Torbjørn Pedersen: Traversing the Globe for Global Goodwill

Foreign.

Kawasaki. And this is remarkable, people. We're on a mission to make you remarkable. Helping me today is Thor Peterson. I hope it's Peterson, not Petterson. I should have asked him in an interview, but I completely forgot and I cannot definitively find the answer because all the YouTube video in which he's talking, he never says his last name. Alas, that is probably not the biggest problem we face in the world. So let me tell you about Thor. He is a Danish adventurer. He made history by visiting every country in the world without flying. His decade long journey is a testament to human connection and, oh my God, the spirit of exploration. His blog, Once Upon a Saga, chronicles his adventures across all these countries, oceans, war zones. He even got married atop Mount Kenya in 2013. And throughout his travels, Thor engaged with local communities, shared stories, and really fostered cultural unity. He also shone a light on the critical, yet often unseen work of the Red Cross societies. Odyssey demonstrates our world's deep interconnectedness and it echoes his belief that a stranger is a friend you've never met before. Join me, Guy Kawasaki, the Remarkable People podcast as we delve into the incredible, remarkable journey of Thor Peterson, or Peterson who visited every country in the world without flying. My wife is Danish, so I've had many an evil skeever in my life.

So what does that mean?

You don't know what an evil skeever is? Maybe I'm saying it wrong.

No, I'm sure you're saying it exactly. It's supposed to be said, but I'm just not from the US and I speak Danish on a day to day basis.

Wait, I'm having an out of body experience. Ebelskiver is that thing that's like little donut pancakes. That's a Danish thing.

Ah, okay, now I know what you're saying. Yes. Oh, okay. No, your pronunciation is very good. It might be a different dialect where I come from. I say ebelskiwa.

That's Hawaiian pigeons saying Ebel skivers.

Yeah, I wasn't ready for you speaking Danish just yet. I'm very impressed.

First, I want to start way back when and I read that you were the lifeguard at the royal palaces. What the hell kind of job is that? Tell me about that.

Denmark is a cute little country with a very small population and very old traditions, in some directions at least. And within our military service, you can get drafted or not, and that's through a lottery. So you put your hand into a box and you pick a number. And if the number is low, then you have to do your military service and if the number is high, you can go out and get a job, if that's what you want. And my number was really low. And then I signed up for what I thought would be the most interesting branch within the Danish military, which is to stand as a guard in front of the Queen's palace. And that's in an olden day outfit. So I think that uniform has not been updated certainly for a very long time. It's with the bearskin hat on top of your head. And it wouldn't be good for warfare. They would spot you a mile away. It looks nice, though.

Wait, so you get drafted by the Danish army and they say you can either go fight the Russians or you can stand in front of the palace. You get that kind of choice.

So within our military service, you can go air force, you can go army, you can go Navy, and then if you feel like it, you can do something a little bit more special. So that's actually a 12 month military service duration, which is longer than any of the others. But that's the kind of country.

Herein lies the problem. So when I read that in your bio, I read Lifeguard when Madison and I, or people basically in California, Hawaii, when we read Lifeguard, we think swimming pool or ocean. You meant palace guard, right?

Yes, it's a palace guard.

Ah, I thought you were watching the Danish princesses swim for your military duty.

You were picturing Danish Baywatch.

So you're the Danish Hesselhorf.

Yes. Not as buff as him, though.

Okay, first serious question is you've been all over the world, obviously, and I want you to explain because I don't think many people understand. It's not clear. I understand. What exactly does the Red Cross do around the world?

I'm very happy that you asked me that question because I've done a great deal of interviews and most they skipped directly over that. I was given the honor of traveling as a goodwill ambassador of the Danish Red Cross, which is the national society of Denmark. And the national society of the US would be the American Red Cross, and the national society in Syria would be the Syrian Red Crescent, and so on and so forth. And the Red Cross is the world's largest humanitarian organization and found in 192 countries around the world. So that's basically every country. And my job was to promote the humanitarian efforts and raise money and awareness. I donated blood. I shared as much as I possibly could about the Red Cross throughout the entire journey. And if you have any specific questions about the Red Cross, then I'M more than happy to answer them.

So let's say there's a tsunami or something. What does the Red Cross do?

It would very much depend on the country. So the Red Cross plays an auxiliary role to the government. So in some countries, the government might be very strong and there would be less of a need for the Red Cross. And in some countries, the Red Cross would take over the entire operation. So the backbone of the Red Cross would be volunteers. And within a tsunami, for sure, lots and lots of volunteers would be sent in and they would immediately start to help those that are affected by the tsunami. Maybe people, they cannot return to their homes, maybe they need a hotel, maybe they need a shelter that would set up shelters. They would hand out food and blankets, clothing, sanitary pads, toothbrushes, soap, anything that you can imagine to get people back on their feet. In some cases, the Red Cross might contact your employer on your behalf and explain to your employer that your life has been destroyed because you might be dealing with trauma or something else. And they might have arrangements with hotels, and they would set you up and they would contact insurance and help you. The Red Cross is there in place to help people. And the level of the Red Cross engagement really depends on the country.

