I

also teaching abroad in Japan and I know you you started out your international travels in that way as well, right I

Did yeah?

Sort of with the idea to fund travel, but then of course as you know living overseas

You know you learn so much

Socio-culturally you learn to sort of internalize what it's like to be in another culture, which is something you can't grasp

Intellectually oh yeah, you can read all you want about another culture

And you could like eat all the sushi you want

But you'll never know what it's like to be in Japan or South Korea until you're actually there, right

Yeah, there an end to an extent making mistakes. You know and that's almost a word of encouragement

English you might have who are worried about that that it's three mistakes that you learn

you know you don't want to intentionally offend your your host culture but

yeah, there's there's some like you said you can read all you want about a place, but until you're there and and sort of

negotiating with the place

It's a completely different experience

I absolutely love that you just said making mistakes can be a good thing because that's what I always say to

My language learners is that we need to make more mistakes. You know don't be afraid of that

Maybe don't make the same mistake over and over and over, but you know make it learn from it, and that's really where you grow

for sure yeah, and I think

Travel or being in other cultures forces you to depend on that language a

Corollary for me as Spanish I go to Latin American countries my Spanish is not that great

But I'm forced to communicate it enough that I can

Get my point across. You know that I speak very poor Spanish

But I get there

and I think it's through it's like it's not that I'm that great at Spanish still but

It's through speaking poorly that you that you learn to to keep improving that you

You learn what works, and what doesn't and you begin to have a better ear for how people speak so?

Yeah, I can't say enough good things about being

fearless enough to make those mistakes

And there and and on and on the matter of fear

I think often times people there's a lot of fears at least in the United States. I know that not all of your

Your audience is based in the United States, but there's a lot of fears attached to travel

Dangers expenses

But that I think that ties into this idea that travel is something that you buy you that you buy this

Smooth-edged travel experience, and then you approach it as a consumer

Where as I say in vagabond and you really it's something you give to yourself. It's something. You'll allow yourself to have

and if you can get past those initially

expenses if you can

Sidestep those fears and just realize that the fears are not as realistic as you might think they are then

You could you can be in the world and and be growing and living an exciting life. Yeah, absolutely

Absolutely let me ask you a little bit about the difference between

traveling and

Vagabonding I know you've probably explained this thousands of times, but for someone who may not be familiar with your work

I mean, what's the difference between the two?

Well vagabond is a subset of travel

Like philosophically, I think travel is something that can happen when you walk to the corner store. You know or talk to your neighbors

But vagabonding is is long-term travel. It's about taking time off

you're away from your normal life to travel for an extended period of time so it's not just

Taking vacation time or yeah holiday time from work to travel. It's it's actually taking time off and

Sort of dedicating a portion of your life to traveling long term in a slow and meaningful way

and I don't think that there's a hard and fast rule for how long that is a

Lot of people will set a year aside. That's a great

Increment of time, but I think you can go vagabonding in six weeks

You can go back about in for six years, so it's long-term travel in whatever

fits your

Interests and capabilities, and it's it's not really a contest

It doesn't matter how long you travel or how many countries you visit, but it's just about how?

how engaged you are and how open you are to the world and and

And really just being in a different mindset than you are at home

Allowing yourself to be a full-time traveler for a while

I love that a lot of people assume that this is for gap year like when you graduate college

You take a year to travel the world, and then you need to get to work

That's just what you do, but it's not just for what 22 year olds right? I mean obviously

I'm not 22 you're not

You still travel right?

Yeah, and that's something that I have

Since the book has come out that the culture has shifted a bit so that it's less weird for non 22 year olds to travel

sort of in that in a I

Did another interview recently about digital nomadism which was a term that didn't exist when I first wrote vagabonding?

I think it's come since you know that like the social media world has grown

to accommodate

being able to work from overseas so

You know obviously there's people in their 20s 30s 40s 50s who take career breaks who take sabbaticals, but also people who?

