Interview With Shane of The Working Traveller
•Please give my readers a background about yourself. What made
you want to start the working-traveller.com?
The Working Traveller pretty much started out as a way to combine my interests
of writing, starting my own business and going travelling. Originally, a long
time ago, The Working Traveller was a black and white photocopied magazine that
I put together at college. I sent some press releases off and after a few mentions
in the British broadsheets it briefly became successful.
But I quickly found that backpacking with a desktop computer, a large photocopier,
tens of thousands of sheets of paper and thousands of envelopes isn't practical.
Laptops and the internet make things so much easier. Over the years the name
has been resurrected as the magazine section of our main site on working
abroad and in its present form as a travel blog.
•In all of your travels, in your opinion what country has the
best food? and the worst food?
My favourite food is Italian but I’ve yet to visit Italy so I’ll
go for Lebanon. I like the food across the Middle Eastern in general but finding
a good meal in Iraq could sometimes be difficult.
•When you first started traveling, did your family support your
decision?
Though I had already been to about ten countries it wasn’t until I was
32 that I set off on my first extended trip so what family thought about it
wasn’t an issue. Had I been much younger I expect they would have been
supportive and perhaps would have liked to have done the same if they had had
the chance.
•Did you always have a love of travel or did you develop your
passion for traveling as you got older?
I think it has always been there. Most of the short lived career ambitions I
had at school – train driver, navy, photographer – involved travel
in some way and in my teens I also took advantage of whatever school and town
exchange programmes were available.
•What impact has the-working-traveller.com had on your life?
I would probably have a real job.
•What has been the least exciting destination you've traveled
to?
We were only in Colonia del Sacremento for a day trip from Buenos Aires but
I look back on that twee and unfriendly town with a particular loathing. As
I had already told my girlfriend about my previous experience on a motorbike
abroad – namely crashing into a stationary milk float within a minute
of hiring the thing and later going head first over the handlebars – she
was somewhat reluctant to get on a bike with me so I hired a three wheeler for
her to sit safely in the back. Little boys pointed, laughed and, easily able
to keep up with the underpowered vehicle, chased after us. The only excitement
to the day was my John Cleese style rant culminating in threatening to give
the trike a damn good thrashing.
•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 try to keep an open mind when visiting a new place to the point of avoiding
looking at photographs but it is hard not to visit Beirut without some preconceptions.
Though there are still plenty of reminders of its violent past but I didn’t
expect the vibrant, forward looking city of designer shops, ladies that lunch
and western style supermarkets with sushi bars.
Turkey also came as a surprise. Though we live there I didn’t realise
just how green Turkey is until we took a trip from the Iraqi border in the east
to our home by the Aegean Sea. Previously our travels in Turkey had hugged the
western coast or had been to cities so we didn’t appreciate the forested
mountain passes and green valleys until we saw them.
•If you had to decide which destination has been the most influential
in your life, which destination would you chose?
Either New York or Peru. New York because it was the first place I visited on
my own, without either friends or family. Peru was the first stop on our RTW
trip and both Deirdre and I realised we could travel together 24 hours a day.
We could endure stressful journeys and small rooms together without one of us
trying to kill the other (that often).
•If you could travel with any celebrity for one week, who would
you chose and why?
I’m not really a big fan of celebrities so I’ll choose every single
participant of whichever reality show is on at the moment on the condition I’m
allowed to permanently lose them in the mountains. Whoever eats everyone else
wins and can return to civilisation.
•What advice would you give to a newbie traveler?
Whether you immerse yourself in the local culture or spend your time drinking
in a traveller’s ghetto is up to you. It’s your trip. Don’t
let the snobbery of others dictate how you travel. Oh, and if you are doing
it to get it out of your system? Forget about it: travel is addictive.
•In 10 years, do you see yourself still traveling or slowing down?
More travelling I hope. As long as we can still hoist our bags onto our backs
I’m sure we will want to explore somewhere new.
Please The Working Traveller !