Talking Travel with Iris Bahr

by Justin Glow on

Iris Bahr is a New York-based actress and author who has appeared in shows like Friends, Curb Your Enthusiasm, and The King of Queens. Her book, Dork Whore: My Travels Through Asia as a Twenty-Year-Old Pseudo-Virgin, is a travelogue seeded with sexuality — it chronicles her travels around Asia as a young woman in search of life and love, and was released by Bloomsbury Publishing in March, 2007.

Fresh out of the Israeli Army, twenty-year-old Iris Bahr decides to follow the footsteps of many before her and backpack through Asia. Only unlike the average traveler, she has more in mind than just seeing the sights: she is on a desperate mission to lose her virginity.

As per usual, Gadling has three copies of the book to give away, so stick around after the interview to find out how you can get your hands on one.

How did you get started traveling?

I’ve been traveling since I was a kid. My parents were really good about taking me around on trips, and after my parents divorce I moved to Israel with my Mom. I would meet my Dad in various places around the world for “quality time,” but besides that, Israelis travel an enormous amount. Since Israel is so small and can be covered in an evening or two, and the surrounding countries aren’t what we’d call welcoming, one always has to fly out of the country, which is why one can find Israelis in every corner of the globe at any given moment. It’s customary for Israelis to embark on long journeys once they complete their military service, usually Asia or South America for 6 months to a year. I jumped on that bandwagon eagerly.

Tell me a bit about the trip you took around Asia.

I started in Thailand, then Viet Nam, Nepal, India, Australia and back to Thailand. I covered a lot of Thailand… ended up going back there about five times — up north and the islands which were fantastic — Viet Nam, I started in Saigon and headed all the way up to Hanoi and Howlong Bay. My favorite place was Hoi An. I felt transported to another calmer magical time. Nepal I started in Kathmandu and then to Pokhara where I trekked a bit, went on safari which involved seeing one rhino over the four days. That’s it, just the rhino. Sunsets were nice, though. In India I started in Delhi and then I focused on Rajasthan, went to Agra, Jaipur, Pushkar and Udaipur. I have been dreaming about returning to Pushkar ever since I left. There was something desolate and spiritual about it, and I wasn’t deathly ill for the four days I was there so that was a perk. From there I headed up north to Shimla to escape the deathly hot weather and then to Manali and Daramsallah, it was surreal going from the insanity and chaos of Rajasthan to the quiet almost other-worldy Tibetan community up north.

What area did you like the most?

I loved India and only fully appreciated it after I left. Definitely going back to cover the rest of the country. Australia I started in Melbourne and then headed up the coast, favorite stop there was Frasier Island. I also enjoyed Byron Bay where I cleaned hostel rooms to pay for my stay, nothing like picking up sketchy undershirts and plastic bongs to make you appreciate moola…

Had you done much traveling before you went to Asia?

I had been to Europe extensively with folks and some parts of the US — very very different experience of course.

Travel has always been romanticized… but maybe not as frankly as you approach the subject in your book. In what ways did your original intention of finding you sexuality through traveling bring you closer to learning more about yourself?

I knew something inside me was instilling my fear of intimacy. I was hoping the carefree nature of travel — a new place — would just cure it. Of course I immediately discovered that your baggage follows you around. There is something liberating about starting a clean slate with people that don’t know you but when something haunts you it quickly surfaces, but interacting with so many different people in such an intense condensed fashion really expedited my journey of self discovery. So many human mirrors to illuminate what’s going on inside you.

Do you recommend traveling alone?

Depends who you travel with. Obviously traveling alone allows one more freedom to float amongst people, pick and choose and do as you please at all times, but there is something gratifying about experiencing things with close friends and taking a long journey with them. It’s the same pros and cons of being in a relationship versus single in a way. I loved traveling alone and still do it when i feel the sudden urge to go somewhere. It can get lonely sometimes too and isolating but you embrace that and you are never really alone if you don’t want to be. A lot of people travel alone, the friendships are quick and instantaneous when there’s a good chemistry.

So how did your journey around Asia prepare you for a future in acting?