Just sort of make their work portable mm-hm

they

In the winter they go to Rio or Cape Town or Hawaii, and they they work through their computer

And they find ways to make it work and a core philosophy of Agra

By name is the idea that your time is your truest form of wealth you know that

if you shift things in life and just don't

prioritize

material wealth and

Status then you can find all kinds of time to travel and live in

Live a more interesting life and billionaires, who are you know burdened down by mansions and jet planes all right?

I think it really is about prioritizing as far as you know affording to travel

It's about prioritizing

putting some savings toward travel as opposed to

whatever

Other things you could spend money on so I know a lot of people would say well sure you can afford to travel

But what about the rest of us?

I mean, maybe they think that someone who travels is rich

But maybe we've just prioritized it so do you have maybe some quick tips for people to afford travel?

I know there's a lot of different ways, but maybe for someone who is just wondering how can I afford that?

Well one that is it one thing that isn't even financial is just decide that you're gonna

Do it right you can keep relegating your travels to the future, but if you say I'm gonna do it

And I want to you know depends on your situation, but even if you don't have a lot of money

You can say in two years

I'm gonna be on the road and then suddenly it becomes real

And then and then maybe if you if you tell some people who can keep you honest that way and then suddenly

You can find all this wealth in

in your day, you know I

I'm in New York right now for the next six weeks and sometimes I go down to get a cup of coffee

You know by the time I tip the barista. It's like $4 as well. You know

or $6 I can get ahold Cardinale coffee and drink them out of my heart bingo mug and

Then week by week. I've saved a lot of money, so I think that there's ways I

My sister cuts my hair when I'm back home in Kansas for free right so I think your daily routine

You mates you may end up finding ways to save $10 a day, but what happens by the end of the month

Well you saved a fair amount of money. You know

and

So really I think that that

Once-once travel in your future becomes real you just you start making decisions that prioritize

that future experience and you realize that you're often throwing money at

Situations at home that you don't need to and I'm consumed just by scaling back your routine you

Have a lot more money to save

Or there may be opportunities to go work abroad you know like we mentioned going to teach English abroad or maybe

Teaching your native language. Whatever it may be or something completely different

There's a lot of jobs that you can do abroad or volunteering and really cutting costs

You're in New York City, and I know you were just in Hawaii, and I know you've traveled a lot of the u.s.

For a foreigner who wants to travel in the u.s.. And see the real America

This is kind of a fluted question

but right

Would you tell them is New York the place to go because that's kind of where everyone thinks that they should go you know so

Let's say someone from Brazil or someone from Japan and they want to see

America I mean

What would you tell them?

Well, I'm not gonna not New York is it's a great world city you know

I it's one of my favorite cities in the world actually, but really people who come to the United States

They go to New York

and maybe do a side trip to DC or

Philadelphia or something they often go to Florida a lot of Europeans go to Florida for the sunshine

People go do a West Coast trips will they'll do la Vegas, San Francisco

But

You really sell yourself short if you're hopping from city to city, right?

You're only going to two places that you've heard about already. I'm a huge fan in the United States

You have to do a road trip. It's worth. Whatever it costs to rent or buy a car and drive around and

America has these great

Interstate highways but get off the interstate highways drive on little roads go to small towns, and I'm from Kansas, which it's it's funny

You're you're near, Kansas. Yeah

I

Think in places where

This holds true everywhere actually if you go to places that other tourists

Don't go local people just have more time for you and more interest in you

and so you go to the little cafe in a town of 500 people and you're Japanese or

German or Australian and suddenly you're the most interesting person in the city right yeah, and

So I think that that's that's a way to get out of what I call in vagabonding the tourist matrix

And there's nothing wrong with that, but a lot of your experiences are kind of prepared for you

if you're seeing the sights air-quote the sights in countries whereas if you're just

Driving around and it's just like here's a town on the map

I'm gonna go to boring, Oregon because that's a funny sounding name, and you just go and see what's in boring, Oregon

Taking small highways, and it's just amazing how I mean using my home state as an example

Kansas is seen as a boring place because people take interstate 78 to get to Colorado and it gets very flat and and people get

Tired of driving in Kansas, it's actually. There's some. There's some beautiful parts of Kansas

Who if you get off i-70?

