April 26, 2024 • 55 mins
Welcome to a fascinating episode of the Black Expat Podcast where I host Lizzie McPherson, a former TV producer turned travel industry professional; exploring her transitory lifestyle and the fulfilling journey of finding a permanent home in Amsterdam.
Lizzie delves deep into her past experiences, shifting her career from film and television to the world of travel, and how her unique competency set allowed her to successfully transition into a new industry. She sheds light on her role designing memorable travel experiences and the importance of cultural immersion in strengthening the experience.
Drawing from her personal experiences, Lizzie underscores the transformative nature of travel and the joy of continuous adaptation. From living in Bali and LA to finally settling down in Amsterdam, Lizzie recounts her intriguing life journey marked by numerous relocations, adaptation, and eventual stability.
This riveting episode does not stop at being purely a travel narrative; it penetrates the deeper essence of finding belonging in unfamiliar territories. It offers a candid account of our guest's journey from leading a nomadic existence to cherishing the stability and connectedness of a home, and the significant impact of this evolution on her personal and career development.
Lizzie also recounts her exciting travel experiences, emphasizing the joy of human interactions, the importance of an open mind, and the moments that impacted her profoundly, making this episode a treasure trove of travel wisdom and insightful life lessons.
The episode's concluding segment sees Lizzie recount her time in Bali during the pandemic and her entrepreneurial endeavors. She also introduces a philanthropic initiative aimed at supporting the Bali community in times of global crisis, thereby manifesting the power of community engagement.
This compelling narrative exudes an inspiring blend of fascinating travel tales, personal growth, enterprising initiatives, and underscores the impact of travel and adaptability on one's professional and personal life. Dive in now and explore the world through Lizzie's bright, inspiring, and adventurous prism. Her Cabins in Bali : 1. https://www.mundukcabins.com
2. Duma Cabin
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
What up, everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Black Expat Podcast.
My name is Carl, and I'm excited to be rocking with you guys for yet another episode.
I am very excited to be joined today by an amazing guest, an amazing guest that
allowed me to stay at one of her amazing places around the world,
(00:21):
which we'll get into later in the podcast, so please stay tuned for that.
But without further ado, I would like to welcome the amazing Lizzie McPherson to the show.
Lizzie, how are you doing today? Hi, Carl. I'm great. Thanks for having me.
Thank you so much for joining us today. If you don't mind, I just want to jump right into it, right?
Because you have such an amazing story and I want to make sure that we get to
(00:41):
all the details and just jump right into it.
So can you tell us a little bit about yourself, your background and how you
landed within the travel space? Sure.
I was raised in Bermuda before settling down in California for the better part of my adult life in LA.
And for 13 years, I was in film and television.
(01:01):
I was an associate director primarily for competition shows and reality shows,
but a little bit of everything. thing.
And in 2017, I started living back and forth between LA and Bali,
where I would spend my time in between shoots, which started as a place to relax,
but of course, eventually turned into a place of work also, which we'll get into later.
(01:24):
And two years ago, I left that industry and moved to Europe.
So I'm currently based in Amsterdam with my partner and our two dogs.
And what else can I tell you? I love to travel, which is why I guess we're here.
I'm a terrible cook, but my partner is a chef, so it works out well.
(01:44):
What? Do the wordle every day.
And yeah, and then I got into travel just about a year ago.
I started with Sunset. So I started when I moved to Amsterdam. Wow.
Well, you said you were, there's so much to unpack in there, right?
So my heart wants me to jump into how do you manage to travel with your dog?
(02:07):
Because I'm going with your dogs, because I'm going through that right now.
But also you said you were born in Bermuda, right? So how did that shape your
perspective of the world, being born in Bermuda?
And what I mean by that is I always say when I was born in Chicago,
right, I think it really, I really thought because it's such a big city and
(02:28):
so many things around it, I didn't really seek anything outside of that because
I felt like I was getting so much where I was at.
And it wasn't until I left Chicago that I was like, wow, Chicago is great.
I love this city, but the world has so much more.
And I was kind of had sensory overload on what I thought Chicago was and what
I realized the world was.
How did that shape your life's journey in your opinion?
Yeah. Yeah, so I actually wasn't born there, but we moved there quite soon after I was born.
(02:54):
And I have American parents who never managed to get us a proper permanent stay
visa during our time there, which is a whole other story.
But we found ourselves traveling a ton for that reason, but also because my
parents are inherently two people who have a hard time sitting still.
I'm really lucky that I got to experience seeing so much of the world at a really early age.
(03:17):
And I think it's something that has stuck with me for better or for worse.
Travel has never scared me or been something that I overthink often.
I'm really comfortable being on the road because I was raised that way.
And I feel really fortunate for that most of the time.
And how did you get into your first chosen career path that you were working in?
(03:40):
Yeah, I studied broadcast journalism in college and I thought I wanted to be a journalist.
I really liked to write, but then I realized I didn't want to write in a journalist
way, but I really liked the TV part of it.
So I did the cliche thing.
I packed up my car, drove across the country, got my first job on Craigslist.
(04:03):
I was Timbaland's unpaid intern. Wow.
Job in LA in 2009. And then it kind of just snowballed from there.
It's a combination of you know, meeting the right people, right place, right time.
That's sort of how that industry works is a combination of luck and working
(04:26):
really hard and being open to the grind that is TV production.
So, so yeah, so I sort of worked my way up.
And then a few years in, I was full time, the associate director,
mainly for competition shows.
But I was doing a little bit everything. I was doing scripted commercials,
(04:47):
music videos, kind of anything that came my way. And I really...
It was a really great career that I enjoyed and one that I look back on,
you know, really, really fondly still.
So Timbaland's unpaid intern. I really like how you kind of,
(05:07):
like, how does, what, like how, just how, like, how does that happen?
I saw this posting on Craigslist. I didn't, I moved to LA. I didn't know anyone.
And I at the time like Craigslist was the
jam like that's that's where
you got all your jobs or so I thought so I
(05:30):
jumped on there and they didn't say that it was like it was
Timbaland at the time they were just like you know
music professional looking for production
intern I can't remember how they worded it something like
that I was applying to everything and they
wrote me back and then it was it was a really cool
first la experience actually everybody was super nice i was doing like a lot
(05:53):
of like admin and clerical work as to be expected but i got to go my first time
on a set was on one of timbaland's music videos and i thought it was the coolest
thing ever i was like i've made it.
And it was really cool and then from there i you
know eventually got a paying job and said
(06:16):
said goodbye to those those wonderful people and
my first paying job was as the receptionist at
a production company that mainly does reality
competition shows it's called magical elves and i
was in the office for about six months but then i really thought that i wanted
to be on set the sets looked like so much fun and that's where all the action
(06:38):
happened and so I you know requested to make the switch and started as a production
assistant and the rest is history I guess.
So I know you mentioned that your parents were like, they like to move around a lot.
Do you say, so I know LA seems like a very, to me, I haven't lived there.
(07:01):
I've been there maybe for only for five days.
Is it a very fast paced environment?
Do you think you're naturally wired to be very fast paced?
And then how easy is it for you then to transition between places,
between things that you enjoy doing?
Or do you see yourself as quite the opposite? that you just have been really
fortunate to kind of be a part of these amazing experiences that you've had
(07:22):
up until this point in your life?
Yeah, I think of LA as my 20s. I spent my whole 20s there.
And it was a wonderful place to kind of spend that time in my life.
I think what I loved about LA is everything that it had to offer.
It felt like there was so much opportunity, especially being really young.
(07:43):
I think what I started to struggle with LA as I I got older is that it's so
big and it's so spread out that I found it difficult to foster community in
an environment like that,
especially because I was working so much and I was always on the road and shooting
wherever in the world I was.
I was never really home that much. And it's hard.
(08:06):
It's different than New York where you can fall into a subway or a taxi and
be anywhere in 10 minutes. It's.
If you go out, getting home is a real thing that you have to think about.
And also just seeing friends.
It felt like it was very spread out and disjointed in a lot of ways.
(08:30):
But I don't mean to. No shade to LA. I have a spot in my heart for LA always.
But I loved it there during that time. I think it's just something that I maybe
grew up and grew out of is how I feel about it. But I love going back to visit now.
So in my 20s, I felt like I was doing everything, everywhere, all at once.
(08:54):
It almost kind of feels like a blur because I was doing so many different things
and traveling to so many different countries.
I was like, man, I did a lot in a short amount of time. But really,
it was a decade. It was quite a long time.
So how does travel fit into that puzzle? specifically working with travel and
helping other people see the world.
How did you naturally transition from LA into working within the travel space?
(09:18):
Yeah, so I think it was more, it wasn't necessarily to do with LA.
It was more to do with my career in production.
But my role on a film set was very logistical and operations-based.
I was responsible for not only writing the shoot schedules, but also executing
them and leading them forward.
(09:39):
So every single day was like we were planning an event with hundreds of people
involved that all had to be on board and move the machine forward at the same pace.
As a result of that, the skill set that was developed was learning how to run
an event, fixing problems before they happen,
having a plan A, B, C, and Z for every possible scenario that could go wrong,
(10:00):
operating under pressure, and generally being forced to plan right and think ahead.
So I know that eventually I knew that I could pivot to working in travel and
executing trips for people where many of those skill sets were the same.
You know, to curate a trip successfully, you need to be good at all of those things.
And it's about taking a client's vision, designing the plan,
(10:24):
laying in the logistics and executing it as flawlessly as possible.
So I think my previous career really gave me a leg up with that.
And I knew that going in when I decided to pull the trigger and make the switch.
So I was really lucky to find Sunset who recognized that not everyone's path
into travel is traditional.
(10:45):
Not everyone starts there. And I was really grateful that they were able to
view my background as an asset and recognize my career path and me as someone
who could benefit the company when they hired me.
So I was really grateful for that opportunity.
So, well, that's my first, thank you. That was, thank you. That was just,
that was, that was amazing.
(11:06):
I guess my next question would be then if, if you were to curate an experience
for yourself and, and you can go into the destination, just like,
just for one, just, just curate your own experience for you.
That kind of, that kind of puts together how all the things that you feel are
important for a travel experience for someone going to saw a place for for the
(11:27):
first time, and it's for yourself, what would that look like?
A tough question. There's a lot of places on my bucket list.
I feel like it grows every day working in this industry.
But I think the most successful trips and the ones that I like to design,
probably because these are the ones that I would like to go on,
are the ones that lend the experiences.
(11:50):
So it's not just a beach vacation. It's not just a jungle vacation a lot lot of the time.
I think the most successful ones and the ones that really give people the opportunity
to experience a country and a place at its fullest are the ones where you get
to visit multiple areas that are really different.
(12:12):
You get to meet the locals and learn about them and their culture and however different it might be.
You can almost always find commonality I find across the world.
And I think that is something that's really important is people that you meet
(12:33):
and the people are so much of what makes up a place. I think that's really, really important.
