Around the World Without Flying? An Interview with GoSeeWrite's Michael Hodson

Michael Hodson, a.ka. the mobilelawyer shut down his law practice and embarked on a RTW journey in December of 2008 with two rules: no reservations and no airplanes. 16 months, 6 continents, 44 countries, southern and northernmost cities in the world visited and plenty of adventures later he successfully came home to the collective yawn of his good friends. He's back traveling now and writing about it all at his blog GoSeeWrite and still looking for a good cigar, a great bottle of wine, and some interesting stories to tell. 

Though in Grenada right now, Michael has happily acquiesced to our request for a Q&A about his rather unusual tastes in extended travel.

1. How would you define your travel ‘style’?

I was thinking about this recently because I need a tag line under the Go, See, Write on my webpage.  The best I could come up with was "the overland adventures of a middle-aged backpacker," but the great folks that helped me design my page (@hopandjaunt) thought it might lack a little appeal.  Basically, I am a budget, mostly overland traveler that wants to see as many places of the world as I can manage, write about them all, and seek to avoid ever being referred to as "that guy" in the bar.  I am not sure I have any particular style, but I am eminently comfortable with who I am.

In Northern Kenya

2. If you could be anywhere in the world right now, where would you be and why?

Wow, great question.  I'm tempted to say at a really high-stakes poker table in Vegas, with someone else's money that I get to keep if I win.  Where I'd really like to be is in my publishers office as he or she opens a bottle of 1947 Petrus to celebrate my book hitting the NY Times bestseller list, but I am not sure whether the wine or the bestseller status is the more unlikely of that supremely unlikely fantasy.  I suppose you want something touching in reality, so how about this -- I have become a bit of a soccer fan on my travels, since that is one of the few sports you can watch around the world, and have decided I like the way Chelsea plays.  I have never seen an English Premier League game live, so I wish right now I that I had good seats to a Chelsea game with some cool British fans that would help explain more of the strategy of the game for me.  And buy me beer.

3. What was your best travel experience?

No doubt, climbing Kilimanjaro.  It was the most difficult and most rewarding thing I have done.  I have yet to even begin to write that chapter because it still is too emotional for me.  I did get a tattoo on the trip celebrating it and wrote a quick blog about it, but it really doesn't dig as deep into my head as it needs to properly explain what it meant to me.

4. What was your worst travel experience?

Can't give you #1 right now because I am actually in the process of trying to sell a piece about it.  Right up there was getting stuck at the border of Kenya and Ethiopia without a valid Ethiopian visa.  The guidebooks and US Embassy in Nairobi told me I could get a Ethiopian visa at the border.  Alas, not true.  To get there, I had to hitchhike a ride on top of a cargo truck and hold on for two days (picture attached).  It wasn't a great ride.  Then the Ethiopians wanted me to turn around, go back to Nairobi and get a visa, then come back up and cross the border.  It took three days at the border, failed bribery attempts, and my guardian angels (in this case some rich and politically connected South African and British motorcycle riders in the same situation) to finally get me across.  It was the closest I came to giving up on trying to get around the world without flying.  If I had to go back to Nairobi, I would have just flown to Addis Ababa.

5. How did you come up with Go.See.Write for your blog?

My original blog was on blogspot and it was mobilelawyer.blogspot.com.  I still go by mobilelawyer on Twitter.  I originally picked that name because I was still practicing law when I started my old blog and just occasionally traveling and writing.  Like most things in my life, I took about 2 minutes to decide on the name and just went with it.  Belatedly, I realized I needed to go to a self-hosted blog, mobilelawyer.com was taken and I needed to pick something else.  I am hoping to make the third career in my life writing, so there wasn't any need to emphasize the law stuff anymore.  Go, See, Write is what I want to do for the next decade or so of my life.

6. What is your best travel advice for the TravelPost community?

Be random.  Perhaps it is because I really make almost no plans at all (I am on Grenada now and headed to Tobago next week and never remotely planned either stop when I originally thought of this leg of my travels), but the one thing I think people tend to do too much of when traveling is planning every little thing.  Even on the first solo short trips I took to Europe six or seven years ago, the only thing I would book would be my hotel on the first night of my arrival, because of the jet lag effect.  I'd book a ticket into one city, out of some other city a couple countries over 10-14 days later and just wing it.  You tend to find more interesting things to do, places to stay, and people to meet if you don't plan everything out fully beforehand.  In my disorganized opinion, of course.

In Northern Kenya

7.What's the strangest breakfast you've eaten while traveling?

A long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, my first career was in politics.  I took a Congressional junket to Japan and every morning we had some sort of Western food, combined with salad and miso soup.  Gotta say the soup and salad breakfast is an incredibly refreshing way to start the day.

8. Anything you can't resist buying from a minibar?

It has been so long since I stayed at a nice enough hotel to have a mini-bar that I'm not sure of the answer.  Do they have those little bottles of alcohol in mini-bars, like airplanes, because if so, I love those things.  Makes me feel like less of an alcoholic.  And taller.

9. Where will you never return to?

Ethiopia.  Most everyone I know loved it, but I just didn't have a great time there.  Plus, more importantly, I was there for about a month and saw pretty much all there is that I'd want to see anyway.  Russia, aside from St. Petersburg wouldn't be high on my list either.  Ugly country and unfriendly people.  Important caveat to these, they are just my limited experiences there and your mileage may vary.  Plenty of people love both and I don't want to discourage anyone from going any place.

10. Sexiest hotel ever?

I had a great weekend about a decade or so ago in a really sexy, small little hotel in Sonoma Valley.  Or it was just a sexy, small companion that went with me.  Hell, I don't know it was ages ago, but I seem to recall some sort of sexy thing there.  And wine.

11.Most memorable travel mishap?

When I boarded my first cargo freighter, I was asked by the Filipino crew if I wanted to go to a karaoke bar with them.  They spoke almost no English, but amazingly could sing every single American or English song that was played flawlessly.  The scantily clad local women were also great singers.  I thought the place might be a strip joint, but there was no stage or pole for the girls to use to dance.  It took me a while, but after a visit to the bathroom on the 2nd floor, I finally realized it was a karaoke bat/whore house.  Interesting combination.