Or just interesting parts of Kansas that are that are rural and not places that you would ever see in a guidebook

And it is one thing to go. There's some great museums in in New York like the Museum of Natural History the Met

I mean there's dozens of good museums

But if you go to the little County Museum in a rural part of America you can bet that curator is gonna

You know talk your ear off. You know because the little Curie I create curator in Minneapolis, Kansas doesn't usually get

travelers from

Korea or China or Brazil or wherever

And they can take an interest in you in a way that

the curator at a big

Metropolitan Museum can't talk yeah, and so I could preach about this forever, but

I was just gonna add you know if you go

Sue let's say I'm Brazilian and I go to New York

It's very easy to find other Brazilians, and you kind of naturally gravitate toward people from your country

I mean it happens to Americans it happens to everyone and so it's too easy

To just fall in with that crowd and speak your native language and not really have

An American experience whatever that may be so I'm a fan of telling people yeah, go to, Kansas

It's boring and that's what you want like that's exactly what you want to experience

Yeah, there's an old onion headline that says semester abroad spent

Hanging out with other Americans in Barcelona right you know

You might think of those as training wheels experience

And I'm by training wheels I mean when you're a child you have training wheels on your bicycle

And then once you learn to ride the bicycle you don't have to have the training wheels anymore

and

Sure start in New York hang out with some Brazilians

but then

Then you have to sort of jump into that

Vulnerability into that fear zone where you're not gonna fall back you. There's no Portuguese to speak

Outside of these big cities with with immigrant populations, and so you just go and and you start engaging with people and you

Americans love a smile. It's funny. We smile a lot. It's kind of

Yeah, and and we sort of we recognize

You know even the air quotes weirdest foreigner if they have a big smile

And they're friendly and they're trying to speak people will will be charmed, and they'll they'll help you out

Even if your English is it perfect. Yeah absolutely so that kind of leads me to another question

I wanted to ask you about how to connect with local peep because I think especially in the last few years

Everyone is you know looking down at their phone

And it I feel like it's a little harder to talk to strangers because a lot of people on the train or in the coffee

Shop, or. You know public places where you might meet people are?

Looking at social media, and I love social media

There's a lot of a lot of benefits to using it also to connect to people but I mean how do you?

Connect with people in real life these days

That's a good question

And that's that's something else that has really shifted since I started traveling and I give some advice in vagabonding like

Find a sports game. You know

Talk and I I'm talking to American travelers usually so I say find some kids who are staying English?

And and you know throw out some phrases at them

Just actually ask a dumb question

You know oftentimes if you're an outsider you have an advantage over a local person because you can just say hey

I'm from Argentina, and I'm hungry and it was a place to eat

you know and

People people love to share that information that not everybody some people especially in big cities like New York are gonna be in a hurry

Oftentimes you can sort of use your foreignness as a pretext to talk to people and

No, there's not never a bad dumb question. You know dumb questions are always good because

Yeah, I think most people like to help other people who are new to a place for the first time now there are

Social media options for meeting people - there's like um there's meetup groups. There's a

couchsurfing

there's

You know social apps you know you can you can get on. I mean there's dating apps

Sometimes this may be the wrong impression if you're just gonna randomly want to randomly meet people

But there's there's equivalents of that

I mean you can even get on

Your facebook or twitter feed and say hey does anybody have any friends in Boston. You know ray I?

would I

Would encourage everybody not to be too dependent on that you know cuz you can meet a lot of people just by reaching out through

Social media and using various apps, but just there's something about the I'm hungry

Where as a place to eat or that looks like a fun soccer game? Do you need a goalkeeper you know?

those simple person-to-person

Interactions are special. Yeah, so don't be afraid to ask a silly question

I also found that nowadays a lot of people

go through social media to meet people in person for example I

joined a rock climbing gym in Kansas City to make some new friends because I'm kind of new here and

there's a Facebook group associated with rock climbing in Kansas City and

People post there if they want climbing partners

But you could just walk up to someone in the gym and say hey do you want to be my climbing partner?

