Learn to Travel – Travel to Learn: Robin Esrock at TEDxVancouver (Transcript)

Starting with the fact that those of us who traveled for a long time, well, we’re either running away from something, or we’re looking for something, and certainly, I was looking. Like many of you, perhaps, I’ll stare out the window at my desk job and I’ll constantly daydream about the life I wasn’t living, the places I wasn’t seeing, the people I wasn’t meeting.

I had an OK job, but I really wanted to travel, you know, like I did in my early 20s when I went backpacking, but it just seemed kind of irresponsible to quit my career and going to do such a thing. I mean, society was telling me: okay Robin, you’re turning 30 years old, it’s time to settle down, make some dough and enter the Godforsaken housing market.

Well, my journey began around the corner, literally, on Alberni Street. I was on my way to work, driving my scooter, and this car comes out of nowhere and just drives straight into my bike. I execute this spectacular swan dive over the handlebars, trash the bike and break my kneecap. The pain was excruciating, and it is that moment, without doubt, the best thing that’s ever happened to me. We need these kind of wake-up calls to remind us that we are not getting any younger, and while the world isn’t going anywhere per se, we most certainly are.

That accident made me think, and it literally bought my ticket. 12 months later, I received a 20,000 dollars insurance settlement. Hey! It’s not millions; it was just 20,000 dollars! but, you know, if I was prepared to sleep on floors and avoid expensive countries. I booked one of the best deals going in the airline racket, it’s called around-the-world ticket, and I visited 24 countries on five continents in 12 months.

Now, immediately, the intensity of travel in my first few month in South America, this exposure to new people, new ideas, new cultures began to put some things into perspective. Our lives are mitigated by routine, right? The routine that tells us when we wake up, when we sleep, when we eat, when we work out, when we can schedule some fun in our lives.

Now, for 12 months, with all my possessions on my back, no itinerary and a vague long-term goal about just returning to Vancouver, alive. Decision-making began to take on a new significance, because every morning I wake up, and I think where I’m going to eat, where I’m going to sleep, where I’m going to find a clean toilet.

Now once the base of that hierarchy of needs was met, a deeper, familiar crisis began to settle in. I found myself once again looking out that window, thinking “Well, should I go to that town or this town? Should I hang out with these people or those people?” I’m second-guessing my decisions, I’m smelling that greener grass. You know when there are so many decisions to make, sometimes it’s just easier not to make any, and you feel that acuity when you travel independently, and you feel that acuity when you don’t. I call it a decision paralysis. And then when we do make a decision, we second-guess it, you know, we questioned it, it’s such and I’ve got like an undercooked burrito, okay?

Sometimes I wasn’t sure if I should jump on that chicken bus, or over that chicken bus. I was kicking myself – I was in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil – and I was supposed to join a friend on a night bus going up north. I decided to spend a few extra days in Rio – I mean, here I am – exploring one of the most beautiful vibrant cities in South America, if not the world, and I just could not groove with it, because what I was thinking about was that night bus and how I should have been on it because of the amazing experiences that I’m probably missing if I were.

A few days later, I go up north and I catch up with my friend, and I find him as white as a sheet. Turns out that the only thing I missed was a certain tragedy. The bus that he was on had a head on collision with a truck. He escaped with minor injuries, but six people died, including the passenger seated right next to him. And from that moment, I mean, I began to realize that whatever decision I make has to be the right decision. I’m not one about to talk about religion and energy and what not, but it’s just like you have to believe that whatever decision you make is the best decision you can possibly make, and from that moment I realized that wherever you are is where you’re supposed to be.

And, immediately, everything got a lot easier. I welcome to La Paz, Bolivia, and the rather dilapidated house of democracy. One of the legends on the gringo trail is to mountain-bike down the world’s most dangerous road. It was, the first time I visited, before they put in a new highway. 150 people die every year on this road as packed buses and trucks, and about 2,000 tourists, for that matter, have gone over the edge on this 2,00 foot cliffs never to be seen from again. And it’s pretty fun, I can tell you it’s fun riding that so close to the edge; it’s as much fun as it is standing on the edge of this red carpet wondering what’s going to happen if I step over? They told me not to step over.

