Speedy Boarding with Brent Hartinger and Michael Jensen
Eight quick travel questions with two guys who are really going places
Welcome back to Speedy Boarding, a bi-weekly series on Not That You Asked that is great news for those of you who are getting sick of me. That’s because it’s a series where I ask some of my favourite writers on Substack eight quick-ish questions about travel. So, the vast majority of the words you’re about to read weren’t written by me but by someone else.
This week the questions are being answered by Brent and Michael of
! They are a long-time couple who decided in 2017 to sell their house in Seattle and travel the world as “digital nomads.” That means they move to a new country every few months, supporting themselves by working remotely. So far, they’ve lived at least a month in dozens of countries — and briefly visited dozens more.Brent and Michael’s Substack has a great mix of travel tips, stories, humour and the reality of life on the road. It’s the first Substack I became a paid subscriber to and it’s worth every penny.
Now, let’s get to the questions.
Where is the best place you’ve ever been and why?
MICHAEL: Nope, nope, nope! I know everyone says this, but it really is like asking a parent to pick their favourite kid and I ain’t gonna do it!
During our past seven years of nomad-ing, we’ve lived in approximately thirty different locations for at least a month. And all but one of those had something I really liked about them.
In Grimentz, Switzerland, the Swiss Alps were every bit as beautiful as I’d imagined. Bangkok, Thailand, and Istanbul, Türkiye, are incredibly vibrant cities that I never got tired of exploring. And the street food in Mexico City was incredible.
I could go on but I think you get the point.
BRENT: After seven years of continuous travel, my view of “my best places” has shifted a bit, in that I no longer think of specific places -- I now think of places along with the people I visited them with. Unfortunately, that means no one else can ever visit my best places. But in this paradigm, I can’t visit their best places either, so I guess we’re even.
The best places I’ve ever visited are: a late-summer hike on the Medieval Monasteries Trail with Gillian and Casey near Dilijan, Armenia; sharing Singapore Slings on the beach with Mike and Miek on Koh Lanta, Thailand; and stopping to have a coffee in the rain at a little café overlooking Lake Como, Italy, with my husband Michael.
Where is the place you most want to visit?
MICHAEL: This is another impossible question to answer! Honestly, the more we travel, the more places we learn about that we really want to visit. I’d love to visit Sri Lanka, Greenland, and India. I’d love to do some hiking in Nepal, visit the ‘Stans, do a safari in Tanzania, and cross the border from Thailand into Myanmar – once the military junta is gone.
I could go on and on.
BRENT: The ruins of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. I’ve long been fascinated with antiquity, and I’ve already visited the location of almost every other one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. But not this.
The twist is that the location of the Hanging Gardens is currently unknown. So if I visited this place, and I knew for a fact it was real, I would be making a major archaeological discovery!
Who's your dream travel companion?
MICHAEL: My husband, of course! But for argument’s sake, let’s pretend you said I couldn’t pick him.
How about you, Tom! You seem like you’d be a pretty chill, interesting person to travel with.
BRENT: I’m extremely lucky, because my dream travel companion is my actual companion, Michael, my husband of 32 years. He’s smart, unflappable, has a great sense of humour, and is game for almost anything, but he’s also practical, responsible, and organized. What a travel combo, huh?
That said, I am a little jealous of those Instagrammers who travel with their devoted cat, like on their shoulder or whatever. I’d totally do that.
Great news! I'm going to buy you a hat. The catch is that you have to wear this hat on every future travel trip at all times. What kind of hat would you like?
MICHAEL: Hmmm… The smart answer would be the hat I wore in Australia. It has a wide brim that kept my face out of the sun and the rain off of my head and that rolled up to fit in my suitcase.
But instead, I think I’m going to choose the jaunty fedora I picked up somewhere in Eastern Europe. Since I’m a nomad living out of a single backpack and carrying most everything I own with me, my wardrobe is rather limited. And I think my jaunty fedora gives me a little bit of panache.
BRENT: I’m bald, and I burn easily, so I already have to wear a hat on every trip, at least outside. I often wear a baseball cap, which, incidentally, is no longer a marker of an American tourist. Everyone wears ‘em now.
But I could probably stand to shake it up. How about an Indiana Jones-style fedora?
Where is the place you never want to go back to?
MICHAEL: Great, now you want me to tell which kid I like the least. Sheesh!