And let's suppose that you're with the Danish Red Cross and you're sitting in, I don't know, Copenhagen, and you're drinking beer, and then there's a tsunami in Indonesia. So what does your phone ring? And they say, thor, get on a plane. We gotta go to Indonesia. How does it work?

That could happen, actually, because I was trained to be within the eru. I was a logistics delegate within the eru. The ERU is the Emergency Response Unit. So that's a team of specialists that are trained to be deployed on short notice. So that could very well happen. Then I would get deployed along with some doctors, some engineers, some technicians, some nurses, probably. And then we would set up camp near the area in Indonesia. And then we would go to work immediately rebuilding the country and supporting the National Society of Indonesia. In that case, the Danish Red Cross would be a pns, which is a participating national society. But the more likely scenario, I would imagine, is that the Danish Red Cross would immediately start raising funds within Denmark, and then all these funds would be directed to Indonesia.

And who decides whether it's the American Red Cross or the Danish Red Cross or the Finnish Red Cross? Who gets involved? Does the people in Thailand say, oh, let's call our buddies in Denmark, or let's call our buddies in New York? Who gets to call.

That's another good question. So the way it works is that if national society is not strong enough to handle the emergency on its own, then it would put out an appeal. And then participating national societies, PNs, they will answer that appeal. So it might be whoever's already within the country, it might be that in Indonesia that the American Red Cross is already there operating, and then it's easy for them to deploy or redirect some of their efforts to the tsunami. It could also be that you would have a country traveling across half the planet to go and help and assist. So within the Red Cross, you have the ifrc, the International Federation of the Red Cross, which is headquartered in Geneva, in Switzerland, and they help coordinate in these cases. So when this appeal is raised, then the IFRC would probably reach out and find appropriate national societies to go in and help and support. And the IFRC also has its own funds.

Okay, you about quintupled my knowledge of how the Red Cross works in the last 60 seconds.

Okay, I can tell you a fun fact. If, if I wanted to pursue a Guinness World Record within the Red Cross, then could probably be awarded the one person on this planet who has visited the Red Cross in the most amount of countries. Because I did visit the red Cross in 198 countries around the world throughout this journey. Wow.

So that's a good segue. So explain what you did.

Yes. So back in 2013, I found out that no one in history had gone to every country in the world completely without flying. And that basically infected me. I just couldn't shake the idea when it grew and it grew within me. And I spoke to friends and I spoke to family, and no one I spoke to had the same interest within the topic as I did. But I was smitten and I eventually started planning. There was a wonderful woman within my life. I'm happy to say that today she's my wife, but back then she was my girlfriend. And we had a talk about how long we thought this would take. And I planned it out. I did the logistics, I raised the funds for it, partnered up with companies, and set out on 10 October 2013 at 10:10am thinking it would take 4 years to visit every country in the world completely without flying. And it got very complicated, very fast. And sometimes it was easy, sometimes it was hard. It was by far the biggest ordeal I've ever had within my lifetime. It ended up taking nine years, nine months and 16 days. In part because of the global pandemic, in part because conflict and strife Broke out in certain countries and regions, in part because I was sick, in part because of the Ebola epidemic, which I think most people might have forgotten somewhere behind the global pandemic. But, yeah, I was delayed in many places around the world.

And when you were stuck in Hong Kong for two years, what did you do in Hong Kong for two years?

Yeah, so I didn't know it was going to be two years. When the virus broke out in Wuhan, I was on board a container ship heading towards Hong Kong, and. And I was blissfully unaware about the outbreak. And then when we reached Hong Kong, I went up on the bridge and I was standing next to the captain, and I saw the captain was wearing a face mask. And I look at him and I asked, what's going on? And he handed me a face mask and he said, you better put this on. There's been a virus outbreak in Wuhan. And I say, okay, so what's Wuhan? He says, that's a city in China. And I said, okay, how far away is that? And he says, that's more than a thousand kilometers away. I'm sorry, you might have to calculate into miles on that. But. So it's really far away. And I figured. I think most people would. That would never have anything to do with me. That would be a local incident in the city, very far away from where I was. And I entered Hong Kong, where I was supposed to be for four days, just for transit between two ships. And then eventually those four days were extended to 11. And then eventually countries started closing their borders and I couldn't get on board ships. And then I was in Hong Kong for a duration unknown. And what I did was network. And I networked, and I was shaking hands and meeting people and sending emails and calling, trying to find out who could help me on a ship and get me to the next country. And after a good 11 months of networking, Hong Kong immigration said that I had to get a job or get married to someone in Hong Kong or start studying. But I couldn't keep extending my visa. So I got a job and I worked for the Danish Seaman's Church. I was an assistant servicing container ships and seafarers. They couldn't leave the ships. They were quarantined on board the ships so I could go shopping in Hong Kong for anything they needed and bring it to the ships. I could also help and support the Danish community in Hong Kong. There's a bit more than a handful of Danish people, about 300 Danish people living in Hong Kong, and they were missing all sorts of Danish delicacies. So I imported that and I was selling it out of the church to fund the activities. And I did a lot of hiking. Hong Kong is 75% nature, so I took to the mountains to get some fresh air and take in the view of the beautiful territory which is Hong Kong. Yeah, I made a lot of good friends, a lot of collaborations. I've done many interviews while in Hong Kong. Suddenly, press started taking interest in this man, who was only nine countries from becoming the first to reach every country in the world without flying, now stuck because of the pandemic.