So curating trips where,
you know, like Sunset does, where you get to go into someone's private home
and do a cooking class or, you know, really interact with the people who are
so excited to show you that place is one of the best ways,
(12:55):
I think, to experience any place in the world.
So yeah, I think the most successful ones are the ones that,
have that balance of culture and landscapes and cities and the ones that are
going to give you the highlights of every place and what they have to offer.
(13:18):
And one of the things that I really aspire to do in my life is to be able to choose where I live.
And I know in some sense, I choose where I live now, but if I really had to
choose, if price wasn't an issue, if I could do whatever I want to do and go
wherever I wanted to go and not worry about those things.
So my question is, you could choose to live wherever you like.
(13:41):
Why have you chosen to live where you live now?
And where is one place that you've visited, that you've been to personally,
that you feel like, man, I could really live here?
And what's the driving factor behind why you could live in that place if you decided to move again?
My toxic trait is that whenever I go anywhere, I think that I'm going to move there.
(14:01):
This is true of most places. And then multiple times in my life,
I have actually done that. I've done that with Bali.
It's a problem.
Yeah. I think my mindset on this has really shifted in the last few years.
When I was working in production, my apartment in LA was basically a glorified storage unit.
(14:27):
I would come home to do laundry and repack and leave again.
And I was also not very comfortable being there. I was more comfortable being
out and on the road and doing something different every day.
And now when I come back from a trip, I'm so grateful to be home.
It's something that like stability was a new concept for me.
(14:49):
It was something that I was really, you know, that I've had to work on being comfortable with.
But when I come home now, I'm really happy to be here. And I feel very settled in Amsterdam.
It's taken 18 months for me to feel like I really am settled here and have roots here.
And I have moved so many times in my life. I hope and I really hope that I don't
(15:14):
have to again, at least permanently.
And that's not to say I don't love spending time in other places.
But recently, this is really one of the first times where I felt I have a permanent, stable home base.
And it's something that's bringing me a lot of reward and happiness.
So I really like this part of my life and feeling like I've finally planted my feet somewhere.
(15:39):
So what was it for you? Was it the people or was it the place?
Because honestly, I feel like I'm going through the exact same thing,
right? I lived in Chicago, grew up there, lived in Indiana for school.
That was bad. Shout out everybody from Indiana. I'm sorry, y'all.
I prefer not to live there.
And I lived in Taiwan for 12 years. Now I'm in Austin, Texas.
(16:00):
And it's really like, I don't, I crave for that level of comfort where it's
like, I come back from a trip and I'm like, man, I'm home.
I love being here, but I'm, I'm just not there. I'm like, I want to live somewhere else.
And it's like this burning desire half within, like, I want to go back to Taiwan,
but it's like, there's so many other options out there.
So for you, like, what was it? Was it, was it the place where it's like Amsterdam
(16:22):
really made me feel welcomed here?
Or was it the people, the culture? Like what, what is it about where you are
now that really gives you that feeling that you're like, okay,
this is going to be my home base moving forward for a long period of time?
Yeah. I mean, when I decided to move here, I was really being pretty pragmatic
about it. I knew that I wanted to leave LA.
(16:42):
I knew that I was leaving the industry and I was really craving a big change.
And I hadn't had a Europe phase yet.
And I really was wanting to live in Europe.
But I was almost at a point where I was zooming all the way out on Google Maps
(17:03):
and about to throw darts at it, being like, where do I go? I was really open to it.
And there was nowhere that made a ton of sense on paper.
But there's a few things, I think, at that point in my life that were really
important to me. I wanted to go somewhere that had at least,
you know, a decent amount of English.
(17:24):
I wanted to go somewhere where I knew at least two or three people.
And I didn't want to go to London because it felt like as big as L.A.
So Amsterdam fit all of those criteria.
And actually, it was sort of it was sort of an accident.
I can't I have some really close friends here. I've been friends with them for
(17:47):
some of them my whole life and some of them for like 10 years,
both Dutch friends and American that live here.
And I used to come over before the pandemic. I would come over like every summer to visit.
And then I hadn't been able to. And then the borders reopened and I was about
to start another show, actually.
But I was like, oh, just I'll pop over for a couple of weeks.
(18:10):
But the show ended up pushing. They were like, well, we're going to shoot in July.
We're gonna shoot in August and I didn't have a reason to go home so I was like maybe I'll just.
Stay here so three
months later I was like still in Amsterdam and by that point I just fallen in
love with it I was already you know I didn't come here thinking like oh I'm
(18:34):
gonna scope it out as a place that I maybe want to move but I did like I was
thinking about that early on when I got here,
and it just started to make sense.
And it was filling a lot of the holes I felt like that I had at that time in my life.
And mainly that Amsterdam is small.
It's a small town. You can bike anywhere. You can be at anybody's house in 15 minutes.
(18:57):
And it felt like it was so much easier to foster community in an environment
like this than especially coming coming out of LA.
It's something that I really loved about it and was so different for me.
I'd never had that before.
So that is kind of what sold me on it. So then I did eventually go back, did my show.
(19:21):
And by that point, I was determined. I decided I was going to move here.
And that was my last one. And then I got pretty lucky when I came back over. I met...
Someone who introduced me to what is now like a huge group of a really,
you know, tight knit group of friends.
(19:43):
I met my now partner. We bought a house.
We got animals. Like a lot has happened.
I got a new job. I left my career. I got a new job.
Like, you know, it was a lot of life changes, but it's all really worked out for me here.
(20:03):
And really I'm happier than I've been in as long as I can remember.
So I'm, I'm so fortunate and grateful that it all worked out this way.
And honestly, that's, that's just so amazing to hear. And I think it definitely
gives me hope and inspires me as well.
Cause that's, that's literally what, what I feel like I had that in Taiwan.
I had this very tight group of friends that, you know, from 21 to 28 friends forever, all that.
(20:28):
And then what I had to learn was how to, how to learn how to lose people.
And not in a sense that, because again, it sounds like I'm so old,
but back then social media wasn't what it is now.
But no, I really lost connecting with a lot of people because,
you know, I was committed to staying in Taiwan for a decade.
They were three years and out, two years and out, some people one years and out.
And I was, I really had to desensitize myself to just losing connections with people.
(20:51):
And I think moving forward, it really hurt me and being able to build connections
with people because I didn't want to feel, you know, that pain of,
man, we have this, I love you. You're a great person.
You're an amazing friend and I may not see you again for another 12 years.
So I really had to kind of work through that as a person who really loved travel
and didn't want to give that up and love new experiences.
Um, but realizing that the lifestyle that I was living had a,
(21:14):
had a, had a limiting factor in it and that it was really hard to sustain and
be present in some friendships and relationships that I built because of my, my love for travel.
So for you, is it easy for you to make friends when you go to new places?
And what are tips or advice or things that really have worked for you that have,
and I guess it's for outside of Amsterdam, that have enabled you to be able
(21:37):
to create those friendships in the places that you've been to?
Yeah. I mean, I really relate to what you just said. I think what it is,
is like when you're everywhere, you're nowhere.
And it's like, I was at a certain point in my life where I felt like I I had
so many friends all over the world,
but I wasn't able to spend enough time with any one of them to feel like I had
(22:01):
anyone close to me, really.
In my present life, you know, you always have close friends that you've had
forever and they'll always be your best friends, etc.
But I think when you never see them and you never get to spend time with them, it's very isolating.
And it was a part of my life and a decision I made to leave the industry that
(22:26):
I was in was partially due to that.
It started to become really important to me to change that.
And I think you know I have
lived in a lot of different places or I've spent extended time in
a lot of different places I'm pretty comfortable making
new friends but I think what it is is saying yes to to everything pretty much
(22:49):
especially at the beginning and I think it's different as an adult too where
it's in your 20s I think it was more like it was more quantity over quality
at that point in some ways,
like I was like, oh, I have to have as many friends as possible.
And now I really, I like to have like a smaller, closer knit group around me,
(23:12):
quality over quantity, I think.
But when I first moved to Amsterdam and I met this, this group that I'm now
really good friends with, I, you know, I did say yes to everything and they're
very active and they're always doing fun things.
And, you know, I really wanted to be a part of that, but like there's some Some
nights where I also just want to sit on my couch.
(23:32):
But I didn't do that, truthfully, for the whole first year that I was here.
And I was really trying to get out there and be a part of a community and a
group of friends that brought me a lot of joy and a lot of reward. So I think...
That is something that is really important to do, especially in the beginning.
(23:53):
And when you're in a new place, trying to make new friends, you just you say
yes, you also be forward.
Like I asked people that I just met if they want to, you know,
go out get a drink next week.
Like I was just, you know, I think most people are somewhat afraid of doing that.
(24:14):
But then you realize that everyone's kind
of open to it and you know some things stick
and some things don't but that's the only way to
find out really man that's so i almost
teared up a few times thank you lizzie and again i want to get back to travel
guys but i think that these are these are really important questions because
i think these are things these these are things that are the effects of travel
(24:38):
and the effects of a somewhat nomadic lifestyle and to embrace in the world
and things that i'm like i said i tell my friends, I say,
you know, you guys have had the state in Chicago and never left.
Like you guys have been around the same people. And I've just seen for majority
of your life and you have, I'm like, and it feels so comfortable for you.
Um, and I was like, I just like, I'm comfortably uncomfortable when I'm in these
(24:59):
places and doing these things.
So I guess my next question would be, this is a, this question I think about
sometimes, not let's say your life panned out very differently and you only
went to, you stayed in one place.
What would your life look like to you and your opinion, just if you were to
picture this in your mind, based on who you are as a person,
if you never traveled to as many places you traveled to, you lived in one place
(25:20):
and maybe traveled to one other place within your lifetime,
but you were, your home base was some place you stayed and you traveled maybe
sometimes, but not frequently. Like how different would your life be?
What, and what would that look like for you? If that was your life,
as opposed to what you have now?
Just meaning if I just would only travel to one place per year?
(25:40):
Yeah. One place per year and your home base was where you were born?
Yeah. I can't really imagine what it's like having a home base be where I was born or where I was from.
It's something that's a really difficult concept for me to imagine.
Where are you from is such a hard concept for me.
(26:03):
I've never really known how to answer that question unless I'm like,
how much time do you have?
I think if I could only travel to one place a year, I feel like I would be a different person.
And while that is kind of the lifestyle that I'm in pursuit of now.
(26:24):
I'm so grateful that I didn't live my life that way when I was younger.
And I think, you know, it's, it's really made me comfortable in uncomfortable
environments and it's made me more open to everything.
And it's, it, it's made me the person who has the courage to move to Amsterdam for no reason.
(26:46):
Like, you know, it's, it's something that's shaped me and who I am to my core.
So, yeah, I think I would be a different person, and I'm really grateful that
I'm the person that I am now because of how much I've been able to get out and explore. floor.
(27:06):
Completely understand. And I think the reason why I asked that and the way I
think about it is I can literally point out defining moments in my life where
my way of thinking completely shifted.
And again, it was accidentally being placed in a Mandarin speaking class.