So you get down to the bottom, and then you realize that you actually have to get back on these same buses and trucks that go over the edge, and this time you’re not in control, there is no comfort there, you have to just close your eyes and pray to God that the driver only had five or six beers, and not 12.

So I get back to the city, and I take a minibus, and because I can’t speak a word of Spanish, I get dropped off high in the hills in one of the city’s worst slums. Shut! … Okay! I believe that travelers become victims when we look like victims, so I stiffened up, and I assumed what I call my Jason Bourne, James Bond mode, right? Because those guys always look like they are in control, that they know where they are going, plus, they can snap your neck in like 24 seconds, right?

So I start walking down this road, absolutely crapping my pants, and, up ahead about thirty feet up ahead I noticed a local walking down, and it gives me some comfort, because I think that if I can just stick with this guy, maybe I can get out of here, you know, so I start following him. Without turning around, he noticed that someone is following him, I mean, we are in a slum, so he quickens his pace. I’m not going to let this guy get out of my sight, you know, so I quicken my pace, and within like a couple of seconds, you have two guys running down this hill, you know, through markets, through traffic, but always 30 feet apart.

Now, it wasn’t the first time that I’ve been lost on my travels, and it certainly wasn’t the first time my local has come to my aid. When you read the newspapers, you would think that the moment you get off the plane, these guys are waiting for you. If it bleeds, it leads, you know, especially, when you read anything about developing countries. It’s just all you hear is the bad news, and that’s one of the reasons why I love being a travel writer, because very often that’s the only good news you will read anywhere!

Well, I’ve now been to 107 countries on 6 continents, including hot spots like Colombia – kidnapping! Ethiopia – whoa! Sri Lanka – terrorism! Papua New Guinea – strange guy with pointy stick! And I’ve never been, get this, I’ve never been robbed or attacked, I’ve never been other than minor illness, I’ve never been physically ill, or threatened, and this makes me either extremely lucky or as I like to believe just one of the vast majority.

My experience has taught me that people would rather help you than hurt you. Locals take great pride in showing us, the traveler, their world. Whatever the culture, you wouldn’t believe the lengths of hospitality that people go through. The friendliest country in the world in my experience – Albania, Albania! You know, sure, there are places where we shouldn’t go, absolutely, absolutely, but travelers are seldom targeted. Locals might want to kill each other, but they don’t go after us for anything other than petty crime, and petty crime can be dismissed with just the most basic amount of common sense.

Okay, not saying that people won’t attack, if provoked, and yes, I’m not going to tell you there aren’t bad apples, no deadly pieces of sushi on Granville Street, there’s rogue bears in the woods, and there’s airline seats, but just don’t lean back! There are places to avoid and we have reasons to be cautious, sure, but if I do find myself in a situation, I have some very powerful weapons in my backpack. No, lose the guns, bring a smile.

Smiling, there’s something about smiling that just projects warmth and honesty, I call it kind eyes, you see it all the time, it’s just like a softening of the soul, it’s why we love traveling in places like Africa and India, even though it can be very challenging. The locals that we meet, the people we meet, they disarm us with their warmth, with their friendliness, you know, with their appreciations, life’s basic pleasures. I mean, it’s such a contrast when you go to a major North American city or Western European city, and you feel like an intruder, like an outsider. I’ve smiled with poof! Maori bouncers in New Zealand, he wanted to throw me out of bar, and I’ve smiled with Maasai warriors in Kenya, I’ve smiled with …men in strange hats! that’s the testicle festival in Montana.

I’ve smiled in dens with man-eating saltwater crocodiles and swimming with great white sharks, and I even smiled with kids holding armed AK-47s. I smile when I’m nervous, and I laugh when I’m scared, because it sure beats screaming and crying. You don’t want to hear me scream and cry. Now this few experiences like hardcore independent travel to make you hear, and more importantly, listen to your instinct.