And during these two years, but also all nine years, where is your fiance, girlfriend, wife?

Yeah, that's the right order. Actually, when I left, she was my girlfriend and she came out and visited me several times. And on her 10th visit, she came to Kenya. And I brought her up on top of Mount Kenya, which is the second highest mountain within all of Africa. And I got down on one knee and I gave her a ring and asked her a question, and she said yes. So beyond that, we were engaged and we thought we would have a nice wedding somewhere in the world. And then the global pandemic broke out, and in order of having her come and visit me inside, Hong Kong was very tightly closed. We had to be married. And how do you get married when one person is in Hong Kong and the other one is in Denmark? It just turns out that the USA came to the rescue, that in Utah you have an agency that marries people online. So we were able to have an online wedding, and that was good enough for Hong Kong. And then we could arrange. And she came to Hong Kong and hotel quarantine for three weeks. And then on the other side of that, we were together for about 100 days in Hong Kong. But Denmark didn't accept this online wedding. So at a later point, when she came to visit me in Vanuatu, we got married on the beach. And what happened was that a German woman living in Vanuatu was helping us, and she was supposed to process this wedding with the government with the registry. And unfortunately, the government in Vanuatu was attacked by hackers, so there was a ransomware attack and all their data was locked and they couldn't move anything. And it's very close to a year now, and we're still not officially married in Vanuatu, so we can't process the paperwork in Denmark. But we do know that we're married in Utah, in Hong Kong and in Vanuatu.

This organization in Utah, was it the Mormon Church?

No, that's. That was my first thought as well. I think that was my primary reference to Utah back in the day. But now I know that they're a bit of a Las Vegas organization.

And I don't understand. So you do this for 10 years or something like are you are using the money that you raise from sponsors or are you working in these countries or how does.

Turned into a big mix over time? But initially my thinking was that I wasn't going to set out and do a thing like this unless I could have the finances covered. I was 34 years old when I left home and I thought it would take four years. I didn't want to come home as a 38 year old be in debt. And some friends and I, we thought that there, there had to be a company out there that would take interest in something of this magnitude. And we were able to find a company that focuses on geothermal energy. And they're called Ross Energy. And they decided to fund US$20 per.

Day, which was set as an average US$20 per day.

So that's cappuccinos? Yeah, in some countries it's two cappuccinos. In other countries it's accommodation, a meal and transportation. So worked as an average and yes, $20 a day for almost 10 years. But what happened was a couple of years into the project, oil prices were real low and Ross Energy, they were hurting from that, so they had to pull the sponsorship. Then I started spending my own money and until I had nothing left. And then I did some crowdfunding campaigns and I gained a little bit of finance that way. Now I sold some articles, I did some speaking engagements and then when I got to Hong Kong, I was able to make some money back working at the Danish Siemens Church. And then eventually Ross Engineering was strong again and they were able to come back on again. So it's been a mix of my personal funds and donations and corporate sponsorship. Wow.

And literally were you carrying cash or was it like a ATM card or Apple Pay? How did you literally spend the money?

All of the above. So I would always have US Dollar because it's a universal currency that you can use in any tough spot around the world. I would also always have a euro on me. So Euro and US dollars, I would have that tucked away somewhere. And then I would have MasterCard and a Visa card which I could use around the world. And then somewhere between 2013 and now 2023, the world kept on developing and more and more countries would have access where you could use Apple Pay. By the end of the project, I wasn't using cash. Anywhere. I was just tapping my phone. And.

Do you know what your wife's parents opinion was of this son in law doing this?