It was like, I never wanted to do that, but I was forced into it and it changed
my perspective for the better.
Studying abroad, like going to Beijing, I was like, wow, I never thought I would
(27:29):
do this. And it really changed.
And I think for you, it was like, well, like you said, where I'm from is it's
such a loaded question. It's not the same as this, maybe for other people.
Like for me, I process it very differently.
And I think that really, you know, kind of, let's say you were born and lived
in one place when you're growing up for 10 years, it would be a completely different outcome.
So just that in and of itself kind of shifted, you know, the trajectory of your entire life.
(27:53):
And for me, I can really pinpoint those times where it's like,
yeah, this changed my life forever.
And had I made a different decision, like who knows what life would have been,
But I know it wouldn't have been what it is now.
And I'm very grateful that I made that decision to go right when everybody else was going left.
So where is a place that you've traveled to that you have no interest in returning
(28:14):
to? It wasn't you have no interest in returning to.
I have a tough time with that question. I don't know if I would say there's
nowhere in the world that I've been that I wouldn't go back to.
Maybe Vegas, just because I'm not sure if I'm allowed back there.
I can tell you about places I didn't have necessarily the best experience.
(28:38):
I didn't have the greatest time in Russia. There were some unsettling things
that happened on my trip there, and I didn't necessarily feel safe at the time,
which is something that's hard to get past.
But I would also maybe give it another shot. It would take a lot for me to write
off a place for anything surface level, like, oh, the beach wasn't pretty enough
(28:59):
or I didn't like the food.
I like to travel with a really open mind and I find that you can find reward
in connecting with the people wherever you are, making a big effort to understand
people and cultures that are different than mine is something I've always made a big effort to do.
And if you visit somewhere where you have a bad experience with one human,
(29:21):
you can almost always find other humans who are fundamentally and morally the same as you.
And I think that's really rewarding and important to keep top of mind when you're
traveling and you're somewhere where you may not be feeling it so much.
I think there's There's always a bright side of any country if you look hard enough.
(29:45):
Okay. Well, you've, you've given me, uh, you were really close to convincing me. Okay.
Cause my answer to this is always, I think I said the wrong answer on my last podcast, but it's fine.
It's Paris and not, I want to go to France, but Paris to me was just so underwhelming.
And I have, Chris is going to be so mad, but it was so underwhelming to me.
(30:06):
And it was like, but also I realized, like you said, the perspective,
right? The time when I went, it was during a Euro trip.
I had a $10,000 budget and we were going for six weeks. I
had at the time I realized that was not enough money and
I made the mistake of spending four thousand dollars in the first five
nights in Italy no idea what I was doing how do you
even do that but I did it but yeah Paris was just like it's a very romantic
(30:27):
place and I will go back there with like you know my wife or something like
but to me it was just like I could have not I guess the Mona Lisa being so small
was very underwhelming for me like the Eiffel Tower in my mind I had I had this
vision that the ivory tower was something that it wasn't.
And I got there and I was like, oh, this is, this is all right. This is all right.
(30:47):
Didn't need to fly across the world to see it. I don't know.
Maybe I'm being too harsh on the place.
But for me, that's the place I say, because I was like, I felt like I was there
for five days and I really, I know I would talk to people.
I did so many things, but I just could not feel connected to it.
So maybe it's a connection thing.
Yeah. Yeah, it's funny you say that because I felt the same way about Paris,
(31:10):
actually. I did the same as you.
I did a Euro trip and stayed in the hostels and got robbed that trip,
actually. Oh, my goodness.
And then I also spent about a month there.
We were shooting a TV show in Paris, so I was there for a month.
And that's not always the most flattering way to experience the city.
You really see the underbelly of lots of places. You go to really beautiful places.
(31:35):
You know, shooting locations and you're sitting in the basement trying to not
let the camera see you. It's that type of thing.
But Paris was not a place that I connected to really, but I was just there a
couple of weeks ago with Christy and I saw her, my mom was there and I really had the best time.
I, you know, was there working with Christy one day and then my mom and I just
(32:00):
kind explored the city a little bit.
And I walked into it with no real expectations.
I feel like I had done the things that you needed to do, the touristy things.
And not feeling the pressure to do the touristy things was actually really rewarding and freeing.
We just didn't make dinner reservations and wandered into a tiny cafe.
(32:22):
And it was truly one of the better meals
that I've had in as long long as i can remember recently it
was just it was great we had the best time okay you've
convinced me i'll i'll i'll give i'll give paris another shot guys
i got so much hate for that when i said it earlier like
a few months ago and people are like oh my gosh you hate paris you hate life
(32:43):
i was like hey guys calm down calm down guys it's just it's one city that's
not my favorite but lizzie has officially convinced me to give paris a shot
and again i'm gonna i'm gonna force christy to I'm Paris, NNC. You'd be thrilled.
NNC. So what is, you know, we have all this travel knowledge,
right? We're travel curators, work with all these cool people, yay.
(33:05):
But like, what is some travel knowledge that you like to share with people who
maybe aren't as well traveled or who are looking for reasons to explore beyond their hometowns?
Yeah, I think it really, I love talking about travel with people that want to
travel but haven't very much. Right.
I'm fortunate that I can speak firsthand about a lot of different places in the world,
(33:30):
but I really like talking
about the places that you wouldn't necessarily find on TripAdvisor or not the
main touristy attractions and not the number one rated restaurant on Google
Maps that you would find yourself.
(33:51):
I love to be able to say, oh, you're going to, you know, Jakarta.
You have to go into this hidden coffee shop that I know about that's,
you know, behind warehouse door that you have to know about.
You know, I love to sort of share that kind of knowledge because it's things
(34:13):
that people wouldn't necessarily discover on their own. And a lot of people
have shared that knowledge with me, too.
And it's been, you know, it feels like a pay it forward type of dialogue.
So then at this point in your life, are you more proponent still the way you
travel now? And which one would you prefer?
Are you more of a backpacker? Let's go and figure a place out.
(34:33):
Are you a heavy planner or are you a heavy planner where it's like,
I want to map out every detail?
Or are you like, I just want a luxury vacation. I've done all that already.
I just want to travel in luxury. Right.
Listen, I've done the hostels. I've had the best time of my life.
I graduated a semester early just so I could run around Europe by myself and stay in hostels.
It was one of the best things I've ever done. I can tell you about 100 of them.
(34:58):
But if we're talking about now, especially as someone who works in luxury travel,
I now suffer daily from intense FOMO, arranging these incredible trips for people
and really just want to go on them myself.
I think one of the best parts of working in the luxury market is discovering
properties all over the world that I never would have maybe known about otherwise.
(35:19):
And every day I'm like, I want to go to there.
So yeah, I think that's really where my head is at just because of the nature of what we do.
Yeah. And I 100% agree. I tell the story.
I think I tell people this, but they didn't really, you know,
just my friends and family. I'm like, guys, I thought I knew what luxury,
(35:40):
I said, there's levels to luxury.
First of all, I thought I knew what luxury meant, but then you go to a place
like Bangkok and you, you know, you go to a place called Riva Siri,
like, oh, this is nice. It's a five-star hotel.
And then you go to the CM, right? And the difference is one hotel is $500 a
night. The other one is $3,000.
So it's like, that to me is like, man, I want to make an income,
not making it yet, make an income where I can also enjoy that level to luxury.
(36:03):
But like you said, I have so much FOMO and I am, I loved hostels,
but the older I got, the least amount of time I spent in shared bunk bedrooms
and more in private rooms within the hostel.
So I knew that just in how I was traveling, I was growing out of that,
but I had so much fun. Like I love hostels.
I had so much fun staying in them, you know, prior to COVID and things like that.
(36:25):
But one of the things that you guys may not know, and Lizzie may not know this as well.
Well, she knows this part. We're both on the Asia team. So we plan trips in
Asia and Oceania, but Lizzie does places all over the world as well in addition to that.
But we're on the same team within the same company. And one of the things that.
For me is that Lizzie's been a great inspiration for me because when I first
started and I was like, you know, I was planning to ship to Indonesia and I'd been there a few times.
(36:47):
And I, and then I, I made my itinerary and I was like, this is great.
The client's going to love it.
But then I went and I was like, well, before I send this, let me go look at,
you know, someone who's an expert in it more, more, more than myself.
And I looked at Lizzie's itinerary and I was like, Hmm, there's a, there's a huge gap here.
And I'm going to, and I started working and what mine looked like versus hers.
I mean, that's the great part about our team, right? as we learn from one another.
(37:10):
And I was like, well, this person is amazing and I need to talk to Lizzie more.
And I made it a point to study the itinerary she put together,
ask as many questions as I could, learn about her when she started full-time and all that.
But you may not know that, but you were a big inspiration for how I went about
planning and looking at places just from the work that you do.
And again, it really, really helped me and made me better at what I was able to do.
(37:33):
So my question in that is in the travel space, who is your biggest inspiration?
I mean, who do you draw motivation from to continue doing the work that you
do, but also pushes you to want to travel more and learn more so that you are
at your best self and what you're able to contribute to the world and to people as well?
First of all, thank you so much for saying that. That's so sweet. I'm going to cry now.
(37:57):
Thank you. That's so nice. So I think I probably join a lot of people when I
say this would have to be Anthony Bourdain.
I actually had the opportunity to work with him for a couple of years on a cooking show.
I was a big fan of his before that, but I was an even bigger fan afterwards
because he is so authentic and just exactly the same person as he is on TV.
(38:22):
So watching No Reservations became even more rewarding for me because I had
the perspective of knowing that he truly was so himself.
What you see is what you get. And I really admired the way that he viewed the
world and interacted with the world.
And his perspectives on things are something that I think about all the time
(38:43):
and carry with me. I really believe he was responsible for opening so many people's
eyes to other parts of the world.
And he made a difference in how an often closed-minded public viewed cultures
that were so different than theirs.
So I miss him and his passing was such an enormous loss to the world.
But I think he was the best at finding those places behind closed doors and
(39:10):
going in there and just being instantly comfortable with anything that came his way.
And I think that's a really enormously important way to experience other cultures, other places.
And I think if everybody traveled that way, it would be a better world. Yeah.
Well, for sure. Absolutely. And he was definitely a legend, a legend in this space for sure.
(39:35):
And definitely one of the reasons why a contributing factor to why I wanted to podcast.
I think I just wanted to provide a perspective for friends and family and people
that pretty much anyone who would listen about what I was going through and
just how much it was changing my life to being able to talk to people just from
all over the world and just hear their different perspectives.
So, but yeah, he was definitely a pioneer and such a terrible loss for the world,
(40:00):
sadly, when he passed away.
But what is, so in the spirit of Bourdain, what is one of your favorite travel stories to sell?
Not sell, tell. tell um like your elevator pitch
people say like oh you're so well traveled like tell me
about one of your travel stories like what what's the first thing that comes
to mind and why and then why and also the last part of that is why is it why
(40:23):
do you why is it set with you for as long as it has and is your favorite travel
story to tell it's such a tough one i think it's probably Probably my experience in Thailand.