I was always a chameleon in the sense that I could blend into completely different types of groups and social circles — bring out certain aspects of my personality that fit in with various groups, connect with people on very different levels. I think that serves me well when approaching characters. One has to morph physically, mentally, adapt, take different perspectives in a way in order to connect with others on as deep a level as possible. But always stay truthful, I never pretended to be someone I wasn’t or at least not connected to a certain part of me. When I tried to do that I felt false and uncomfortable. In acting it’s different, I play characters that sometimes have nothing in common with me — that’s when I really have to use my imagination and take their perspective.

Finally, what books inspired you to take a trip like this?

I always enjoyed Paul Theroux when I was younger but I can’t pinpoint a certain book that inspired me. I’ve always been very curious and somewhat fearless in a ridiculous way, throwing myself into crazy situations just to see what happens.

Sounds like it! Thanks, Iris.

Iris Bahr’s Dork Whore: My Travels Through Asia as a Twenty-Year-Old Pseudo-Virgin (Bloomsbury USA, $13.95) debuted in bookstores in March, 2007.

We have copies of the book to give away to three lucky Gadling readers! Just leave a comment below and our magical system will automatically select three random winners — but make sure you use a valid email address, as we’ll have to contact you to get your mailing address. For official rules, please click here. Comments and contest will close one week from today, May 23 at 8:00 PM.

Talking Travel with Susan Griffith

by Justin Glow on

Susan Griffith is a freelance writer and editor whose specialty lies in working and volunteering your way around the globe. Her most well known book, Work Your Way Around the World, was first published in 1983, and she personally updates the long-running series every two years. This month will see the brand new 13th edition hit stores, and it’s packed full of the most definitive information on working and volunteering abroad.

Through her shoestring travels in and around Europe in the early 1980s, she happened upon a few short-term jobs before realizing that people can travel indefinitely, working a string of odd jobs they find during their travels, and make enough money to survive — and then some. The idea for Work your Way Around the World was born, and today it is the go-to “guide for the modern working traveler.”

We’ve got a few copies of the brand new edition of the book to give away to three lucky Gadling readers, so stick around after the interview to find out how you can score one.

How did you get started traveling?

As a child, family holidays seemed to consist almost exclusively of driving somewhere a long way away. I grew up in southern Ontario, right in the middle of North America, so it was a very very long drive to the east coast and to the west coast. But that didn’t deter my parents on our fortnight-long summer holidays. Once I was independent, I was desperate to fly somewhere completely different so flew to London and spent ten weeks InterRailing round Europe and a month hitch-hiking round the UK. I seem to remember we used Europe on $10 a Day and concluded that that was unnecessarily extravagant. I was hooked from then on, both on travel and on Europe as a place to live.

What events led up to first writing this book?

After finishing university in Toronto, I schemed to get back to Britain, and did a graduate degree at Oxford. After that, I wanted to stay on, so got a job with a publisher in Oxford. This little press published some boring but useful directories of summer jobs and one or two travel titles, and I started as an editorial assistant. While updating these job directories, I thought it would be much better to bring the hard information alive by including the stories of the people who had worked abroad. To find these stories, the publisher and I placed small ads in the Guardian newspaper and the local student newspaper, asking for work-abroad stories of all descriptions. Scores of people replied, many of whom I invited to the Nag’s Head pub around the corner from the publisher where I heard the most unlikely tales from people who had earned a fortune gutting fish in Iceland or who had delivered trucks to west Africa or who had worked for gold prospecting companies in the Australian outback.

Meanwhile I was doing a lot of shoestring traveling myself since my employer was generous with time off but not with pay. I managed to avoid doing slave-labor jobs like fish-gutting, but opportunities kept presenting themselves unbidden, mostly in the nature of work-for-keep exchanges that meant you didn’t have to spend your travel fund. While roaming around the Ionian islands (before Captain Corelli made them famous), my companion and I were befriended by a local farmer who offered us the chance to work in his fields. I got the easy job of wandering around pouring wine out of a plastic jug into the workers’ cups while my less fortunate companion did some strenuous digging. Later on the same trip (on Crete), a hostel owner asked us to clean out her dogs’ kennel in lieu of paying for our beds, not one of the most appealing jobs. On a solo trip round the Indian subcontinent, I met a round-the-world yachtsman in the wonderful south Indian port of Cochin who was looking for crew to join him on a trip to Dar es Salaam. It sounded romantic, but I had commitments at home which didn’t really allow me to entertain that one seriously. Then in the Swat Valley of northern Pakistan I stumbled across a film being shot with the Himalayas as a backdrop. They asked me if I would like a bit part as the Colonel’s daughter, but their faces fell when I had to confess I was no horsewoman. I began to see that if you were a free and unfettered traveler, you could take advantage of all these things and stay on the road, maybe indefinitely, which got me excited about writing a book to guide and encourage people.