Unfortunately not. My wife no longer has her parents. She lost them before we got married. But I do know that her friends and the friends of her parents and extended family, they pretty much all thought I was crazy. I think very few people didn't think that I was crazy to do this. And even the ones that saw a little bit of light in what I was doing, that I was chasing a difficult goal, or that I was inspiring and motivating people around the world, or that I was trying to look for the positive to promote every country around the world, or raising funds and awareness for the Red Cross. Even the people that could see some sanity within that they saw absolutely no sanity in hanging out in Hong Kong as the sand ran through the sandglass.

Now, when you say most people thought you're crazy, there's two kinds of crazy, right? There's oh my God, he's crazy and there's oh my God, he's crazy, he's an idiot. Was it like the negative kind or the funny, humorous kind?

Since you're asking me, I would say that I'm the good crazy. But I'm pretty sure that plenty of people out there think it's irresponsible, that I should have taken a job, I should have started a family, I should have contributed to society in other ways. And today I have about a quarter of a million followers online that are very supportive of what I've done and are lovely. So it really depends on who you ask.

We recently interviewed a woman who walked across the US and she had similar things to say. Different strokes for different folks, right?

Yeah, absolutely. That's a good way to put it. I'll tell you this, when I left in 2013 and when I reached 2015, so two years in, I couldn't take it anymore. I was recovering from cerebral malaria. I had lost the financial backing, the long distance relationship to my then girlfriend. It wasn't going well. We were really struggling. I wasn't getting the sleep I needed, malnutrition, mentally and physically. I just couldn't cope with it anymore. I've been living out of a bag, going from a bus to a train, trying to deal with the bureaucracy. I've been held at gunpoint. Several of the ships that I traveled with had sank to the bottom of the ocean by then. There was a great deal of racism towards me in Central Africa, more than likely due to hundreds of years of colonialism. I really couldn't take it anymore. And at some point I just decided the system wasn't going to beat me and I was going to find a way and I was going to prove everyone wrong. Everyone who said that I couldn't get the next visa or I couldn't enter the next country. I wanted to prove them wrong and I kept fighting for it. But since 2015, I've always wanted to go home. And I thought the final country was just around the corner. Eventually it would get a bit smoother. I would have the support, I would have the backing. It was just around the corner. So imagine pushing since 2015 and only setting foot back home in 2023.

Didn't you fly home twice and then fly back to where you flew from?

No. So I left home on 10th October 2013 and I returned home on 26th July 2023. And in between, I didn't fly at any one point, I didn't return home and I spent more than 24 hours in every country around the world.

Oh, someplace I read you had to fly to the UK twice for something.

No, I think you're confusing me with British gentleman. His name is Graham Hughes, he's from Liverpool and he attempted to visit every country in the world without flying prior to me. I think he must have started out in 2008 or 2009 and he had to fly back home several times. He also flew on holiday in Australia. He spent four years and 31 days completing his project. I met the guy, he's a really nice guy. I met him in Panama. He's good crazy too.

Okay. I read a report recently that said that of the 200 countries in the world, you can safely drink tap water in only 50 of them. Now, did you find that to be true? Did you drink tap water everywhere and get sick all the time? Or how does water work around the world?

I can tell you this. I went to every country, every beautiful island nation within the Caribbean, and I believe that most of them told me that they have the purest drinking water in the world. So you talk to locals and locals will say it's fine because they've been living there for their entire life. And their bodies, their immune defense, their immune system got used to the water and bacteria and this kind of stuff. And you come as a foreigner and you might have to run to the toilet for a few days, but then in many cases your stomach, your system will also get ready for it. I really wouldn't recommend drinking tap water all around the world if it's 50 countries around the world. I don't know that that might be true. I traveled with a water purification kit, a bottle called Lifesaver. Yeah. And at a later point, I had a filter, a soft flask from Salomon that had a filter within that, too. And I just made sure to filter all my water all around the world as a. Throughout all of Africa. If you can get to a borehole and you get water straight from the underground, there's no issue. You can just drink that if it comes from, let's say, 100ft below or something like that, no issues.

Wow. So those filter things, I see them at rei. They really work.

Yeah, they must. Here I am talking to you. I still have all my teeth. My liver is functioning.

What's the hairiest story you have about trying to clear customs into a country?