So I went to Thailand during a summer in high school, and I was volunteering
there in a more remote part of Thailand.
(40:45):
And on one of our days off, they sent us on a scavenger hunt.
It was sort of like a competition.
And we had to find certain things. We had to like take a picture with a cow.
We had to, you know, find a sign that has certain words in it or whatever.
It was sort of a silly thing. But,
(41:05):
we were looking for a cow to take a picture of.
And we ended up knocking on this person's door that we saw that there were cows outside.
We ended up knocking on this person's door and asking this person who did not
speak English if we could take a picture with his cow.
(41:25):
And I think he did not understand what we were talking about.
But he invited us into his house, made
us tea gave us food was speaking Thai
to us we had no idea really what was happening
but we were laughing so hard we made
I mean at the time looking back on
it it was probably not the safest
(41:48):
thing to do to just walk into someone's house but it was it was one of the coolest
things ever and then we did end up taking a picture with the cow and our new
friend in the backyard and we lost the scavenger hunt because we just spent
all day in this man's house but yeah things like that,
(42:08):
are are always things i look back on and
i'm like wow i've i've been so lucky to to get to do things like that so yes
if you had a travel podcast because what would you talk about and why yeah i
had to think about this one for a while i would probably i would be doing what
(42:28):
travel industry legend Carl Jr.
Is doing most likely, which is, you know, interviewing people who have experience
in the space and telling, you know, helping them tell stories in an interesting way.
But I think people who are looking for a travel podcast are looking for insight
(42:51):
into different places around the world.
I think with a podcast, you need to have sort of like a theme or a thread.
I've never had a podcast before.
But I think, honestly, I think you do such a good job. I've listened to all of your episodes.
I love them. And I think you do such a good job of, you know,
helping people tell their stories, but also highlighting different places around
(43:17):
the world in a really organic way.
And I really love that. And I respect that.
Thank you so much. I really appreciate that, Lizzie, because I would listen to a Lizzie cast.
I feel like and I know you have so many amazing gems to share.
Again, your story, as you've been listening to it now, guys,
(43:38):
as you listen to the podcast, it's just it's amazing. There's so many follow-up
questions I have, but I'm like, okay, I only have an hour.
I don't want to get stuck in one place for too long. But your story is just so amazing.
And again, the joy that I get from interviews and podcasts is how much I learned.
Like just in the first 20 minutes, I was, you guys know, it's very hard for me to get speechless.
(43:59):
I'm speechless. I'm like, wow, should I dive into that? I'm tearing up.
It's just so many amazing things that you have to share with the world.
So again, I ask this question because I'm like, hey guys, I want people to realize,
share your story. It's so amazing.
But I'm also just very thankful for taking the time and being willing to share
your life journey and how travel has impacted that.
And I guess that leads to one of my last questions.
(44:21):
What passions have you discovered from travel?
And something that maybe you didn't see coming, but has become a passion of
yours within this space?
So a passion I think I really discovered in Bali, actually, when I was there during the pandemic.
Bali suffered tremendously during the pandemic. 80% of Bali's economy is tourism.
(44:44):
And being there during the pandemic was something that really opened my eyes
to how much people were really,
really suffering and how reliant the island is on tourism.
And we really saw some devastating situations.
(45:06):
I had a really good friend who is a Balinese high priestess,
but she and her husband run an organization called Feed Bali that started as
sort of a brainchild of the pandemic.
But they had this system where $30 would feed a family of four for two weeks during the pandemic.
(45:31):
And I just was so.
Sort of passionate about what they were doing. And I had the opportunity to
go volunteer with them and go around with them to various homes of people that
were in need during that time.
And it really opened my eyes to the part of Bali that a lot of people don't really get to see,
(45:55):
which is the impoverished areas and what kind of goes on behind the big walls and the closed doors.
I think that if I wasn't working in travel,
I could see myself either starting a nonprofit or being involved in one just
because it's easy to go to Bali and just sort of live the life and enjoy yourself there.
(46:22):
There's a wonderful place to be, but I think I really learned a lot during that time,
and it sparked something in me where I felt like I really needed to give back
there to an island that gives us so much.
I think it's really important to give back some of that as well.
(46:43):
And I know now that you are the owner of Duma Cabot in Bali, Indonesia as well.
Can you talk a little bit about that experience? What led to that?
Why you decided to have that, and just anything else that you would like to
share about your ownership of things in Indonesia as well.
Yeah, absolutely. So in 2017, when I started spending a lot of time in Bali,
(47:05):
at first it was just a place I went.
When I reached a point in my career where I didn't need to say yes to every
project, I started taking longer breaks between shows and going to Bali.
But I got addicted and started making friends and eventually started building
investment properties over there.
So I built my first one in 2018, which is a villa in Canggu.
(47:28):
And my second one was this brainchild of the pandemic, actually,
which would eventually become Mundek Cabins and Duma Cabin.
A friend approached me about a concept for a boutique hotel in Munduk,
which if you know, Bali is quite remote and in the middle of nowhere,
but a beautiful area in the north with close proximity to all the best waterfalls
(47:52):
and lakes and hiking, etc.
So at the time, this was 2020, the borders were very closed.
Tourism was non-existent with no real insight on when it was coming back.
We were pretty locked in on the island without an easy way to get in and out.
We had some extra time on our hands to do the least. And we were like,
we should totally open a hotel in the mountains during a time when we expect
(48:16):
exactly no one to stay there.
Let's do it. And it was hilarious because it was such a risky and chaotic decision looking back on it.
But I think the pandemic had this effect on me, at least, where I was really
open to saying yes to new things and taking on new projects and just very open to whatever.
So off we went. And we We spent a ton of time up there that year.
(48:40):
We got it up off the ground in about a year and three months, start to finish.
And we opened in September of 2021, which, I mean, tourism was very much not
back yet at anywhere near its full capacity.
But when we opened, the first thing we did was try to get our friends up there
and as many as possible just to get their feedback. back.
(49:02):
And largely due to, I think, Instagram, the word spread pretty quickly.
We weren't expecting the onslaught of interest given the situation at the time.
But what we found was that people, and particularly the expat community in Bali
that had spent the pandemic locked in on the island, was dying to experience
(49:23):
something new at that point in an area they knew of and had probably we spent time in,
but there was never anywhere that could be considered a luxury boutique hotel in that area.
And it took off immediately. We almost didn't have an empty night from the day
we opened for our first year, despite there being very little tourists in the
(49:45):
early days on the island and us being very wrong about what we expected as a new business.
But I'll always be really thankful to that community for spreading the word
and getting it out there because it was really the Bali local community that
supported us in the early days and blowing us up on Instagram and can be credited
for helping us to really succeed in the long run.
(50:06):
And now it's starting in such an amazing place.
I'm so proud to be a part of. It's rewarding to see our guests and friends getting
to enjoy it in the way that we always hoped for and always intended.
It's one of my favorite places in the world. Every year, once a year,
I get to take over the whole property with my friends.
And it's my favorite thing to do. We built it as a place to disconnect,
(50:31):
to reconnect, so to speak.
And we put thought into the spaces such as the round fire pit that can seat
20 and the restaurant that we have on site.
And we tried to create spaces for people to spend real time together with the
people that are important to them.
And I'm so insanely lucky Lucky for the team that we have there,
(50:51):
it was important for us to hire locally within the Munda community.
And without that team, the whole thing collapses.
They're really the heart and soul of the cabins now, and we're incredibly grateful to have them.
So if someone wanted to find this cabin, what is the website or what's the easiest
way to find it? Website and social media? Yeah, it's www.mundacabins.com.
(51:17):
That's M-U-N-D-U-K.
Or we're at Mundacabins or at Duma, D-U-M-A, cabin on Instagram.
And I can say from experience, it's amazing. You guys talked about it in my
Indonesia podcast. You want to go check that one out, but I'm gonna talk about it again.
It was so much. Oh my goodness. First of all, I didn't, I didn't know what to
expect because I liked, I looked at one or two pictures. I was like,
(51:40):
nope, it already looks amazing.
I want to, I want to get that wow factor when I pull up and I stay there and
everything Lizzie said, the first, the team, the team is phenomenal.
They're, they contact you on WhatsApp. Yeah. It's easy to get in contact with
them for food, for drinks, for ideas, activities, relaxation,
disconnecting, all of that is there.
(52:00):
And it's even great because you walk in and you have Alexa in one of the rooms.
And that was really cool. I was like, hey, Alexa. She was like, hey, Carl.
She didn't say, hey, Carl, but I want her to. But the fire pit was amazing.
The pool area, it is so serene and it is a great place within Bali to disconnect.
There was a waterfall hike that we went on. We went early per recommendation
from Lizzie and her entire team.
It was the right thing to do. We were there by ourselves. We had great Instagram photos.
(52:25):
So I have so much more I can say about this place. But yeah,
I highly, highly recommend it per my podcast. Talked about it before.
But I want to just, you know, I know Liz being very, very, very modest.
I'm going to let you guys know it's amazing. It's totally worth it if you're
ever in Indonesia or in Bali.
Sorry if that was too much, Lizzie. I just, I really loved it.
I really enjoyed it and really thankful for it.
I love hearing that. And we loved having you. I really love sharing it with,
(52:50):
you know, people in my life and it's one of my favorite things.
So I, I, you're always welcome back. Bring everybody.
So my last question, do you have any, anything else you'd like to mention or
talk about or any questions you have for me as we wind down the podcast?
I have so many questions for you.
So many questions, not enough time. Um.
(53:11):
Is there something you want me to talk about? No. No, anything or nothing.
It's okay. No, no pressure.
I would love to hear about your time in Taiwan. I feel like I feel bad,
but I didn't know this about you, that you spent that much time there.
Yeah, it was the short version. It was a complete accident how I got there.
It was right around the time we were in a recession in America and I graduated
(53:34):
that year. No jobs available.
And my professor was like, hey, you want to go work in Taiwan?
I was like, yeah, sure. Why not? And that's how I ended up there.
She showed me one picture of some palm trees and I was like, oh, it looks warm.
But yeah, it was eight years of being a director of a foreign, at a private school.
So I was in charge of the international program. So hired a bunch of people,
(53:57):
organized a lot of amazing things for the students there.
I fell in love with teaching and I never thought that I would do that. But then I wanted more.
So I started my own travel company where I focused on Thailand and Taiwan.
And then I wanted more and opened my own bar and art gallery there.
And then the pandemic hit when I opened the bar and art gallery,
which is why I ended up coming back home.
(54:17):
Because long story short, put everything into it. But then, you know,
that kind of kind of ruined everything. But it was still a great learning experience.
I made amazing connections and it just prepared me for whatever's next in my
life. But yeah, Taiwan was home for 12 or is home when I'll be heading back
there in three weeks. So I'm excited.
But yeah, Taiwan was a great period of my life. A lot of highs,
(54:38):
a few lows, but overall, I wouldn't replace it for the world.
It's amazing. I love hearing about that.