What sort of information can people expect to find in Work Your Way Around the World?

I include anything that will help travelers who are willing to offer their labor to extend their stay or to get from A to B. Of course all the usual seasonal jobs are covered, like working in a ski resort or working for farmers at harvest time, or longer jobs abroad like teaching English abroad which is covered in some detail and becoming an au pair and doing volunteer work in developing countries. A classic example of the kind of topic covered is crewing on yachts. Inexperienced sailors might not be able to cross the ocean for free, but the daily cost will be much reduced if they pitch in and share chores. My aim has been to make the information as concrete as possible, to cut the vague generalities and waffle. So that in the sections about crewing, specific yacht basins, chandlery stores, crew list agencies, etc. are named and contact details given. The book is of course strewn with first-hand accounts by travelers who have found these and a thousand other opportunities on their travels.

Who is the book written for?

Any individual with guts and gusto, from students to grandmothers. Everyone has the potential for funding him or herself to various corners of the globe. In fact, the majority of readers are 18-28, and the type who loathe the prospect of settling down prematurely with a nice safe job and mortgage.

What benefits does the updated edition have against older versions?

I have personally updated the book every other year since the first edition was published in 1983. I read every word, check every fact as far as is possible and add lots of new accounts of people met on my travels or that readers of the last edition have sent in. Google has changed everything and the new 2007 edition has nearly 2,000 web addresses, all of which have been checked in the past few months. The internet has become not just an asset but a necessity for the job-seeking traveler. But unless you know precisely what you are looking for on the internet, you can quickly (in fact within 0.19 seconds) become overwhelmed. You will feel as though you have been hit by a tsunami of undifferentiated information. Books are better at cutting through the clamor and rubbish, and I like to think that WYWATW creates order out of chaos.

What makes the book live are the first-person stories which I am always collecting. Since the last edition was published in 2005, I have either chatted to or corresponded with many recent working travelers, including a Canadian who got a job on a dude ranch in the American Rockies after cold-calling them out of the Yellow Pages, a lively Flemish woman who volunteered at the Botanical Gardens in Berlin and interned with a consultancy company near Frankfurt, an American adventurer who at the time of writing had decided to stay a while in Mauritania where he had t
alked an English language centre into giving him some hours of teaching, a serial volunteer in national parks in North America who especially enjoyed her stint at a school in the remote Canadian arctic, a young woman who spent 2006/7 between high school and university picking grapes in France, joining a three-month conservation programme in South Africa and traveling in India, a long-time resident of Crete who reported on the temporary job opportunities on the island, an American photographer who fixes up short English teaching jobs – most recently in Poland and Taiwan – in order to extend her portfolio, a newly graduated Canadian who spent a year teaching English in Korea, a 19 year old Australian who worked for a floatplane company in Vancouver before backpacking across Canada, and a round-the-world TEFLer who has picked up teaching jobs on arrival in Brazil, Ecuador, Thailand, Australia and this year Seville, Spain.

What laws/regulations are in place for foreigners working in other countries? I assume it varies by country?

Every country in the world has immigration policies that are job-protection schemes for its own nationals. Full and realistic account is taken of these restrictions in the book. The European Union has largely done away with the need for work permits for people lucky enough to have access to European nationality. Outside the EU, work authorizations become more tricky though there are lots of ways round these, for example government-sponsored schemes such as the Japan Exchange & Teaching/JET programme, farm placements made by a Norwegian youth exchange organization or the recently expanded New Zealand one-year working holiday visa for travelers aged 18 to 30 (www.bunac.org or www.ccusa.com).