Trying to clear customs that might have been between Ethiopia and Somalia, where they were chewing cat, which is a leaf, a green leaf that you chew. It's a drug basically from nature. You look at these people who are chewing cat, and it looks like they had 40 cups of coffee or something like that. They seem quite tense. And they looked at me and they started taking my bags apart, and they found I had a gps, which I was using to plot my route around the world. And they said that was military equipment, and I said it was not. They found a couple of knives, which I was traveling with, and basically I have them to cut rope or cut an apple or something. But again, they looked at it and said that was military equipment. And they got real suspicious real fast, and they just took everything apart. And then they guided me away from the road and over to sit with some officers. And they were sitting there chewing cat, and they told me to sit down next to them. And I was sitting there in the shade, sitting next to them, just wondering, okay, what's going to happen now? And after 45 minutes, they said, okay, you're good to go. And I just got up and I packed my bags again and I left. I'd say the hairiest situation that I experienced wasn't necessarily with customs. It would have been a checkpoint in the middle of a jungle in the middle of the night in Central Africa. And I'd been driving, just me and a taxi driver. We would driving throughout the night. And we got to these guys and they stopped the vehicle. There were three of them, and they were drunk out of their mind, and they were armed to their teeth, and they were vicious. And from the moment I stepped out the vehicle, I was commanded out of the vehicle at gunpoint. And from the moment I got out of the vehicle and they saw that I wasn't a local person, but I was North European, you could just feel the hate. You could absolutely feel hate coming out of their eyes. And the rage from these men. They just had it in for me. And that was definitely the Harry situation. Being at gunpoint by angry, emotional, highly drunk adults, that was terrifying. And I was there for a good 45 minutes before, for some reason, one or the other, and I'm not sure I understand why they just let me go. They let me and the driver go. And the only thing I could do in the situation was try to stay as calm as possible. No quick movements, be as compliant as I possibly could. Agree with them. Anything hateful they would say about me, just agree with them. But, yeah, eventually I got out of it.

And all of this is happening in English.

This is happening in broken French. So I was doing my very best to survive with whatever little French I know.

Wow. Okay, so now let's say, step me through what happens. By the grace of God, somehow you get through customs and immigration. So now you're in the country, do you go and walk around, meet people, or you just.

You always meet people. You always meet people. You meet people on one side of the border, going through the border on the other side of the border, and the buses in the trains. This is a people project. This was not a country project. This was all about people all around the world. People, cultures, handshakes, kindness, generosity. People are just amazing. I set out with a motto when I left home, which was a stranger is a friend you've never met before. And I thought it was a really nice motto, but it wasn't in any way proven. I probably traveled for a couple of weeks before I had several stories that confirmed that little a stranger is a friend you never met before. Eventually I started saying people are just people, because this is what I believe. It doesn't matter political affiliation or the color of people's eyes or which God they pray to if they don't pray to a God at all, or if they have children or not, if they're working or unemployed. People are just people all around the world. And people are driven by much of the same. They dance to pretty much the same songs. The same songs get trendy all around the world at the same time. They watch the same TV shows, Netflix. They play the same games on their phones, they like barbecues, they fall in love, they get married, they go to school, they go to work. People are Just people all around the world. So my standard operating procedure, as someone once called it, my sop, would be to get a SIM card as fast as possible. This isn't 1845. We're living in a world where one of the most important tools you can have when you're traveling is your smartphone. And if you're online, then you have access to hotel bookings, communication, you can call people, you have online maps. You have everything you need right there in your hand. So I'd make my way to wherever I was going to spend the night. Often I would have that pre booked. Sometimes I would work it out. Sometimes I would just talk to someone on the bus and they would bring me home with them and give me a couch to sleep on or a guest bed. And then I would locate the Red Cross and I'd go and meet with the Red Cross. Then often I would be invited to do a speaking engagement somewhere at a school or a company. I would have to apply for visas and various documents, invitation letters. Sometimes I would need to get new vaccines. Yeah. What else was going on? If I had any time left for myself, I was blogging, I was updating social media, I was doing stuff like that. If I had any time left for myself, I tried to go to a national museum and see how much I could learn about the country. Just sucking in information from the national museum, or if there's a beautiful waterfall or a temple or anything nearby that I could visit, then I would go and see that.

And if I do the Math, let's say 10 years, that's 3650 days divided by 200 countries. So, you know, on average you would have spent, I don't know, a couple weeks in each country. Is that enough to learn about a people in two weeks?

No, absolutely not. There's less than 300 people who have gone to every country in the world at this point. And I would be surprised if any of those would sit down and say, I have seen the entire world, in everybody's case except me. They were flying. So a lot of the time they would be looking down at the planet from high above. Even me being on the ground or being across the surface of the ocean or a lake. You have to imagine a red line being drawn through a country. So let's say the US for a second. Okay, I came from Canada and then I entered through to Buffalo. And from Buffalo I made my way to Washington D.C. and from Washington D.C. i got on a train and went up to Chicago. And from Chicago I went across the Mississippi river and the Rocky Mountains, and I made my way down to California. And from California, I headed into Mexico. Then at a later point, I came back to the US from the Bahamas on a ferry and I entered Fort Lauderdale, I think it was. And then, so I'm in Florida, and then I'm heading up north up to Norfolk. So I visited 16 or 17 states within the U.S. but in reality, I'm just drawing this thin red line wherever my bus or my train takes me. And if I'm lucky, I can maybe see a couple of miles out the window. So I'm really not seeing a lot. But then at the same time, I would say that imagine buying your first car. You don't know what you're doing. Like, you probably see if there's a steering wheel and if there are four wheels on it, and then you're happy. But if you're buying your second car or your third car, your fourth car, then you start to know what to look for. You learn from your mistakes. You learn more and more. So by the time you're buying your 10th car or your 20th car, you do not need to spend as much time in order to understand the conditions of that car. You bring all the knowledge from all the other cars that you purchase throughout your life. So imagine me going to 10 countries, 20 countries, 50 countries, 100 countries. At some point, you start removing all the noise, the stuff that people get dazzled by when they enter a new country, and you start to see specifics. You start to see are there sideways walks or not. You start to see what kind of clothes people are wearing, Are they wearing shoes or not? Is public transportation? Does it look good? Does it go frequently? What does the healthcare system look like? What does the this and that? You can start to pinpoint what kind of country you are and you get adapt to understanding your environment faster and faster as you get further and further down this tunnel of countries.