I want to know more. I know we're out of time. We are. And I'm sorry for it being so long.
I do apologize, but it was just so many great things that we were able to talk
about. So thank you so much, Lizzie, for being a part of the show today.
I do want to invite you on sometime in the future because there is so much more
(55:01):
I would like to discuss, getting more into the places you visit and the highlights of those.
But again, thank you so very much for joining me today. It was really an honor to have you on the show.
It was so much fun. Thank you for having me, Carl. Thank you so much, Lizzie.
And thank you to everyone for tuning in to yet another episode of the Black Expat Podcast.
If you look in the link description of the show, you will see a link to Duma
(55:22):
and Mundu Cabins, which you can find, which Lizzie talked about during the show.
If you want to just check it out, you can click the link right in the description.
And as always, like, share and subscribe. Another huge thank you to Lizzie for
joining us today. And thanks to everyone for tuning in.
My name is Carl, the Black Expat. We're out, shit.
What up, everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Black Expat Podcast.
My name is Carl, and I'm excited to be rocking with you guys for yet another episode.
I am very excited to be joined today by an amazing guest, an amazing guest that
allowed me to stay at one of her amazing places around the world,
(00:21):
which we'll get into later in the podcast, so please stay tuned for that.
But without further ado, I would like to welcome the amazing Lizzie McPherson to the show.
Lizzie, how are you doing today? Hi, Carl. I'm great. Thanks for having me.
Thank you so much for joining us today. If you don't mind, I just want to jump right into it, right?
Because you have such an amazing story and I want to make sure that we get to
(00:41):
all the details and just jump right into it.
So can you tell us a little bit about yourself, your background and how you
landed within the travel space? Sure.
I was raised in Bermuda before settling down in California for the better part of my adult life in LA.
And for 13 years, I was in film and television.
(01:01):
I was an associate director primarily for competition shows and reality shows,
but a little bit of everything. thing.
And in 2017, I started living back and forth between LA and Bali,
where I would spend my time in between shoots, which started as a place to relax,
but of course, eventually turned into a place of work also, which we'll get into later.
(01:24):
And two years ago, I left that industry and moved to Europe.
So I'm currently based in Amsterdam with my partner and our two dogs.
And what else can I tell you? I love to travel, which is why I guess we're here.
I'm a terrible cook, but my partner is a chef, so it works out well.
(01:44):
What? Do the wordle every day.
And yeah, and then I got into travel just about a year ago.
I started with Sunset. So I started when I moved to Amsterdam. Wow.
Well, you said you were, there's so much to unpack in there, right?
So my heart wants me to jump into how do you manage to travel with your dog?
(02:07):
Because I'm going with your dogs, because I'm going through that right now.
But also you said you were born in Bermuda, right? So how did that shape your
perspective of the world, being born in Bermuda?
And what I mean by that is I always say when I was born in Chicago,
right, I think it really, I really thought because it's such a big city and
(02:28):
so many things around it, I didn't really seek anything outside of that because
I felt like I was getting so much where I was at.
And it wasn't until I left Chicago that I was like, wow, Chicago is great.
I love this city, but the world has so much more.
And I was kind of had sensory overload on what I thought Chicago was and what
I realized the world was.
How did that shape your life's journey in your opinion?
Yeah. Yeah, so I actually wasn't born there, but we moved there quite soon after I was born.
(02:54):
And I have American parents who never managed to get us a proper permanent stay
visa during our time there, which is a whole other story.
But we found ourselves traveling a ton for that reason, but also because my
parents are inherently two people who have a hard time sitting still.
I'm really lucky that I got to experience seeing so much of the world at a really early age.
(03:17):
And I think it's something that has stuck with me for better or for worse.
Travel has never scared me or been something that I overthink often.
I'm really comfortable being on the road because I was raised that way.
And I feel really fortunate for that most of the time.
And how did you get into your first chosen career path that you were working in?
(03:40):
Yeah, I studied broadcast journalism in college and I thought I wanted to be a journalist.
I really liked to write, but then I realized I didn't want to write in a journalist
way, but I really liked the TV part of it.
So I did the cliche thing.
I packed up my car, drove across the country, got my first job on Craigslist.
(04:03):
I was Timbaland's unpaid intern. Wow.
Job in LA in 2009. And then it kind of just snowballed from there.
It's a combination of you know, meeting the right people, right place, right time.
That's sort of how that industry works is a combination of luck and working
(04:26):
really hard and being open to the grind that is TV production.
So, so yeah, so I sort of worked my way up.
And then a few years in, I was full time, the associate director,
mainly for competition shows.
But I was doing a little bit everything. I was doing scripted commercials,
(04:47):
music videos, kind of anything that came my way. And I really...
It was a really great career that I enjoyed and one that I look back on,
you know, really, really fondly still.
So Timbaland's unpaid intern. I really like how you kind of,
(05:07):
like, how does, what, like how, just how, like, how does that happen?
I saw this posting on Craigslist. I didn't, I moved to LA. I didn't know anyone.
And I at the time like Craigslist was the
jam like that's that's where
you got all your jobs or so I thought so I
(05:30):
jumped on there and they didn't say that it was like it was
Timbaland at the time they were just like you know
music professional looking for production
intern I can't remember how they worded it something like
that I was applying to everything and they
wrote me back and then it was it was a really cool
first la experience actually everybody was super nice i was doing like a lot
(05:53):
of like admin and clerical work as to be expected but i got to go my first time
on a set was on one of timbaland's music videos and i thought it was the coolest
thing ever i was like i've made it.
And it was really cool and then from there i you
know eventually got a paying job and said
(06:16):
said goodbye to those those wonderful people and
my first paying job was as the receptionist at
a production company that mainly does reality
competition shows it's called magical elves and i
was in the office for about six months but then i really thought that i wanted
to be on set the sets looked like so much fun and that's where all the action
(06:38):
happened and so I you know requested to make the switch and started as a production
assistant and the rest is history I guess.
So I know you mentioned that your parents were like, they like to move around a lot.
Do you say, so I know LA seems like a very, to me, I haven't lived there.
(07:01):
I've been there maybe for only for five days.
Is it a very fast paced environment?
Do you think you're naturally wired to be very fast paced?
And then how easy is it for you then to transition between places,
between things that you enjoy doing?
Or do you see yourself as quite the opposite? that you just have been really
fortunate to kind of be a part of these amazing experiences that you've had
(07:22):
up until this point in your life?
Yeah, I think of LA as my 20s. I spent my whole 20s there.
And it was a wonderful place to kind of spend that time in my life.
I think what I loved about LA is everything that it had to offer.
It felt like there was so much opportunity, especially being really young.
(07:43):
I think what I started to struggle with LA as I I got older is that it's so
big and it's so spread out that I found it difficult to foster community in
an environment like that,
especially because I was working so much and I was always on the road and shooting
wherever in the world I was.
I was never really home that much. And it's hard.
(08:06):
It's different than New York where you can fall into a subway or a taxi and
be anywhere in 10 minutes. It's.
If you go out, getting home is a real thing that you have to think about.
And also just seeing friends.
It felt like it was very spread out and disjointed in a lot of ways.
(08:30):
But I don't mean to. No shade to LA. I have a spot in my heart for LA always.
But I loved it there during that time. I think it's just something that I maybe
grew up and grew out of is how I feel about it. But I love going back to visit now.
So in my 20s, I felt like I was doing everything, everywhere, all at once.
(08:54):
It almost kind of feels like a blur because I was doing so many different things
and traveling to so many different countries.
I was like, man, I did a lot in a short amount of time. But really,
it was a decade. It was quite a long time.
So how does travel fit into that puzzle? specifically working with travel and
helping other people see the world.
How did you naturally transition from LA into working within the travel space?
(09:18):
Yeah, so I think it was more, it wasn't necessarily to do with LA.
It was more to do with my career in production.
But my role on a film set was very logistical and operations-based.
I was responsible for not only writing the shoot schedules, but also executing
them and leading them forward.
(09:39):
So every single day was like we were planning an event with hundreds of people
involved that all had to be on board and move the machine forward at the same pace.
As a result of that, the skill set that was developed was learning how to run
an event, fixing problems before they happen,
having a plan A, B, C, and Z for every possible scenario that could go wrong,
(10:00):
operating under pressure, and generally being forced to plan right and think ahead.
So I know that eventually I knew that I could pivot to working in travel and
executing trips for people where many of those skill sets were the same.
You know, to curate a trip successfully, you need to be good at all of those things.
And it's about taking a client's vision, designing the plan,
(10:24):
laying in the logistics and executing it as flawlessly as possible.
So I think my previous career really gave me a leg up with that.
And I knew that going in when I decided to pull the trigger and make the switch.
So I was really lucky to find Sunset who recognized that not everyone's path
into travel is traditional.
(10:45):
Not everyone starts there. And I was really grateful that they were able to
view my background as an asset and recognize my career path and me as someone
who could benefit the company when they hired me.
So I was really grateful for that opportunity.
So, well, that's my first, thank you. That was, thank you. That was just,
that was, that was amazing.
(11:06):
I guess my next question would be then if, if you were to curate an experience
for yourself and, and you can go into the destination, just like,
just for one, just, just curate your own experience for you.
That kind of, that kind of puts together how all the things that you feel are
important for a travel experience for someone going to saw a place for for the
(11:27):
first time, and it's for yourself, what would that look like?
A tough question. There's a lot of places on my bucket list.
I feel like it grows every day working in this industry.
But I think the most successful trips and the ones that I like to design,
probably because these are the ones that I would like to go on,
are the ones that lend the experiences.
(11:50):
So it's not just a beach vacation. It's not just a jungle vacation a lot lot of the time.
I think the most successful ones and the ones that really give people the opportunity
to experience a country and a place at its fullest are the ones where you get
to visit multiple areas that are really different.
(12:12):
You get to meet the locals and learn about them and their culture and however different it might be.
You can almost always find commonality I find across the world.
And I think that is something that's really important is people that you meet
(12:33):
and the people are so much of what makes up a place. I think that's really, really important.
So curating trips where,
you know, like Sunset does, where you get to go into someone's private home
and do a cooking class or, you know, really interact with the people who are
so excited to show you that place is one of the best ways,
(12:55):
I think, to experience any place in the world.
So yeah, I think the most successful ones are the ones that,
have that balance of culture and landscapes and cities and the ones that are
going to give you the highlights of every place and what they have to offer.
(13:18):
And one of the things that I really aspire to do in my life is to be able to choose where I live.
And I know in some sense, I choose where I live now, but if I really had to
choose, if price wasn't an issue, if I could do whatever I want to do and go
wherever I wanted to go and not worry about those things.
So my question is, you could choose to live wherever you like.
(13:41):
Why have you chosen to live where you live now?
And where is one place that you've visited, that you've been to personally,
that you feel like, man, I could really live here?
And what's the driving factor behind why you could live in that place if you decided to move again?
My toxic trait is that whenever I go anywhere, I think that I'm going to move there.