But people don't do that as much it's like you're supposed to ask

Through the social media first and then meet in real life

So I feel like some social dynamics are changing not that you can't just walk up to people and ask

But I think it's worth a look you know search for if there's groups of interest or locations

You know that you can kind of link up with people first, and you know you'll hit the ground running

Yeah, well again. It's there's no dumb questions. You know the worst thing a person could say is no or I already have one

Right and and even sometimes people are sort of attracted

I think people use the social media route because they think that's what the rules are right

I think once you have somebody with a big smile who's asking dumb questions

And inviting people to be their climbing partner or whatever the equivalent of that is in a different situation

Then they relax a little bit

And they're open to it and again some people might not be interested in that but some people will

And even if you don't get a climbing partner then you'll you'll sort of have

Somebody that you recognize and somebody who will look at you and think oh

There's that friendly person who smiles a lot and asks me that dumb question. I'm gonna go talk to them so

It's just like building those social networks in real life. Which is an under

Practiced thing these days well. It's the most meaningful part of travel

I think I mean I I love going to see museums and monuments and all that and taking pretty pictures

But what I really remember is the people that I get to talk to in the conversations?

And I think you're missing a lot, I mean I'm preaching to the choir here, but

You're missing a lot of you

Don't go out of your way and ask some silly questions and start some conversations, right

Yeah, for sure for sure and it's a good like I'm an introvert by nature, and so travel forces me to talk to people

sometimes just because I'm

lost or bored or lonely you know but

But yeah, I know he gets me out of my shell and forces me to be social in a way

That's really good for me. I think so you travel to

Non-english speaking places how important is it to learn the language before you go?

as

a courtesy learning phrases of the language is useful

You can literally go to places and know nothing of language and do fine

Is that because people speak English generally or mm-hmm okay?

Yeah

I mean we're privileged as Americans or those of us in the Anglosphere

Having it as a first language is really useful because it's the world's second language right now

and so

But you know almost anywhere you go. There's so many people traveling with no phrases beyond hello, and thank you

That if you commit yourself to learning

50 words of Thai you know more

10 phrases in Portuguese or whatever then suddenly people are gonna. Help you with English

Regardless, but if you sort of demonstrate that you can say you know. Where is the bathroom in a really horrible?

accent then you'll say it in this sort of adorably five-year-old way and

And it'll charm people

I mean this place is like France for example where I teach a class a writing class every summer

And I always tell my students to learn the pleasantries because France is a more formal culture. There's this

Reputation that French people have for being rude, but it's actually the opposite the Americans are the rude ones. They're too informal

They're not saying hello to the proprietors. They're not

Giving the proper greetings, and so you you master those

10 to 20 phrases of French that can establish you as a polite

You know you just say really horrible bones, ooh

Masu and they will one know that you're trying to be polite and know to know that you're horrible at French

And and they'll help you out you know that you basically

Established your goodwill and so language works at several levels, and one is direct communication

But also is just an expression that you're not a privileged

American who is just swaggering through on the fact that people should speak English, but that you're making an effort

Yeah, I find that a lot of my English learners really want to have perfect English they want to have excellent

Fluency before they ever travel outside their countries and that's admirable

But then like you're waiting for this moment that never comes because first of all what is perfect fluency

I mean native English speakers don't have perfect fluency

so I guess I'm just kind of making an observation that I

Try to encourage people to just take what you have and go with it, and you know you'll learn as you go, right

Yeah for sure and and again be fearless be willing to make mistakes

And even you get a lot of interesting perspective on your own language as you make mistakes another one right?

And I don't think anybody should wait until they get perfect right you know I taught English

conversation English in in Korea for a while and

One thing I learned is that?

You know the the Yuliya in Korean the the letter is that contains L. And R, and and we just use our mouth differently

When we say an L our tongue goes up and when we say an R

It sort of curls back

And so just knowing and I'm just using it like

This is a Korean traveler knowing that sometimes you're messing up your ELLs

And your R's you just sort of knowing that that's you're getting your tongue in shape. You know you're doing your exercises

Thinking about that. You know how did your students say your name?