Up next on Remarkable People.

I've been to every country in the world that has war, and what I found was that yes, there is hardship, but not for everyone. And what you find more than anything, you will find ordinary people living relatively ordinary lives. They like music and dancing and food and family, and they don't like the rain too much and they don't like getting stuck in traffic. People being people everywhere around the world.

Become a little more remarkable with each episode of Remarkable People. It's found on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Welcome back to Remarkable People with Guy Kawasaki. Arguably, you may be one of the top 300 people in the world to give advice on how to really visit a new place.

Yeah, I don't know. I'm happy to give advice. My advice is. So I'm an avid hiker. I enjoy hiking. And within the world of hiking, there's the hiker's creed. And I do not know it word by word, but I can paraphrase. And the hiker's creed would be something along the line of that you should leave nothing behind but your footprints. And I think we should take the hiker's creed and bring it into the world of travelers. So when you go somewhere, if you go on a business trip or you go on a holiday, or you go for one reason or the other, then remember, leave nothing behind but your footprints. Try to be as invisible as you possibly can. Try to be a sponge when you go into a new environment. Try to suck up everything you possibly can. What are they eating? And try to taste the food. And what do they look like? How do they dress? What, the bicycles, scooters, the cars, the fields, the buildings, the cities, the shops. Just suck it all up. Learn as much as you possibly can about the culture and the history. See if you can learn a little bit of the language. Use it every time you possibly can, because people love it. If you can just say two or three words within a foreign language. People, they love that you try. No one expects that you speak the full language. Just give it a go, like, even. And I want people who travel to remember, and this is very important, they have to remember that as soon as you leave your home, you become a guest. So even just going over to your neighbor's house, you're a guest. And especially if you go to someone else's country, you're a guest. So you're not supposed to come there and be opinionated and tell them how things are done better where you come from, or they're doing things wrong. And you're supposed to come and be polite and you're supposed to compliment people, and you're supposed to look for the good and for the positive. You're not supposed to go somewhere and tear it apart.

Wow. Okay. In these 10 years, what did you learn about yourself?

Oh, that's a brilliant question. I pushed my own personal borders and so many different directions. I generally think that you can measure age in two different ways. The conventional way is to look at the date that you were born and then look at the calendar and then calculate, how old is this person. But we regularly experience that some people, in spite of their Age seem much older. And I think that the way that works is life experience. So generally you get life experience as you age so slowly, from 10 to 20 years to 30 to 40 to 50 to 60 and beyond. And you would expect a certain life knowledge and life experience from someone who's 50 and from someone who's 70 and from someone who's 100. But where does that life experience really come from? How do you get on the fast track of life experience? And I can't help to wonder. That happens when we are challenged. And where are you challenged? You're typically challenged when you're brought out of your own environment where you know everything and then put into a different environment where you have to work out, how do I get a SIM card here? Or how. How do I activate it? How do you get a bus ticket? Do you buy the bus ticket online? Do you do it from a window? Do you do it on the bus? You show up and you know nothing and you have to learn everything. Then you accelerate within life experience. So I wonder. I left home when I was 34, and according to the calendar, I'm 44 now, but I wonder if I'm somehow much, much older than that on account of having built up much more than 10 years of life experience within the duration of 10 years. So that's something that I'm still reflecting upon.

What do you do after you come back from such an adventure?