(14:01):
This is true of most places. And then multiple times in my life,
I have actually done that. I've done that with Bali.
It's a problem.
Yeah. I think my mindset on this has really shifted in the last few years.
When I was working in production, my apartment in LA was basically a glorified storage unit.
(14:27):
I would come home to do laundry and repack and leave again.
And I was also not very comfortable being there. I was more comfortable being
out and on the road and doing something different every day.
And now when I come back from a trip, I'm so grateful to be home.
It's something that like stability was a new concept for me.
(14:49):
It was something that I was really, you know, that I've had to work on being comfortable with.
But when I come home now, I'm really happy to be here. And I feel very settled in Amsterdam.
It's taken 18 months for me to feel like I really am settled here and have roots here.
And I have moved so many times in my life. I hope and I really hope that I don't
(15:14):
have to again, at least permanently.
And that's not to say I don't love spending time in other places.
But recently, this is really one of the first times where I felt I have a permanent, stable home base.
And it's something that's bringing me a lot of reward and happiness.
So I really like this part of my life and feeling like I've finally planted my feet somewhere.
(15:39):
So what was it for you? Was it the people or was it the place?
Because honestly, I feel like I'm going through the exact same thing,
right? I lived in Chicago, grew up there, lived in Indiana for school.
That was bad. Shout out everybody from Indiana. I'm sorry, y'all.
I prefer not to live there.
And I lived in Taiwan for 12 years. Now I'm in Austin, Texas.
(16:00):
And it's really like, I don't, I crave for that level of comfort where it's
like, I come back from a trip and I'm like, man, I'm home.
I love being here, but I'm, I'm just not there. I'm like, I want to live somewhere else.
And it's like this burning desire half within, like, I want to go back to Taiwan,
but it's like, there's so many other options out there.
So for you, like, what was it? Was it, was it the place where it's like Amsterdam
(16:22):
really made me feel welcomed here?
Or was it the people, the culture? Like what, what is it about where you are
now that really gives you that feeling that you're like, okay,
this is going to be my home base moving forward for a long period of time?
Yeah. I mean, when I decided to move here, I was really being pretty pragmatic
about it. I knew that I wanted to leave LA.
(16:42):
I knew that I was leaving the industry and I was really craving a big change.
And I hadn't had a Europe phase yet.
And I really was wanting to live in Europe.
But I was almost at a point where I was zooming all the way out on Google Maps
(17:03):
and about to throw darts at it, being like, where do I go? I was really open to it.
And there was nowhere that made a ton of sense on paper.
But there's a few things, I think, at that point in my life that were really
important to me. I wanted to go somewhere that had at least,
you know, a decent amount of English.
(17:24):
I wanted to go somewhere where I knew at least two or three people.
And I didn't want to go to London because it felt like as big as L.A.
So Amsterdam fit all of those criteria.
And actually, it was sort of it was sort of an accident.
I can't I have some really close friends here. I've been friends with them for
(17:47):
some of them my whole life and some of them for like 10 years,
both Dutch friends and American that live here.
And I used to come over before the pandemic. I would come over like every summer to visit.
And then I hadn't been able to. And then the borders reopened and I was about
to start another show, actually.
But I was like, oh, just I'll pop over for a couple of weeks.
(18:10):
But the show ended up pushing. They were like, well, we're going to shoot in July.
We're gonna shoot in August and I didn't have a reason to go home so I was like maybe I'll just.
Stay here so three
months later I was like still in Amsterdam and by that point I just fallen in
love with it I was already you know I didn't come here thinking like oh I'm
(18:34):
gonna scope it out as a place that I maybe want to move but I did like I was
thinking about that early on when I got here,
and it just started to make sense.
And it was filling a lot of the holes I felt like that I had at that time in my life.
And mainly that Amsterdam is small.
It's a small town. You can bike anywhere. You can be at anybody's house in 15 minutes.
(18:57):
And it felt like it was so much easier to foster community in an environment
like this than especially coming coming out of LA.
It's something that I really loved about it and was so different for me.
I'd never had that before.
So that is kind of what sold me on it. So then I did eventually go back, did my show.
(19:21):
And by that point, I was determined. I decided I was going to move here.
And that was my last one. And then I got pretty lucky when I came back over. I met...
Someone who introduced me to what is now like a huge group of a really,
you know, tight knit group of friends.
(19:43):
I met my now partner. We bought a house.
We got animals. Like a lot has happened.
I got a new job. I left my career. I got a new job.
Like, you know, it was a lot of life changes, but it's all really worked out for me here.
(20:03):
And really I'm happier than I've been in as long as I can remember.
So I'm, I'm so fortunate and grateful that it all worked out this way.
And honestly, that's, that's just so amazing to hear. And I think it definitely
gives me hope and inspires me as well.
Cause that's, that's literally what, what I feel like I had that in Taiwan.
I had this very tight group of friends that, you know, from 21 to 28 friends forever, all that.
(20:28):
And then what I had to learn was how to, how to learn how to lose people.
And not in a sense that, because again, it sounds like I'm so old,
but back then social media wasn't what it is now.
But no, I really lost connecting with a lot of people because,
you know, I was committed to staying in Taiwan for a decade.
They were three years and out, two years and out, some people one years and out.
And I was, I really had to desensitize myself to just losing connections with people.
(20:51):
And I think moving forward, it really hurt me and being able to build connections
with people because I didn't want to feel, you know, that pain of,
man, we have this, I love you. You're a great person.
You're an amazing friend and I may not see you again for another 12 years.
So I really had to kind of work through that as a person who really loved travel
and didn't want to give that up and love new experiences.
Um, but realizing that the lifestyle that I was living had a,
(21:14):
had a, had a limiting factor in it and that it was really hard to sustain and
be present in some friendships and relationships that I built because of my, my love for travel.
So for you, is it easy for you to make friends when you go to new places?
And what are tips or advice or things that really have worked for you that have,
and I guess it's for outside of Amsterdam, that have enabled you to be able
(21:37):
to create those friendships in the places that you've been to?
Yeah. I mean, I really relate to what you just said. I think what it is,
is like when you're everywhere, you're nowhere.
And it's like, I was at a certain point in my life where I felt like I I had
so many friends all over the world,
but I wasn't able to spend enough time with any one of them to feel like I had
(22:01):
anyone close to me, really.
In my present life, you know, you always have close friends that you've had
forever and they'll always be your best friends, etc.
But I think when you never see them and you never get to spend time with them, it's very isolating.
And it was a part of my life and a decision I made to leave the industry that
(22:26):
I was in was partially due to that.
It started to become really important to me to change that.
And I think you know I have
lived in a lot of different places or I've spent extended time in
a lot of different places I'm pretty comfortable making
new friends but I think what it is is saying yes to to everything pretty much
(22:49):
especially at the beginning and I think it's different as an adult too where
it's in your 20s I think it was more like it was more quantity over quality
at that point in some ways,
like I was like, oh, I have to have as many friends as possible.
And now I really, I like to have like a smaller, closer knit group around me,
(23:12):
quality over quantity, I think.
But when I first moved to Amsterdam and I met this, this group that I'm now
really good friends with, I, you know, I did say yes to everything and they're
very active and they're always doing fun things.
And, you know, I really wanted to be a part of that, but like there's some Some
nights where I also just want to sit on my couch.
(23:32):
But I didn't do that, truthfully, for the whole first year that I was here.
And I was really trying to get out there and be a part of a community and a
group of friends that brought me a lot of joy and a lot of reward. So I think...
That is something that is really important to do, especially in the beginning.
(23:53):
And when you're in a new place, trying to make new friends, you just you say
yes, you also be forward.
Like I asked people that I just met if they want to, you know,
go out get a drink next week.
Like I was just, you know, I think most people are somewhat afraid of doing that.
(24:14):
But then you realize that everyone's kind
of open to it and you know some things stick
and some things don't but that's the only way to
find out really man that's so i almost
teared up a few times thank you lizzie and again i want to get back to travel
guys but i think that these are these are really important questions because
i think these are things these these are things that are the effects of travel
(24:38):
and the effects of a somewhat nomadic lifestyle and to embrace in the world
and things that i'm like i said i tell my friends, I say,
you know, you guys have had the state in Chicago and never left.
Like you guys have been around the same people. And I've just seen for majority
of your life and you have, I'm like, and it feels so comfortable for you.
Um, and I was like, I just like, I'm comfortably uncomfortable when I'm in these
(24:59):
places and doing these things.
So I guess my next question would be, this is a, this question I think about
sometimes, not let's say your life panned out very differently and you only
went to, you stayed in one place.
What would your life look like to you and your opinion, just if you were to
picture this in your mind, based on who you are as a person,
if you never traveled to as many places you traveled to, you lived in one place
(25:20):
and maybe traveled to one other place within your lifetime,
but you were, your home base was some place you stayed and you traveled maybe
sometimes, but not frequently. Like how different would your life be?
What, and what would that look like for you? If that was your life,
as opposed to what you have now?
Just meaning if I just would only travel to one place per year?
(25:40):
Yeah. One place per year and your home base was where you were born?
Yeah. I can't really imagine what it's like having a home base be where I was born or where I was from.
It's something that's a really difficult concept for me to imagine.
Where are you from is such a hard concept for me.
(26:03):
I've never really known how to answer that question unless I'm like,
how much time do you have?
I think if I could only travel to one place a year, I feel like I would be a different person.
And while that is kind of the lifestyle that I'm in pursuit of now.
(26:24):
I'm so grateful that I didn't live my life that way when I was younger.
And I think, you know, it's, it's really made me comfortable in uncomfortable
environments and it's made me more open to everything.
And it's, it, it's made me the person who has the courage to move to Amsterdam for no reason.
(26:46):
Like, you know, it's, it's something that's shaped me and who I am to my core.
So, yeah, I think I would be a different person, and I'm really grateful that
I'm the person that I am now because of how much I've been able to get out and explore. floor.
(27:06):
Completely understand. And I think the reason why I asked that and the way I
think about it is I can literally point out defining moments in my life where
my way of thinking completely shifted.
And again, it was accidentally being placed in a Mandarin speaking class.
It was like, I never wanted to do that, but I was forced into it and it changed
my perspective for the better.
Studying abroad, like going to Beijing, I was like, wow, I never thought I would
(27:29):
do this. And it really changed.
And I think for you, it was like, well, like you said, where I'm from is it's
such a loaded question. It's not the same as this, maybe for other people.
Like for me, I process it very differently.
And I think that really, you know, kind of, let's say you were born and lived
in one place when you're growing up for 10 years, it would be a completely different outcome.
So just that in and of itself kind of shifted, you know, the trajectory of your entire life.
(27:53):
And for me, I can really pinpoint those times where it's like,
yeah, this changed my life forever.
And had I made a different decision, like who knows what life would have been,
But I know it wouldn't have been what it is now.
And I'm very grateful that I made that decision to go right when everybody else was going left.
So where is a place that you've traveled to that you have no interest in returning
(28:14):
to? It wasn't you have no interest in returning to.