Apart from these specific programmes, the job-seeker from overseas must find an employer willing to apply to the immigration authorities on his or her behalf well in advance of the job’s starting date, while they are still in their home country. This is easier for high-ranking nuclear physicists and pop stars than for mere mortals, though there are exceptions, especially in the field of English teaching.

What countries are the friendliest when it comes to U.S./Canadians looking for work abroad?

A huge number of North Americans are looking to the Pacific Rim countries (Korea, China, Japan and Taiwan) for job opportunities, primarily but not exclusively as English teachers. Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Indonesia are equally welcoming. Closer to home, American and Canadian job-seekers have an advantage in South and Central America because the whole continent is culturally and economically oriented towards Il Norte. There is a decided preference among language learners for the American accent and for American teaching materials and course books, which explains why so many language institutes are called Lincoln and Jefferson.

There are ways round the work permit restrictions. To give just one example, an organization called Willing Workers on Organic Farms (WWOOF) operates in many countries around the world. National WWOOF co-ordinators (including in most European countries, Australia, New Zealand, Turkey, Japan, etc) compile lists of their member farmers willing to provide free room and board to volunteers who help out. No wage is paid and no work permit is required.

What’s your opinion/experience on finding and working under-the-table jobs while traveling?

Some travelers are prepared to throw caution to the winds after concluding that by the time the system discovers they are ‘aliens’ they will be long gone. This is more serious in some countries and in certain circumstances than in others, and the book tries to give some idea of the degree of risk, again based on first-hand accounts. It seems that the authorities will usually turn a blind eye in areas where there is a labor shortage and enforce the letter of the law when there is a glut. It is always important to be as sensitive as possible to local customs and expectations, but many informal arrangements work perfectly smoothly.

How realistic is it for someone to fund their travels while they travel? Is it possible to forgo the traditional save-money-then-go practice of traveling in favor of leaving with the intention of making money as you go?

By its nature, any trip like this is unpredictable, so there are no guarantees that a given individual will be able to fund him/herself abroad for a fixed period. How much you decide to set aside before leaving will depend on whether or not you have a gambling streak. But even gamblers should take only sensible risks. If you don’t have much cash, it’s probably advisable to have an open return ticket so that you have an escape route if things don’t work out. Sometimes pennilessness acts as a spur to action as it did in the case of one of my informants of longstanding whose travel fund ran out in Australia but who stayed away traveling for a full 18 months after that. On numerous occasions, he got down to just $50 but somehow something always turned up. He says, “When your funds are REALLY low you WILL find a job, believe me.”

What type of traveler is best suited to work on the road?

The kind of traveler who feels most at home looking for ways to work their way has an optimistic and resilient personality and does not give up at the first hurdle. Usually it is a self-selecting group who happily contemplates this “seat-of-your-pants” kind of travel. An affluent, tour-package kind of person is unlikely to choose to travel this way. On the other hand plenty of well-off people accustomed to a luxurious standard of travel relish the prospect of a spell of simpler living. They might be tempted for example to do some conservation volunteer work in Africa or to live on an organic farm for a while.

While I’m sure it will make it easier, do you need a college degree to find work abroad?

Most of the casual jobs discussed in the book like fruit picking, working on summer camps, au pairing, etc. need no degree. The notable exception is English teaching. Having a university degree is a visa requirement in some countries (e.g. Japan, Taiwan, Turkey) but not all (e.g. Latin America, Africa).

What options are available for degree-less travelers looking to work in another country?

Many other qualifications and skill sets can prove more useful to the round-the-world working traveler than a university degree. Among the most useful qualifications you can acquire are a certificate in Teaching English as a Foreign Language (for which a degree is not a prerequisite), sailing, diving or other sports qualification, catering experience, knowledge of a foreign language and so on. But WYW is aimed at people of all backgrounds, as long as they feel the call of the road and the spirit of adventure flicker.

Thanks so much, Susan!

Susan Griffith’s Work Your Way Around the World, 13th Edition (Crimson, $21.95) will be in bookstores in June, 2007.