Luckily, my wife is still around and we're building a life together, and that's good fun. And we've gotten to know each other really well. She came out to visit me 27 times across the world, and we were together ahead of this project, but now we're living together for the first time. So that's a really interesting adventure. I have a book coming out next year. I have a documentary coming out next year. I'm doing speaking engagements. I'm invited to events and to companies and whoever wants to listen to me speak. Then we negotiate a price and I show up and I talk about these adventures and share about culture and the world. So that's what's going on right now. And that's what it looks like. I have this adjustment period which I'm still within. I've been home for just about three months now from something that took almost 10 years. And you can imagine that the soldiers that we deploy overseas, when they come back home, some of them need some time to settle in. They've been in a stressful environment. They've been in a foreign culture. And I've Been in every foreign culture, and I've been in stressful environment for a very long time. I don't know how long it will take me to re enter society. Certainly a lot more than these three months that have passed. Wow. Wow.

Can you offer an opinion on where the happiest people in the world are?

I was listening to a podcast just yesterday, and they were talking to the happiest person in the happiest country. And so the happiest country right now, according to some lists, is Finland. And they found one person who they gave the honor of being the happiest person within the happiest country. And that did sound like a very happy person. But it's an interesting thing because these Scandinavian countries in northern Europe, they often rank within the top four or five happiest countries in the world. But then I was in the Pacific and I was in Vanuatu, and in Vanuatu, they claim to be the happiest country in the world. And I said, hang on a minute, I thought that was in Scandinavia. And I do some research and I talked to some people, and I found out that there are different lists, there are different ways of ranking happiness. And in some ways, in Vanuatu, they dance a lot, they're very social, they enjoy music, good food. This feels like everybody knows everybody, and they seem really happy. Okay.

Because you have firsthand experience in 200 countries, I'd be very interested to know what sources of news you trust.

Yeah, I have a little bit of difficulties with that. I have found that whichever news media is reporting, maybe they send out a journalist and a cameraman somewhere. And the cameraman, he has his camera focused and pointing at the worst thing within the vicinity of the camera. So it might be a fire or a dead body or some sort of destruction or chaos or who knows what. And in my experience, the cameraman is usually safe, and what goes on behind the camera might be relatively normal. So while the camera is pointing at absolute chaos, when you look behind the camera, often you'll find the taxis are driving, markets are open, school children are walking about. So I have this disconnection from general media where I feel that these stories that are being covered are important. We need to know about the corruption and about the wars and the conflicts and the tsunamis and the diseases, and the list goes on. We need to know about this. But if this is the only thing that we hear about, then that will start to paint a picture of a world that's falling apart and that there's nothing good left within the world. And that's simply not True. I've been to every country in the world that has conflict areas. I've been to every country in the world that has war. And what I found was that, yes, there is hardship, but not for everyone. And what you find more than anything, you will find ordinary people living relatively ordinary lives. They like music and dancing and food and family, and they don't like the rain too much, and they don't like getting stuck in traffic. People being people everywhere around the world. So which news do I trust? There's nothing that's really perfect. I listen to BBC. I listen to the BBC World podcast of BBC World News. They broadcast twice daily. And I think it's a good update to understand what's going around the world. But they're not covering everything, and they're slightly biased. Let's say all media is biased. I think maybe BBC is less biased than others.

A real tactical question. Vis a vis equipment. I would love to know your sort of recommendations for shoes. Phone, camera, computer. Are you like Mr. Rei, are you Mr. North Face? Are you wearing alpaca jackets? What's the real tactics of equipping yourself to do this? Or it's all bullshit and you don't need Gore Tex to travel around the world?

Yeah, probably the latter. It's all bullshit. You don't need Gore Tex to travel around the world. I'm on Team Salomon. That was a coincidence. I went into a store in Denmark three days before leaving home, and I said I needed some versatile footwear, something that would hold up when it was warm, when it was cold, when it was wet, when it was dry. And the salesperson, he handed me a pair of Salomon shoes, and they fit. And I left home with those. And then once I wore those out, I replaced them with a new set of Salomons. And when I wore those out, a new set. And then I started contacting Salomon and saying, look. Hey, guys, look at me. I'm traveling every country in the world in your footwear. And when I reached about 170 countries, they teamed up with me, and I became a brand ambassador of Salomon. I ended up visiting every country in the world only in their footwear. Equipment breaks and it can be replaced. And there's a lot of good equipment. There are a lot of good brands out there. I generally think that if you're traveling on a low budget and if you're not hiring guards and fixers everywhere and you're on your own, then you don't want to look too flashy because you don't want to make yourself a mark. For those who have less and for those who are desperate, I try not to look my best always. It doesn't mean I go for the homeless look, but I just like when things are a little bit worn and not too shiny and not wearing a wristwatch and stuff like that. I left home with an iPhone and I was actually an Android person ahead of this project. But I dropped my phone and broke it, and I decided to replace it with the newest iPhone on the market in 2013, which should put things in perspective because that was an iPhone5. So I left with an iPhone5 and it held up pretty nicely. Eventually it broke, and then I got another iPhone and eventually it broke, and then I got the third and last iPhone for the project. So as far as telephones and equipment, I was pretty happy with iPhone. That worked for me. I'm sure that there are Samsung and htc, if that still exists. And what else is out there, I'm sure they do just as well.