I have a tough time with that question. I don't know if I would say there's
nowhere in the world that I've been that I wouldn't go back to.
Maybe Vegas, just because I'm not sure if I'm allowed back there.
I can tell you about places I didn't have necessarily the best experience.
(28:38):
I didn't have the greatest time in Russia. There were some unsettling things
that happened on my trip there, and I didn't necessarily feel safe at the time,
which is something that's hard to get past.
But I would also maybe give it another shot. It would take a lot for me to write
off a place for anything surface level, like, oh, the beach wasn't pretty enough
(28:59):
or I didn't like the food.
I like to travel with a really open mind and I find that you can find reward
in connecting with the people wherever you are, making a big effort to understand
people and cultures that are different than mine is something I've always made a big effort to do.
And if you visit somewhere where you have a bad experience with one human,
(29:21):
you can almost always find other humans who are fundamentally and morally the same as you.
And I think that's really rewarding and important to keep top of mind when you're
traveling and you're somewhere where you may not be feeling it so much.
I think there's There's always a bright side of any country if you look hard enough.
(29:45):
Okay. Well, you've, you've given me, uh, you were really close to convincing me. Okay.
Cause my answer to this is always, I think I said the wrong answer on my last podcast, but it's fine.
It's Paris and not, I want to go to France, but Paris to me was just so underwhelming.
And I have, Chris is going to be so mad, but it was so underwhelming to me.
(30:06):
And it was like, but also I realized, like you said, the perspective,
right? The time when I went, it was during a Euro trip.
I had a $10,000 budget and we were going for six weeks. I
had at the time I realized that was not enough money and
I made the mistake of spending four thousand dollars in the first five
nights in Italy no idea what I was doing how do you
even do that but I did it but yeah Paris was just like it's a very romantic
(30:27):
place and I will go back there with like you know my wife or something like
but to me it was just like I could have not I guess the Mona Lisa being so small
was very underwhelming for me like the Eiffel Tower in my mind I had I had this
vision that the ivory tower was something that it wasn't.
And I got there and I was like, oh, this is, this is all right. This is all right.
(30:47):
Didn't need to fly across the world to see it. I don't know.
Maybe I'm being too harsh on the place.
But for me, that's the place I say, because I was like, I felt like I was there
for five days and I really, I know I would talk to people.
I did so many things, but I just could not feel connected to it.
So maybe it's a connection thing.
Yeah. Yeah, it's funny you say that because I felt the same way about Paris,
(31:10):
actually. I did the same as you.
I did a Euro trip and stayed in the hostels and got robbed that trip,
actually. Oh, my goodness.
And then I also spent about a month there.
We were shooting a TV show in Paris, so I was there for a month.
And that's not always the most flattering way to experience the city.
You really see the underbelly of lots of places. You go to really beautiful places.
(31:35):
You know, shooting locations and you're sitting in the basement trying to not
let the camera see you. It's that type of thing.
But Paris was not a place that I connected to really, but I was just there a
couple of weeks ago with Christy and I saw her, my mom was there and I really had the best time.
I, you know, was there working with Christy one day and then my mom and I just
(32:00):
kind explored the city a little bit.
And I walked into it with no real expectations.
I feel like I had done the things that you needed to do, the touristy things.
And not feeling the pressure to do the touristy things was actually really rewarding and freeing.
We just didn't make dinner reservations and wandered into a tiny cafe.
(32:22):
And it was truly one of the better meals
that I've had in as long long as i can remember recently it
was just it was great we had the best time okay you've
convinced me i'll i'll i'll give i'll give paris another shot guys
i got so much hate for that when i said it earlier like
a few months ago and people are like oh my gosh you hate paris you hate life
(32:43):
i was like hey guys calm down calm down guys it's just it's one city that's
not my favorite but lizzie has officially convinced me to give paris a shot
and again i'm gonna i'm gonna force christy to I'm Paris, NNC. You'd be thrilled.
NNC. So what is, you know, we have all this travel knowledge,
right? We're travel curators, work with all these cool people, yay.
(33:05):
But like, what is some travel knowledge that you like to share with people who
maybe aren't as well traveled or who are looking for reasons to explore beyond their hometowns?
Yeah, I think it really, I love talking about travel with people that want to
travel but haven't very much. Right.
I'm fortunate that I can speak firsthand about a lot of different places in the world,
(33:30):
but I really like talking
about the places that you wouldn't necessarily find on TripAdvisor or not the
main touristy attractions and not the number one rated restaurant on Google
Maps that you would find yourself.
(33:51):
I love to be able to say, oh, you're going to, you know, Jakarta.
You have to go into this hidden coffee shop that I know about that's,
you know, behind warehouse door that you have to know about.
You know, I love to sort of share that kind of knowledge because it's things
(34:13):
that people wouldn't necessarily discover on their own. And a lot of people
have shared that knowledge with me, too.
And it's been, you know, it feels like a pay it forward type of dialogue.
So then at this point in your life, are you more proponent still the way you
travel now? And which one would you prefer?
Are you more of a backpacker? Let's go and figure a place out.
(34:33):
Are you a heavy planner or are you a heavy planner where it's like,
I want to map out every detail?
Or are you like, I just want a luxury vacation. I've done all that already.
I just want to travel in luxury. Right.
Listen, I've done the hostels. I've had the best time of my life.
I graduated a semester early just so I could run around Europe by myself and stay in hostels.
It was one of the best things I've ever done. I can tell you about 100 of them.
(34:58):
But if we're talking about now, especially as someone who works in luxury travel,
I now suffer daily from intense FOMO, arranging these incredible trips for people
and really just want to go on them myself.
I think one of the best parts of working in the luxury market is discovering
properties all over the world that I never would have maybe known about otherwise.
(35:19):
And every day I'm like, I want to go to there.
So yeah, I think that's really where my head is at just because of the nature of what we do.
Yeah. And I 100% agree. I tell the story.
I think I tell people this, but they didn't really, you know,
just my friends and family. I'm like, guys, I thought I knew what luxury,
(35:40):
I said, there's levels to luxury.
First of all, I thought I knew what luxury meant, but then you go to a place
like Bangkok and you, you know, you go to a place called Riva Siri,
like, oh, this is nice. It's a five-star hotel.
And then you go to the CM, right? And the difference is one hotel is $500 a
night. The other one is $3,000.
So it's like, that to me is like, man, I want to make an income,
not making it yet, make an income where I can also enjoy that level to luxury.
(36:03):
But like you said, I have so much FOMO and I am, I loved hostels,
but the older I got, the least amount of time I spent in shared bunk bedrooms
and more in private rooms within the hostel.
So I knew that just in how I was traveling, I was growing out of that,
but I had so much fun. Like I love hostels.
I had so much fun staying in them, you know, prior to COVID and things like that.
(36:25):
But one of the things that you guys may not know, and Lizzie may not know this as well.
Well, she knows this part. We're both on the Asia team. So we plan trips in
Asia and Oceania, but Lizzie does places all over the world as well in addition to that.
But we're on the same team within the same company. And one of the things that.
For me is that Lizzie's been a great inspiration for me because when I first
started and I was like, you know, I was planning to ship to Indonesia and I'd been there a few times.
(36:47):
And I, and then I, I made my itinerary and I was like, this is great.
The client's going to love it.
But then I went and I was like, well, before I send this, let me go look at,
you know, someone who's an expert in it more, more, more than myself.
And I looked at Lizzie's itinerary and I was like, Hmm, there's a, there's a huge gap here.
And I'm going to, and I started working and what mine looked like versus hers.
I mean, that's the great part about our team, right? as we learn from one another.
(37:10):
And I was like, well, this person is amazing and I need to talk to Lizzie more.
And I made it a point to study the itinerary she put together,
ask as many questions as I could, learn about her when she started full-time and all that.
But you may not know that, but you were a big inspiration for how I went about
planning and looking at places just from the work that you do.
And again, it really, really helped me and made me better at what I was able to do.
(37:33):
So my question in that is in the travel space, who is your biggest inspiration?
I mean, who do you draw motivation from to continue doing the work that you
do, but also pushes you to want to travel more and learn more so that you are
at your best self and what you're able to contribute to the world and to people as well?
First of all, thank you so much for saying that. That's so sweet. I'm going to cry now.
(37:57):
Thank you. That's so nice. So I think I probably join a lot of people when I
say this would have to be Anthony Bourdain.
I actually had the opportunity to work with him for a couple of years on a cooking show.
I was a big fan of his before that, but I was an even bigger fan afterwards
because he is so authentic and just exactly the same person as he is on TV.
(38:22):
So watching No Reservations became even more rewarding for me because I had
the perspective of knowing that he truly was so himself.
What you see is what you get. And I really admired the way that he viewed the
world and interacted with the world.
And his perspectives on things are something that I think about all the time
(38:43):
and carry with me. I really believe he was responsible for opening so many people's
eyes to other parts of the world.
And he made a difference in how an often closed-minded public viewed cultures
that were so different than theirs.
So I miss him and his passing was such an enormous loss to the world.
But I think he was the best at finding those places behind closed doors and
(39:10):
going in there and just being instantly comfortable with anything that came his way.
And I think that's a really enormously important way to experience other cultures, other places.
And I think if everybody traveled that way, it would be a better world. Yeah.
Well, for sure. Absolutely. And he was definitely a legend, a legend in this space for sure.
(39:35):
And definitely one of the reasons why a contributing factor to why I wanted to podcast.
I think I just wanted to provide a perspective for friends and family and people
that pretty much anyone who would listen about what I was going through and
just how much it was changing my life to being able to talk to people just from
all over the world and just hear their different perspectives.
So, but yeah, he was definitely a pioneer and such a terrible loss for the world,
(40:00):
sadly, when he passed away.
But what is, so in the spirit of Bourdain, what is one of your favorite travel stories to sell?
Not sell, tell. tell um like your elevator pitch
people say like oh you're so well traveled like tell me
about one of your travel stories like what what's the first thing that comes
to mind and why and then why and also the last part of that is why is it why
(40:23):
do you why is it set with you for as long as it has and is your favorite travel
story to tell it's such a tough one i think it's probably Probably my experience in Thailand.
So I went to Thailand during a summer in high school, and I was volunteering
there in a more remote part of Thailand.
(40:45):
And on one of our days off, they sent us on a scavenger hunt.
It was sort of like a competition.
And we had to find certain things. We had to like take a picture with a cow.
We had to, you know, find a sign that has certain words in it or whatever.
It was sort of a silly thing. But,
(41:05):
we were looking for a cow to take a picture of.
And we ended up knocking on this person's door that we saw that there were cows outside.
We ended up knocking on this person's door and asking this person who did not
speak English if we could take a picture with his cow.
(41:25):
And I think he did not understand what we were talking about.