As promised, we have copies of the book to give away to three lucky Gadling readers! Just leave a comment below and our magical system will automatically select three random winners — but make sure you use a valid email address, as we’ll have to contact you to get your mailing address. For official rules, please click here. Comments and contest will close one week from today, May 16 at 8:00 PM.

Upcoming Talking Travel Interviews in May

by Justin Glow on

We’ve had a great run with our Talking Travel feature so far. In March, we sat down with Lois Pryce, who chronicled her solo motorcycle trip from Alaska to the southern tip of South America in her book, Lois on the Loose. April saw two great conversations, one with American Shaolin’s Matthew Polly, and another with Tim Ferriss, author of The 4-Hour Work Week.

May is turning out to be an even bigger month for Talking Travel. Here’s a sneak peak of what’s to come:

Be sure and keep an eye out for these in the coming weeks.

Talking Travel with Timothy Ferriss

by Justin Glow on

Serial entrepreneur and ultravagabond Timothy Ferriss has been featured by dozens of media, including The New York Times, National Geographic Traveler, NBC, and MAXIM. He speaks six languages, runs a multinational firm from wireless locations worldwide, and has been a world-record holder in tango, a national champion in Chinese kickboxing, and an actor on a hit television series in Hong Kong — all by the age of 29.

His new book, The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich, was released on April 24th, and it quickly rocketed to the #8 spot of Amazon’s best-seller list. Gadling got the chance to sit down with Tim, and discuss everything from his new book, his travels, language learning, and what it takes to scape that 9-5 job, live anywhere in the world, and join the “new rich.”

As always, Gadling has a few copies of his book to giveaway, so stick around after the interview to find out how you can get your hands on one.

How did you get started traveling?

It was thrust upon me as a sophomore in high school. I was selected to spend a year living in Japan as an exchange student, and it became my first trip outside of the U.S.. I was told I would receive “Japanese classes,” which ended up being actual classes — physics, classical Japanese, world history — alongside 5,000 Japanese students! Talk about lost in translation. I’d only had six months of Japanese in the U.S. prior to landing and couldn’t even read exit signs. Even though I had failed to learn any Spanish in two years of study in gradeschool, in Japan I went from being illiterate to writing an article for my high school’s newspaper in 11 months. Thereafter, my progression period for learning languages got shorter and shorter. The reason for this is simple: though I lacked the proper methods (the “how”), I became very good at choosing material (the “what”). This is the difference between being efficient and being effective.

From that point on, it was an addiction. In the last five years, I’ve gone through three passports and more than 25 countries.

You call yourself an “ultravagabond.” What do you mean by this?

That’s actually what other people call me because I relocate overseas for 1-3-month “mini-retirements” a few times a year. I suppose the “ultra” is tagged on because it’s not nomadic behavior out of necessity — I have a nice home near San Francisco and manage a business for a few hours a week from wireless locations around the world. I don’t sacrifice income when I take these trips. I’ve actually saved about $32,000 in the last 12 months when compared to the alternative of just sitting at home in CA! Digital lifestyle design offers some amazing options once you learn to leverage time and mobility. From overseas tax credits to outsourcing your life, there are some incredible “lifehacks” right under people’s noses.

You speak 6 languages — how does this affect how and where you travel?

Before I answer that, I just want to point out that I believe — no, I know — that adults can learn languages faster than children. It’s supported by the research in “In Other Words” by Hakuta, I’ve done the research in Chinese character (kanji) acquisition, and I learned all of my foreign languages after age 15. I think it’s possible to become conversationally fluent — being able to speak, not just listen, 30 minutes without missing a word is my benchmark — in any language within three months.

I travel, in large part, to learn languages, so I like to relocate somewhere at least once per year where I don’t speak the native tongue. Culture is shared thought patterns, and thinking in adults is largely indistiguishable from language; thus, it’s impossible to understand a culture without understanding the language. Croatia and Latvia are next on my list, though Russia and Holland are looking good as well, since the book rights have been sold in both places. For the warm and fuzzy feeling of returning home to a favorite language, I’ll settle in Tokyo or Buenos Aires for 1-3 months.

Do you believe there is a capacity on how many languages one can be fluent in?