And what about camera? Were you taking pictures or are you just using your iPhone?

I used my phone for the most part. I did have a GoPro camera and I was updating my GoPros throughout the year, so the quality got better. The iPhone5 held up for maybe three years or something like that. So that was a great deal of countries, more than 100 countries with the iPhone5, which unfortunately doesn't have the camera quality. Now I have an iPhone 13 and there's a huge gap between the video quality and the photo quality. That's just the direction of technology. Right. So I'm a little sad to look at the old photos and see the quality of that, knowing what it could have been if I had left today.

And are these photos going to be published somewhere?

I ran social media throughout the entire project, so a lot of these photos certainly were posted on Facebook and Instagram and X, as it's called today, and many other places I was blogging throughout. We're making this documentary right now, so we'll have this full feature film out next year. We've been working on that for four years, and that's going to include some of the photos and some of the video that I have from going around the world. I don't know, maybe I'll make a coffee table book at some point and I'll pick my best photos from around the world and see if anyone wants to have a look at those.

But in this documentary and this book, it's not like you ever had a crew documenting you right? This is all first person.

Yes, it's all first person. The last four years of the project I was working in close collaboration with an award winning film director from Canada, his name is Mike Douglas. And he flew out to film me while I was in the Pacific. So I was in Marshall Islands and we spent three days together and then the pandemic broke out so we didn't see each other for a bit and he told me to film as much as I possibly could. He said film when you're frustrated, film when you're angry, film when you're happy. Just film, film, film. So I did that and then he came to see me in Fiji at a later point and then I went around to several countries and returned to Fiji and he came to film me again. And then he came to Sri Lanka and filmed me and joined a ship with me from Sri Lanka to the final country which was the Maldives. So we have all of that covered really well the last four years of the project. We have everything we need and more. It's the first six years of the project where I really wasn't filming a lot. And yeah, I get a lot of heat for that.

You were busy. A friend of mine who has also been on this podcast is Rick Smolin. And Rick Smolin is the guy who did the Day in the Life of Us, Australia, Russia. He followed the woman who was going across Australia with camels. And he has experience in this kind of stuff. If you ever want to talk to him, his name is Rick Smolin. S M O L A N. Check him out.

As it turns out, Denmark has an adventurers club. So there are these adventurers club around the world and there's a chapter in Denmark called the Adventurers Club Denmark. And I was recently invited to come and speak at their clubhouse during one of their meetings. And I'm hoping that one day I can become a member. And all of these guys, they don't have much more than 100 people at one time. That's where they cap the membership. And all of these guys are crazy people who go out with kayaks or camels or this or that. Rick Smolen, he sounds like he fits right in.

Yeah, we've had crazy people and I mean that in a positive way. It sounds like when you were making some of these border crossings, it was just as dangerous as surfing a hundred foot wave.

And there was some crazy stuff out there. But you have to consider the volume. The distance that I covered within this journey is akin to going nine and a half times around the planet or going once from the planet and all the way out to the moon. So I traveled some considerable distance. And if nothing is going to go wrong across such a distance and every country in the world and over the course of almost 10 years, then you have to be the luckiest person on the planet. So of course I have some stories. But here's the thing. If we were to talk about bad things from the project, then we would maybe be talking for days because there's a lot of volume and I can certainly share some stories with you. But if we were to talk about the good stuff, we would be talking for months and months because there's been so much more of that. And I think that's just the nature of people around the world.

That's a good way to end this podcast total up be about the goodness of people. Because as you say, media only covers the bad stuff. Nobody ever says, oh, family had a happy dinner. Update at 11.

Yeah, that is true. There's so much good stuff going around the world and the only cameras there are from the phones that people are holding.

Holy cow, that's one hell of a story. Ten years, no flying into the country, visiting every country in the world. Wow. I can't say I could do that. Let's face it, we're on this.in the universe and we're all interconnected. By the way, Madison and I have a new book. It's called Think Remarkable. It reflects what we've learned from interviewing over 200 remarkable people like Thor, as well as our own experiences in business. In my case, 40 years in tech. So please check it out. Think Remarkable. Let me thank the Remarkable People team, Jeff C. And Shannon Hernandez, incredible sound engineers. Madison Nismer, a co author and producer of this show, not to mention the drop in queen of Santa Cruz, Tessa Nismer, ace researcher and writer and backing us up, doing all kinds of miscellaneous and important work because you have no idea how much work is involved in making a podcast and transcripts and everything work. Anyway, the rest of the team is Luis Magana, Alexis Nishimura and Fallon Yates. This is the Remarkable People team. We're on a mission to make you remarkable. Until next time, mahalo and aloha. This is Remarkable People.