But he invited us into his house, made
us tea gave us food was speaking Thai
to us we had no idea really what was happening
but we were laughing so hard we made
I mean at the time looking back on
it it was probably not the safest
(41:48):
thing to do to just walk into someone's house but it was it was one of the coolest
things ever and then we did end up taking a picture with the cow and our new
friend in the backyard and we lost the scavenger hunt because we just spent
all day in this man's house but yeah things like that,
(42:08):
are are always things i look back on and
i'm like wow i've i've been so lucky to to get to do things like that so yes
if you had a travel podcast because what would you talk about and why yeah i
had to think about this one for a while i would probably i would be doing what
(42:28):
travel industry legend Carl Jr.
Is doing most likely, which is, you know, interviewing people who have experience
in the space and telling, you know, helping them tell stories in an interesting way.
But I think people who are looking for a travel podcast are looking for insight
(42:51):
into different places around the world.
I think with a podcast, you need to have sort of like a theme or a thread.
I've never had a podcast before.
But I think, honestly, I think you do such a good job. I've listened to all of your episodes.
I love them. And I think you do such a good job of, you know,
helping people tell their stories, but also highlighting different places around
(43:17):
the world in a really organic way.
And I really love that. And I respect that.
Thank you so much. I really appreciate that, Lizzie, because I would listen to a Lizzie cast.
I feel like and I know you have so many amazing gems to share.
Again, your story, as you've been listening to it now, guys,
(43:38):
as you listen to the podcast, it's just it's amazing. There's so many follow-up
questions I have, but I'm like, okay, I only have an hour.
I don't want to get stuck in one place for too long. But your story is just so amazing.
And again, the joy that I get from interviews and podcasts is how much I learned.
Like just in the first 20 minutes, I was, you guys know, it's very hard for me to get speechless.
(43:59):
I'm speechless. I'm like, wow, should I dive into that? I'm tearing up.
It's just so many amazing things that you have to share with the world.
So again, I ask this question because I'm like, hey guys, I want people to realize,
share your story. It's so amazing.
But I'm also just very thankful for taking the time and being willing to share
your life journey and how travel has impacted that.
And I guess that leads to one of my last questions.
(44:21):
What passions have you discovered from travel?
And something that maybe you didn't see coming, but has become a passion of
yours within this space?
So a passion I think I really discovered in Bali, actually, when I was there during the pandemic.
Bali suffered tremendously during the pandemic. 80% of Bali's economy is tourism.
(44:44):
And being there during the pandemic was something that really opened my eyes
to how much people were really,
really suffering and how reliant the island is on tourism.
And we really saw some devastating situations.
(45:06):
I had a really good friend who is a Balinese high priestess,
but she and her husband run an organization called Feed Bali that started as
sort of a brainchild of the pandemic.
But they had this system where $30 would feed a family of four for two weeks during the pandemic.
(45:31):
And I just was so.
Sort of passionate about what they were doing. And I had the opportunity to
go volunteer with them and go around with them to various homes of people that
were in need during that time.
And it really opened my eyes to the part of Bali that a lot of people don't really get to see,
(45:55):
which is the impoverished areas and what kind of goes on behind the big walls and the closed doors.
I think that if I wasn't working in travel,
I could see myself either starting a nonprofit or being involved in one just
because it's easy to go to Bali and just sort of live the life and enjoy yourself there.
(46:22):
There's a wonderful place to be, but I think I really learned a lot during that time,
and it sparked something in me where I felt like I really needed to give back
there to an island that gives us so much.
I think it's really important to give back some of that as well.
(46:43):
And I know now that you are the owner of Duma Cabot in Bali, Indonesia as well.
Can you talk a little bit about that experience? What led to that?
Why you decided to have that, and just anything else that you would like to
share about your ownership of things in Indonesia as well.
Yeah, absolutely. So in 2017, when I started spending a lot of time in Bali,
(47:05):
at first it was just a place I went.
When I reached a point in my career where I didn't need to say yes to every
project, I started taking longer breaks between shows and going to Bali.
But I got addicted and started making friends and eventually started building
investment properties over there.
So I built my first one in 2018, which is a villa in Canggu.
(47:28):
And my second one was this brainchild of the pandemic, actually,
which would eventually become Mundek Cabins and Duma Cabin.
A friend approached me about a concept for a boutique hotel in Munduk,
which if you know, Bali is quite remote and in the middle of nowhere,
but a beautiful area in the north with close proximity to all the best waterfalls
(47:52):
and lakes and hiking, etc.
So at the time, this was 2020, the borders were very closed.
Tourism was non-existent with no real insight on when it was coming back.
We were pretty locked in on the island without an easy way to get in and out.
We had some extra time on our hands to do the least. And we were like,
we should totally open a hotel in the mountains during a time when we expect
(48:16):
exactly no one to stay there.
Let's do it. And it was hilarious because it was such a risky and chaotic decision looking back on it.
But I think the pandemic had this effect on me, at least, where I was really
open to saying yes to new things and taking on new projects and just very open to whatever.
So off we went. And we We spent a ton of time up there that year.
(48:40):
We got it up off the ground in about a year and three months, start to finish.
And we opened in September of 2021, which, I mean, tourism was very much not
back yet at anywhere near its full capacity.
But when we opened, the first thing we did was try to get our friends up there
and as many as possible just to get their feedback. back.
(49:02):
And largely due to, I think, Instagram, the word spread pretty quickly.
We weren't expecting the onslaught of interest given the situation at the time.
But what we found was that people, and particularly the expat community in Bali
that had spent the pandemic locked in on the island, was dying to experience
(49:23):
something new at that point in an area they knew of and had probably we spent time in,
but there was never anywhere that could be considered a luxury boutique hotel in that area.
And it took off immediately. We almost didn't have an empty night from the day
we opened for our first year, despite there being very little tourists in the
(49:45):
early days on the island and us being very wrong about what we expected as a new business.
But I'll always be really thankful to that community for spreading the word
and getting it out there because it was really the Bali local community that
supported us in the early days and blowing us up on Instagram and can be credited
for helping us to really succeed in the long run.
(50:06):
And now it's starting in such an amazing place.
I'm so proud to be a part of. It's rewarding to see our guests and friends getting
to enjoy it in the way that we always hoped for and always intended.
It's one of my favorite places in the world. Every year, once a year,
I get to take over the whole property with my friends.
And it's my favorite thing to do. We built it as a place to disconnect,
(50:31):
to reconnect, so to speak.
And we put thought into the spaces such as the round fire pit that can seat
20 and the restaurant that we have on site.
And we tried to create spaces for people to spend real time together with the
people that are important to them.
And I'm so insanely lucky Lucky for the team that we have there,
(50:51):
it was important for us to hire locally within the Munda community.
And without that team, the whole thing collapses.
They're really the heart and soul of the cabins now, and we're incredibly grateful to have them.
So if someone wanted to find this cabin, what is the website or what's the easiest
way to find it? Website and social media? Yeah, it's www.mundacabins.com.
(51:17):
That's M-U-N-D-U-K.
Or we're at Mundacabins or at Duma, D-U-M-A, cabin on Instagram.
And I can say from experience, it's amazing. You guys talked about it in my
Indonesia podcast. You want to go check that one out, but I'm gonna talk about it again.
It was so much. Oh my goodness. First of all, I didn't, I didn't know what to
expect because I liked, I looked at one or two pictures. I was like,
(51:40):
nope, it already looks amazing.
I want to, I want to get that wow factor when I pull up and I stay there and
everything Lizzie said, the first, the team, the team is phenomenal.
They're, they contact you on WhatsApp. Yeah. It's easy to get in contact with
them for food, for drinks, for ideas, activities, relaxation,
disconnecting, all of that is there.
(52:00):
And it's even great because you walk in and you have Alexa in one of the rooms.
And that was really cool. I was like, hey, Alexa. She was like, hey, Carl.
She didn't say, hey, Carl, but I want her to. But the fire pit was amazing.
The pool area, it is so serene and it is a great place within Bali to disconnect.
There was a waterfall hike that we went on. We went early per recommendation
from Lizzie and her entire team.
It was the right thing to do. We were there by ourselves. We had great Instagram photos.
(52:25):
So I have so much more I can say about this place. But yeah,
I highly, highly recommend it per my podcast. Talked about it before.
But I want to just, you know, I know Liz being very, very, very modest.
I'm going to let you guys know it's amazing. It's totally worth it if you're
ever in Indonesia or in Bali.
Sorry if that was too much, Lizzie. I just, I really loved it.
I really enjoyed it and really thankful for it.
I love hearing that. And we loved having you. I really love sharing it with,
(52:50):
you know, people in my life and it's one of my favorite things.
So I, I, you're always welcome back. Bring everybody.
So my last question, do you have any, anything else you'd like to mention or
talk about or any questions you have for me as we wind down the podcast?
I have so many questions for you.
So many questions, not enough time. Um.
(53:11):
Is there something you want me to talk about? No. No, anything or nothing.
It's okay. No, no pressure.
I would love to hear about your time in Taiwan. I feel like I feel bad,
but I didn't know this about you, that you spent that much time there.
Yeah, it was the short version. It was a complete accident how I got there.
It was right around the time we were in a recession in America and I graduated
(53:34):
that year. No jobs available.
And my professor was like, hey, you want to go work in Taiwan?
I was like, yeah, sure. Why not? And that's how I ended up there.
She showed me one picture of some palm trees and I was like, oh, it looks warm.
But yeah, it was eight years of being a director of a foreign, at a private school.
So I was in charge of the international program. So hired a bunch of people,
(53:57):
organized a lot of amazing things for the students there.
I fell in love with teaching and I never thought that I would do that. But then I wanted more.
So I started my own travel company where I focused on Thailand and Taiwan.
And then I wanted more and opened my own bar and art gallery there.
And then the pandemic hit when I opened the bar and art gallery,
which is why I ended up coming back home.
(54:17):
Because long story short, put everything into it. But then, you know,
that kind of kind of ruined everything. But it was still a great learning experience.
I made amazing connections and it just prepared me for whatever's next in my
life. But yeah, Taiwan was home for 12 or is home when I'll be heading back
there in three weeks. So I'm excited.
But yeah, Taiwan was a great period of my life. A lot of highs,
(54:38):
a few lows, but overall, I wouldn't replace it for the world.
It's amazing. I love hearing about that.
I want to know more. I know we're out of time. We are. And I'm sorry for it being so long.
I do apologize, but it was just so many great things that we were able to talk
about. So thank you so much, Lizzie, for being a part of the show today.
I do want to invite you on sometime in the future because there is so much more
(55:01):
I would like to discuss, getting more into the places you visit and the highlights of those.
But again, thank you so very much for joining me today. It was really an honor to have you on the show.
It was so much fun. Thank you for having me, Carl. Thank you so much, Lizzie.
And thank you to everyone for tuning in to yet another episode of the Black Expat Podcast.
If you look in the link description of the show, you will see a link to Duma
(55:22):
and Mundu Cabins, which you can find, which Lizzie talked about during the show.
If you want to just check it out, you can click the link right in the description.
And as always, like, share and subscribe. Another huge thank you to Lizzie for
joining us today. And thanks to everyone for tuning in.
My name is Carl, the Black Expat. We're out, shit.
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