Interview With Robert Schrader of Leave Your Daily Hell
Robert, please give my readers a background about yourself. What made you want
to start leaveyourdailyhell.com?
I began traveling in the summer of 2005, when I visited five countries in Europe
to follow the tour of singer Tori Amos. Over the subsequent years I traveled more
extensively, returning to Europe twice in 2007 and 2008 and visiting India in
2009. After losing my job in the U.S., I decided to move to Asia and teach English.
Before I moved to China in November 2009, I launched a Blogger blog in preparation for the journey. Unfortunately, Blogger was blocked in China, alongside most other blogs and social media. After a couple months of blogging via Web proxies, I decided it was time to get my own site and launched Leave Your Daily Hell in January 2010.
Initially, it was more of a personal blog than anything. It was until I left China to begin traveling in July 2010 that it began to morph into what it is now.
In all of your travels, in your opinion what country has the best food?
and the worst food?
I've eaten a lot of amazing food abroad, so it's difficult to name a single
country with the best food. But if I had to, I'd probably say Lebanon -- I don't
think I had a bad meal there! As far as the worst, maybe Bolivia? In addition
to the fact that there didn't seem to be any definitive national cuisine, the
quality of ingredients was really low. I understand this, of course: Bolivia
is an extremely poor country. Still, I never looked forward to eating during
my time there.
When you first started traveling, did your family support your decision?
Absolutely not! In particular, my father thought it was frivolous of me to be
spending the money I earned working full-time during college to travel -- I
should've taken an internship with a large company, according to him. I've just
finished my ninth trip though, so my family now understands how important travel
is in my life.
Did you always have a love of travel or did you develop your passion for
traveling as you got older?
When I was a kid, I was far more interested in airplanes and maps than I was
with the idea of actually traveling. My parents bought me a huge world map for
my sixth birthday and I would spend hours each night studying it -- I knew all
the countries in the world and all their capitals by the time I turned seven!
My Dad traveled a lot for business and we'd always accompany him to the airport
and watch planes take off for hours after he'd depart.
As I mentioned earlier, I first began traveling independently to follow the tours of my then-favorite singer. My love for traveling as a hobby began to develop out of that. I felt so free from social pressures when I was on the road and with each subsequent trip, it became harder to imagine living life without having the freedom to move.
Has blogging about your travels/adventures change your life? If so, how?
In a huge way. Besides the great feedback I've gotten from my awesome readers,
it's helped me progress a lot professionally. In November 2010, for example,
I won a free trip to Thailand as part of a blogging competition. Just last month,
I spent four days in Barcelona exploring the artwork of painter Joan Miró,
all expenses paid, for some work I'm doing with QGuide, a new social network
designed for gay and lesbian travelers.
I also think blogging and photography have forced me to become a more conscious, aware traveler. Whenever I visit a place, I'm concerned not only with how I can enjoy myself and experience the local culture, but also how I can convey that to my readers, which results in me exploring places on a much deeper level than I would if I were just casually traveling.
What has been the least exciting destination you've traveled to?
Hm. I guess I would say Laos. Although I really enjoy the country from an aesthetic
standpoint, the proportion of foreign tourists to locals -- it seemed like we
were in the British Isles rather than Southeast Asia -- cheapened the experience
a lot and resulted in me being pretty bored and disengaged most of the time
I was there.
What has been the most surprising destination you've been to? Meaning, you had a specific mindset about a certain destination but it was totally a different experience than you had imagined. I guess maybe the city of Bangkok. Before I visited, friends advised me to avoid it at all costs, to fly in and use it as a transfer point, but not to waste my time getting to know the city. I ended having no choice once I got to Thailand -- an electronics malfunction stranded me there a couple nights -- and I absolutely fell in love with the city. Talk about an electric place -- the colors, the people, the pulse! I think it's very likely that Bangkok will be one of the next places I live, which I never would've expected based off how negative most people I know have been about it.
If you had to decide which destination has been the most influential in
your life, which destination would you chose?
Shanghai, without a doubt. Although I'm not crazy about Shanghai as a city --
I found other Chinese cities like Beijing and Chengdu to be much more interesting,
for example -- taking the leap to move there and allowing it to change me completely
altered the way I thought and introduced me to opportunities I never would've
had at home, such as a temporary gig writing for CNN. Living in Shanghai gave
me confidence, life experience and a sense of fearlessness I lacked when I was
living in the United States. If I had never moved there, I am not sure how much
I'd be enjoying my life now.
Robert, if you could travel with any celebrity for one week, who would you
chose and why?
I don't know if I would want to travel with a celebrity to be honest. In my
experience, the more you expect out of travel the more disappointing it is and
I'd imagine that most celebrities are used to being treated like Gods and are
therefore nightmares to travel with. I guess if I had to choose however, probably
someone funny like Kathy Griffin or Chelsea Handler.
What advice would you give to a newbie traveler?
Use other peoples' advice as a guideline, but go with your gut when all is said
and done. There is nothing that annoys me more than someone else asserting that
I have to do X, Y or Z when I visit a certain place, that I "haven't really
been there" if I don't.
Also, don't limit yourself based on other peoples' negativity -- set huge goals and do everything you can to achieve them! About six months before I went to India, which was my first non-Western destination, I told my friends and family I would be going to India in about six months -- they responded that I was full of it. Three years and two dozen countries later, we know who was right.
So go with your gut and your heart and if someone doesn't support you, cut them loose -- when you're out on the road, you'll meet countless people who are cooler than they are.
In 10 years, do you see yourself still traveling or slowing down?
That's a good question, because I always come home from each trip feeling like
I can't do another -- I flew back from Lisbon last Monday actually, and am really
uncertain as to whether I can visit Australia at the end of next month as I've
tentatively planned. But then I get back into the grind of having a routine
and a place and a fixed socia group and I get the bug again, even when I think
I won't.
Still, I doubt I will be traveling as extensively and often as I do now in ten years. Rather, I'll probably take shorter, less frequent trips to the favorites from among the places I've visited in the past couple years and will visit in the next couple years to come.
Thanks Robert for the interview. Please visit his blog @ Leave Your Daily Hell
Follw Him on Twitter and Friend Him on Facebook !