At one time, yes. I don’t believe it is possible for someone to have near-native fluency in languages from more than three or four families at the same time. That said, there is an unlimited number of languages you can become fluent over the span of a lifetime. In my case, for example, I have conversational fluency in two or three languages at a time, usually because they bridge families. Currently, I’m most comfortable in Japanese, Argentine Spanish, and Mandarin, in that order. But, if I have a week in Berlin or Milan, for example, I can “reactivate” conversational fluency in German or Italian. Maintaining half a dozen languages would be a full-time job, even two is a huge time drain, so I depend on a specific sequence for what I call “reactivation”.

Tim sets a tango World Record on Live with Regis and Kelley

In your book, you claim that it’s possible to design a lifestyle of “fun and profit” in the here-and-now. How can this concept be applied to the traditional save-money-to-travel mindset?

Let me answer that with a story. I recently had lunch in San Francisco with a good friend and former college roommate. He will soon graduate from a top business school and return to investment banking. He hates coming home from the office at midnight but explained to me that, if he works 80-hour weeks for 6-9 years, he could become a managing director and make a cool $3-10 million per year. Then he would be “successful”.

“Dude, what on earth would you do with $3-10 million per year?” I asked. His answer? “I would take a long trip to Thailand.”

That just about sums up one of the biggest self-deceptions of our modern age: extended world travel as the domain of the uberrich. If your dream, the pot of gold at the end of the career rainbow, is to live large in Thailand, sail around the Caribbean, or ride a motorcycle through China, guess what? All of them can be done for less than $3,000. I’ve done all three.

$3,000 still seem like a lot? For $250 in Panama, I spent five days on a private Smithsonian tropical research island with three local fishermen who caught and cooked all my food and also took me on tours of the best hidden dive spots in Central America. For $150 in Mendoza wine country in Argentina, I chartered a private plane and flew over the most beautiful vineyards and snow-capped Andes with a private pilot and personal guide.

The trick, of course, is creating time. This requires separating income from traditional ass-in-seat time and moving from presence-based to performance-based work. I cover remote work negotiation at length in the book — even including actual scripts case studies have used — but it’s not as difficult as most think. There is a great sequence many lifestyle designers use, called the “hour-glass” approach because it begins with a long period out of the office, returns to a short period, then expands back to a long period. Here’s how it works:

  1. Use a pre-planned project or emergency (family issue, personal issue, relocation, home repairs, whatever) that requires you to take one or two weeks out of the office.
  2. Say that you recognize you can’t just stop working, and that you would prefer to work instead of take vacation days.
  3. Propose how you can work remotely and offer, if necessary, to take a pay cut for that period (and that period only) if performance isn’t up to par upon returning.
  4. Allow the boss to collaborate on how to do it so that he or she is invested in the process.
  5. Make the two weeks “off” the most productive period you’ve ever had at work.
  6. Show your boss the quantifiable results upon returning, and tell him or her that – without all the distractions, commute, etc. – you can get twice as much done. Suggest two or three days at home per week as a trial for two weeks.
  7. Make those remote days ultra-productive.
  8. Suggest only one or two days in the office per week.
  9. Make those days the least productive of the week.
  10. Suggest complete five-day-per-week mobility – the boss will go for it.

Thanks, Tim!

Timothy Ferriss’s The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich (Crown, $19.95) debuted in bookstores on April 24, 2007.

As promised, we have copies of the book to give away to two lucky Gadling readers! Just leave a comment below and our magical system will automatically select two random winners — but make sure you use a valid email address, as we’ll have to contact you to get your mailing address. For official rules, please click here. Comments and contest will close one week from today, May 4 at 8:00 PM.

Talking Travel with Matthew Polly

by Justin Glow on

We recently got a chance to talk travel with Matthew Polly, author of American Shaolin, and winner of a Lowell Thomas Award for travel writing. His stories have also appeared in Esquire, The Nation, Playboy, Publisher’s Weekly, and Slate.

Growing up a 98-pound weakling tormented by bullies in the schoolyards of Kansas, young Matthew Polly dreamed of one day journeying to the Shaolin Temple in China to become the toughest fighter in the world, like Caine in his favorite 1970’s TV series Kung Fu. While in college, Matthew decided the time had come to pursue this quixotic dream before it was too late. Much to the dismay of his parents, he dropped out of Princeton to train with the legendary sect of monks who invented kung fu and Zen Buddhism.