Since I dodged the other question, this time I’ll give you a straightforward answer – Serbia.
Why Serbia? The attitude of too many older folks about the Balkan Wars that took place during the 1990s left a bad taste in my mouth. They were the aggressors in that war, yet not only still very much see themselves as the victims, but continue to deny the atrocities they committed. Meanwhile, Bosnians bend over backward to be diplomatic about everything that happened.
That being said, I’ve got hope for the younger Serbs now in their twenties.
BRENT: There are actually very few places that I want to go back to. I’ve had so many wonderful travel experiences, and I now have a lot of great memories. But each great new destination just makes me want to visit more places. Life is starting to feel too short to repeat myself.
Even if I did go back to, say, Lake Balaton in Hungary, which is just beautiful, I’d want to stay in a town other than Keszthely. It’s charming, but I already lived there two whole months!
You've been given a million pounds to live your best life in one destination for a year. The problem is - you're trapped there and can't leave for the year. Where would you go?
MICHAEL: Hmm, since you’ve given me a pretty big loophole where with the word “destination,” I’m going to sail right through it with my gondola and say Italy.
Not only does being in Italy simply make me feel happy, I love the geographical diversity of it. You’ve got the Italian Alps, Lake Como, Tuscany, the Ligurian Coast, the Cinque Terre, Puglia, Sardinia, and Sicily, just to name a few regions. I think I could happily spend ten years exploring Italy.
BRENT: A whole year? It would have to be a big city, and my favourite big cities are Istanbul and Mexico City, and I hear incredible things about Tokyo.
But a million pounds that I have to spend? I might pick a fantastic but expensive city like London. And if you allow treks into nearby wilderness areas, I could go with Vancouver, Canada.
You’d have to pay me a lot more than a million pounds to live in New York or Los Angeles, both of which I am now totally over.
How do you decide where to visit next?
MICHAEL: These days it’s a mixture of things ranging from cool things we’ve heard or read about that we want to check out to where our other nomadic friends are going to be. I also look for places that are big and interesting enough to keep me happily exploring for a month or two, but that aren’t huge frenetic cities like Bangkok. I do like to spend time in those bigger places, but I need to space those out more because they can be exhausting. We try to limit it to no more than one megalopolis per year.
BRENT: Somewhere between “I have a clear, longstanding bucket list” and “I let the universe decide!”
Actually, at this point, we tend to go places where we know our friends will be. Someone is traveling to Ethiopia? Well, that sounds great, why don’t we meet them there?
Hmm, maybe that is the universe deciding for us.
And finally, what's the one thing you never leave home without when travelling?
MICHAEL: My Pixel phone. Not because I can’t live without news or social media or my apps. It’s because my phone is how I take my photos and photography has become something I’m very passionate about. It’s my desire to take cool, interesting, and beautiful pictures that gets me out exploring early every morning wherever we happen to be living!
BRENT: I mean, I have my favourite brand of aftershave lotion, and I love my Cotopaxi backpack, but this is something that continuous travel has taught me: I don’t really care about things. They can all be replaced!
I’ve tried to explain to non-nomads the incredible freedom that comes with simple living. When you carry everything you own in a backpack, your life has to be in balance, figuratively but also literally. If it isn’t, you break your back!
But my non-nomad friends aren’t interested. Which is fine. I wasn’t interested either before I took up this life, and a time may come when I won’t be interested again.
A huge thanks to Brent and Michael for agreeing to be part of Speedy Boarding. If you liked this post please do consider becoming a free or paid subscriber to Not That You Asked. Paid subscribers get two free travel guides a month for just £4.99, which is way cheaper than Netflix. If £4.99 is a bit steep in this economy there’s a 50% off forever sale on at the moment to celebrate two years of Not That You Asked.
The next Speedy Boarding will drop on the 16th May when it’s the turn of the great
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Well Brent and Michael I found your travel story both interesting and admirable. As I am in the process of decluttering my house, travelling with just a back pack sounds bliss.
I know Tom does it well.
Great bloody answers from these two, as you'd expect! I really want to steal that list of places to visit. And totally agree that it's impossible to separate the destinations from the people you met and experiences you had. It's so true - they're intertwined! Also, I think there could be a paid upgrade option where Michael is forced to pick his favourite children, I mean destination.