I mean your name is like ours and ELLs and you know it must have been difficult anyway

Yeah in Korean literally if you use the Hangul letters it slow to cool

What that's a great? That's a great example? You know I could start the lesson with my name

And and and again, I don't think there's a need to be self-conscious

for example if you're Korean because that's just something your your your your mouth is used to forming Korean word but

So what I'm saying basically whatever language you speak

You know French people drop the H on all their words whereas we pronounce the H

Just just be aware as you're making mistakes

Be aware that that's happening

And then you can sort of exercise your mouth muscles and and sort of have an intelligent approach to your mistakes as you

as you gloriously and enthusiastically

Make mistakes in another language. I love that. I love that. Yeah mistakes are the starting point of learning

So I want to ask you. What are you doing in New York and what's going on with your new book with souvenir?

Tell us a little bit about that and when is it coming out exactly and yeah tell us

Well, I'm in New York because I New York is one of my favorite cities um

I have a lot of colleagues and a lot of friends here

and

So I try to spend as much time in New York as I can I have a friend who's out of the country

So I'm staying in his apartment for a while

and it just gives me a chance to see old friends to meet to meet editors and

and colleagues

and just enjoy the metropolis for a while because

In Kansas where I'm often based. I think the closest town has like 300 people or something so

When you have 3 million people in a single borough?

It's just nice to be in a dynamic dynamic city and I do this a lot you know um

I'll have a little sojourn in New York, or I'll spend a few months in the winter in

southern Africa or Argentina or something again

It's that sort of that digital nomad

Principle that I'm not spending anymore that much more money than I would be spending in the United States

But I'm spending it in a unique place, so that's what that explains my time in New York

I just haven't a nice opportunity to house it for a friend and

I'm enjoying this this wonderful city

As for the book it comes out. I'm not sure when this interview will air, but it comes out the second week of March

The same time yeah, okay, yeah, this is my book debut interview so alright. It's called souvenir, and it's it's um

You know vagabonding is a very broad travel philosophy with a lot of advice whereas souvenir is

Literally about souvenirs. It's sort of a deep dive into ooh this phenomenon sort of the

Historical and psychological phenomenon of why we collect these things as we travel and as I wrote the book

It was really interesting because I think there's something very

Connected to our core sense of self about connected collecting souvenirs because we're traveling through countries where we can't stay very long

We don't belong to these countries, so we take a little piece. You know we take a little either

we pick up a rock or off the ground or we save the bottle of soju that we drank at that wonderful party or

we go to a gift shop, and we buy a little Eiffel Tower keychain or a

t-shirt that says Rio de Janeiro and

These become parts of our lives

And they become little symbols of our memories and our ways of being in the world and so by the time

I was done writing the book. I realized that souvenirs are end up whether we intend to are not becoming deeply meaningful

Symbols and metaphors for how we interact with the world

And how we collect them changes over time and so it's really interesting so again. It's it's not like a sequel to vagabonding

It's not a direct

Book of travel advice, but it's a deep meditation and I think

One that is a lot of fun and worth considering how?

Some of the most interesting stories we tell about our lives. We don't tell with our mouths

Objects that we surround ourselves when me when we come home

Yeah, so I have a launch party here on March 26th at quinny's in New York. Yeah, and

Don't have a big book to her plan, but I'm really proud of the book and happy to have it out in the world

That's exciting. Do you personally buy a lot of souvenirs?