We’ve got a few copies of his book to giveaway to three lucky Gadling readers, so stick around after the interview to find out how you can score one.

How did you get started traveling?

I grew up in Kansas. Every year my family would go on one big driving adventure. Since this was pre-GPS, pre-Mapquest, and pre-video Ipods, it involved a great deal of shouting and getting lost. Personally, I’m not sure why I still find travelling exciting. It must the masochist in me.

How much traveling had you done before going to China? And since?

I did a fair amount of traveling before I went to China but it was mostly in very safe, standard areas: North America and Western Europe. After Shaolin, I’ve been around the globe. Not everywhere but a number of fascinating places like Rio, Bangkok, the West Bank.

Did you have any previous martial arts experience or training before deciding to study kung fu at the Shaolin Temple?

When I got to Princeton I started taking martial arts classes in the typical way of most busy college students. A couple days a week when the week wasn’t too busy with other activities.

What made you choose the Shaolin Temple, and not, say, the kung fu school down the road from your house?

When I was a kid I saw the TV show Kung Fu with David Carradine. I idolized his character. He looked as awkward as I felt and yet he was a total bad-ass. When I was in college I started to study Chinese language, philosophy, Ch’an (Zen) Buddhism, and kung fu. The Shaolin Temple is the birthplace of kung fu and Zen Buddhism, so it was like going to the source.

What was the tipping point that made you decide, “okay, I’m going to drop out of Princeton to study kung fu in China?” Was it spur-of-the-moment, or something you thought long and hard about?

I went to one of my Chinese language teachers and asked him where in mainland China I could learn about kung fu and Zen Buddhism.

He asked me in Chinese, “Are you afraid to eat bitter? Are you afraid to suffer?”

“No,” I said, lying.

“Then you must go to the Shaolin Temple.”

As soon as he mentioned Shaolin, it was like a light exploded in my head. I knew I had to go.


Matthew Polly on the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson


How did your friends and family react to that decision?

My friends didn’t believe I’d actually go through with it. My family thought I had lost my mind. This was in 1992, three years after the Tiananmen Sq. massacre. At that point in time, China’s reputation was that it was North Korea only with more food and better hairdos. My mother was afraid the government would kill me. Eventually, I convinced them to let me go, but it was a hard fight.

It’s got to be intimidating: an American traveling across the globe to study kung fu at the temple in which the martial art was born. What that was like?

It was terrifying. The Shaolin Temple is situated in a tiny village between five mountain peaks in the middle of rural China. When I arrived I was the only laowai (foreigner) there. The monks didn’t know what to make of me. It took me about six months of proving that I was willing to train as hard and as bitter as they did before they finally started to accept me as a member of the community.

Looking back on your experience, what advice would you offer up to someone who is considering a major life change to travel?

If you know in your heart that this is the right decision, then you don’t need any advice. Go and see where the path leads you. If you’re uncertain, then don’t give up your day job and drop out of college. It can be a long road back.

What can you tell us about the movie rights you sold to Fox Studios?

Fox2000 has optioned the rights to the book. And they are currently developing it into a feature length film. The A-list screenwriter who wrote Austin Powers II and III [Michael McCullers] has already adapted it into a screenplay. But one never knows with Hollywood. They may ask Britney Spears to play the role of me. She has the shaved head.

Ha! Now I have to ask… who would you want playing you in the movie version of your book?
Having looked in the mirror recently, I don’t think it will be Brad Pitt. If Tom Hanks had a much younger brother that’d be a fairly close approximation.

Thanks, Matthew!

Matthew Polly’s American Shaolin: Flying Kicks, Buddhist Monks, and the Legend of Iron Crotch: An Odyssey in the New China (Gotham Books/Penguin Group, $26.00) debuted in bookstores in February, 2007.

As promised, we have copies of the book to give away to three lucky Gadling readers! Just leave a comment below and our magical system will automatically select three random winners — but make sure you use a valid email address, as we’ll have to contact you to get your mailing address. For official rules, please click here. Comments and contest will close one week from today, April 25 at 8:00 PM.