How many times have you guys heard a story: something bad happens to someone out there and they blame themselves, because they knew beforehand to avoid that situation. They shouldn’t have eaten the pink chicken. They shouldn’t have gotten into that taxicab with the driver slurring his words. They shouldn’t have walked down that dark road in the middle of the night, and they shouldn’t have believed the fire docked in Taipei when he said, “Robin, this isn’t going to hurt!”

Trust your guts. The more we use our instinct, the more we hear it, the more we use it, and the more we use it, the more chance we have to avoid whatever it is that’s trying to save us from. Use your gut, trust it, listen to it, it works so well when you’re out there, and it works so well when you’re here as well.

Now, I’ve been fortunate to chase my passion to a degree of absurdity. I’ve run around the world ticking of one bucket list after another, and I believe that my success in a very challenging, very competitive industry – travel media is due to applying these truths that I’ve learned out there into my daily bizarre world.

And here’s one of the best lessons that I learned, people you meet create the paradise you find. It’s all about the people, and the paradise, literally. I’m on assignment in a 2,000 dollar a night ocean villa in the Maldives. Spectacular, yeah? and I’m having miserable time. The whole place is kitted up for honeymooners and for romance, and I’m there by myself dealing with a relationship disintegrating back home. Cry me, crocodile tears! I was miserable, I was lonely, so I ended up sneaking away to the staff quarters and having a couple of beers with the cleaners, and that was fun.

Paradise islands and epic festivals, wild parties. It doesn’t mean much if you’re not connecting, and you’re not sharing with the right people, because people we meet on a journey out there, on our journey in here, shape the world, shape the way we look at everything. It could be a Rasta priest that I met in the Blue Mountains of Jamaica. This guy was living off-grid, and yet, we had this wonderful debate about the merit of RFID chips. An elder in the Cook island, he takes me into the mountains, and he teaches me that anytime I’m feeling stressed, don’t take a Tylenol, put yourself in nature. In Ecuador, the shaman freaks out, he tells me I’m cursed, and he goes into this whole ceremony, blows vodka in my face, a real concern to get rid of this curse.

In Transylvania, I meet the 74 year-old farmer, who teaches me how to dance with my heart and smile with my eyes. On the streets of Ethiopia, I meet street kids who believe that if they work hard enough, one day they could run in the Olympics, and you know what? Some of these guys did. And as much as I travel around the world, it’s my friends mean the world to me, and they take me to places I’d never thought I’d get to. These are all people that make you want to get off the couch, switch off reality TV, and start participating in reality itself.

Now I’ve recently returned from one more epic journey. This time, I visited every province and territory in Canada to tick off the ultimate list of things to do before you die for my first book it’s called The Great Canadian Bucket List, and once more, I’ve emerged at the end of this crazy journey, elated, safe, healthy, inspired by the people and the places and the creatures that I’ve met in this beautiful country; that is way too big to call a backyard.

The lessons that I’ve learned to my travels keep applying to the world that I live about daily life, because I don’t believe that we ever stop traveling, and I don’t believe we ever stop growing. So I’m going to leave you with one more piece of travel, travel wisdom. Two little words that have helped me when I really needed them, like, when I jumped off the Sky Tower in Macao, this is the world’s highest commercial bungee jump.

Two little words that help me when I’m really trying not to soil my shorts, like when I’m in Chernobyl. I spent the night in Chernobyl holding a Geiger counter, hoping I’m not going to turn into a mutant. You know, they were there for me when I came face to face with death, deep in an ancient burial cave in the South Pacific, they were there with me when I came out there 12 minutes ago, in front of 2,000 people at the largest TEDx ever held anywhere.

Two little words, so important, which is why they put these words on the cover of what I think is one of the best guidebooks have ever written. Whoa! Two little words that helped me when early this summer my wife sent me a text message. And, precipitating what I think will be the craziest adventure, out of all of them! Don’t panic!

So I came out here and said I’m going to teach you how to travel. I said, “Well, don’t panic!” Surround yourself with good people, and just know that people will rather help you than hurt you. Listen to your instinct, smile, and, you know, before you go on any journey, make sure you pack the right state of mind, whether or not you’re traveling, whether you’re staying at home. And okay, don’t forget your toothbrush. Thank you.

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