Well, that's something I had to consider when I was writing the book because I felt like I didn't and there's a lot of

You know different iterations of souvenirs because there's like heirlooms and mementos and

keepsakes and

Other things that are like souvenirs without quite being souvenirs

You know like I have I have Mardi Gras beads from from 2005 which was like the last Mardi Gras before Hurricane Katrina

And I didn't really think of it as a souvenir, but now it's this little symbol of this interesting time in my life

and I have a my

Grandfather's Zippo lighter, and I never knew him he died long before I was born and so this is this little symbol of

You know my family history

And that that's mixed in with like these

Masks I read about this in the book that these masks that I bought as I was traveling through Asia

And the more I bought the masks the more I realized that I wasn't really sure why I was buying the masks

and so I talk about that in the book about how our taste in souvenirs change, and I think

And this is actually borne out by researchers is that new travelers buy more souvenirs than experienced travelers

Whereas

Experienced travelers are more likely

Statistically to take those pieces of the rock souvenirs that to pick up to keep a ticket stub

or take a seashell or or to keep that t-shirt they wore when they were you know in the Samba parade or whatever and

So I have this mix I have in my house gift shop souvenirs. I have little soaps from hotels

That were part of a meaningful trip. I have my Kansas City Royals baseball

Souvenirs. They're more like keepsakes

But again they have a also this story, yeah

It's sentimental stuff. It's absolutely not necessarily expensive like the things you just listed are pretty much free

But it has some sentiments, but I'm just imagining your house is covered in

Souvenirs and sentimental items and do you feel like when you go home?

Do you I mean you have your home as kind of a place where you?

Obviously where you rest and you?

you can just yeah do laundry repack, but like is that also where you kind of collect all these things as a

memory of your travels

Yeah, and I don't want to overemphasize

like

Souvenirs themselves because my souvenirs are mixed in with books and and and furniture

and I'm like I said keepsakes and kitchen utensils and stuff and

So it's not like you walk into my house, and you see 500 souvenirs dominating the landscape

But I mean you use souvenirs to remember your travels in the same way you use keepsakes to remember family members or friends or something?

and so

Absolutely actually I have a big bookcase my office has is just a whole wall as books because I when I got my house

In Kansas after years of travel, I wanted to have a wall of books and so

Those are interesting evidence relationship with them because some of them I read and some of them

I haven't and now I have too many books

They don't even fit on the Shelf anymore

And so it's like these objects are sort of in

conversation with each other

With each other and it's sort of this shorthand that only I can understand like a guest can come in and say well this is

An interesting mask where is it from or why is there a boat propeller hanging on your wall?

Or what's this picture right?

and so I intuitively

know all these things though that boat propeller is when I went down the mekong in Laos, and and this mask is is a

You know a dance mask from Korea

And I got it at the market at this specific market and and so it's interesting

I think one take home if you read my book is that suddenly you'll realize how?

Without even realizing it your youth most of us surround ourselves with these objects that remind us of the mean of life

And I think a lot of people like I didn't really consider myself a big souvenir collector before I wrote the book

But as I wrote the book. I realized that in a very subtle way

I have always used souvenirs and objects to sort of ground myself in in a kind of sense of self so

It was it was a fun book to write. Yeah. I can't wait to read it

I am super excited for that book to come out

And it sounds like there's a lot of yeah a lot of deepness in there. I'm excited

March 8th

Awesome well where can people find it in bookstores on Amazon or on your website or?

They can find it on my website which is Rolf Potts calm

Or. Just you know Rolf Potts souvenir you can go to Amazon or other online retailers

Big book stores will probably have it it's part of the object lesson series not all bookstores carry the object lesson series

You can order it through any bookstore, but probably the most dependable

You know not to shill Amazon too much, but I live in the middle of nowhere

and there's no bookstores, so I end up getting a lot of books and

So that's a that's a dependable way to get the book. It's just to order it online

Perfect and if people want to find out more about you. Where should they go

They can start at Rolf Potts calm. That's a collection

they can read a ton of my travel writing for free before they ever decide if they want to buy a

Vagabonding or Marco Polo didn't go there one of my other books. Yeah, so links to my social media

You know at Rolf COTS at instagram at Rolf Potts at Twitter. I'm not really super prolific on either

There's a lot of Hawaii pictures up on Instagram right now

Yeah, and then then there's a contact form there

And I always try my best to answer emails of you know for people who send me earnest

enquiries and and greetings

So that's the starting point Rolf pass calm perfect well

I'm so glad you responded to my message and that we could have this conversation. Thank you so much off you bet happy travels