My Expert Travel Advice? Live — and Let Live

As a nomad who regularly updates an experience-based Instagram account, I see a lot of algorithmic memes, reels and comments about travel.

From articles on how to keep your money safe from pickpockets to video tips on scoring the cheapest airfare to user anecdotes on hidden gems in some of the wildest places on the planet, there’s no shortage of adventure-forward content.

There’s an interesting underbelly to this content, however, where keyboard warriors express their first-world privilege of shaming other travelers for traveling like tourists.

American-on-American bullying, at its finest — because we’re a nation of never-ending micro-aggressions. It be your own people, as somebody once wisely observed. 

Recently, I ran across a social-media post that put down picky eaters traveling to foreign countries. The caption, under a video of Americans in a fast-food restaurant, asked, “What kind of people travel abroad to eat at McDonald’s?”

It’s me. I’m that kind of people.

I don’t strictly eat at fast-food restaurants when I’m traveling abroad — I support local establishments — but I also have a limited palate and plenty of self-imposed dietary restrictions.

I was in Tokyo, and I don’t like fish. There’s a lot of fish in Tokyo. So, I shopped at the supermarket for food for my mini-fridge, I dined at steakhouses (find the one on my Instagram for a hot tip on the butteriest, most mouth-wateringist Wagyu you’ll ever put between your lips), and, if I was out pounding the urban pavement all day, I popped into McDonald’s for lunch.

In my own defense, I don’t eat McDonald’s at home often.

That says nothing about the quality of the food, but rather that I’m still traumatized by pandemic fast-food practices where I had to order through an app but couldn’t pick it up because my van, a Ram ProMaster 2500, wouldn’t fit through the drive-thru.

I was told at a Wendy’s during peak COVID, while standing at its front door pleading for attention from the aloof workers inside, that I had to go around the building and stand in the drive-thru to pick up my order, with vehicles in front of me — and likely vehicles behind me eventually — so I could look like a lunatic. 

What would I do when I got there — lower my head in embarrassment? Apologize silently to the family in front of me — and the one over my shoulder — for being the first weirdo they encounter today? Pop in my AirPods and sporadically shuffle forward every time a stoner drives away with a sack full of Dave’s Singles?

My $5 Biggie Bag was not worth that humiliation.

I arrived at a Starbucks to pick up my drink, which I could see sitting on the counter as I approached the front door, but I couldn’t get to it because the door was locked.

There I am again, banging on the vault to all the riches at the U.S. Mint, hoping that some 17-year-old with a broccoli top would have pity on me.

When they finally noticed me, I did my best sign-language impression of a customer who ordered a hot chocolate but who also drives a Ram ProMaster 2500 that can’t fit through the prohibitive drive-thru. After a few minutes, they realized I was someone who had taken their medication that morning, and they brought my venti to the door and beamed it through the crack so they wouldn’t catch my hypothetical cooties. 

I feel differently about foreign McDonald’s, specifically.

I love the instant familiarity in a place where everything that surrounds me is new. I love looking at interesting menu items that we don’t have at home. And I love ordering a McChicken (yes, I’m a chicken-tenders-everywhere-I-go guy) when I want protein without emptying my pockets.

For some reason, that offends people — and that idea interests me.

The idea that someone is privileged enough to travel the globe, experience the wonders of distant worlds, participate in unique cultures and customs, and they’re annoyed that not everybody wants to eat tiger balls and monkey paws?

That sentiment speaks to a broader offense, I think: We’ve largely forgotten why we’re traveling.

A high-school buddy asked me on Facebook, after a new series of travel photos I posted, why I didn’t start a YouTube page dedicated to van life when I started it five years ago. He suggested that it probably wasn’t too late, as if I’d miss an opportunity if I didn’t seize it.

But it was never about missing that proverbial boat — because I consciously chose not to get on it.

When I started planning my van-life adventure in 2018, I had a successful media career in Manhattan, and all the material things that came with it, but I was burnt out, and I needed a change. So, I sold my real estate, bought the Ram and hit the road. I only intended to explore the country for a year before settling back down, but that’s somehow morphed into a half-decade in the wild, and I have another couple years planned. 

From the onset, I decided this experience was all or nothing, and a detractor from that would be to turn this into a content-fest. I have an Instagram, and I enjoy updating it, but it’s more about showing off dope ’fits and chronicling this adventure for myself so I have something to look back on fondly when I’m old.

Thus, no YouTube content then, no YouTube content now.

Regardless of my willingness to do it, that space didn’t need another voice pretending that this lifestyle is a dream. It’s a lot of things — a lot of things for which I’m grateful — but easy it isn’t, and I’ve deduced that much of the rose-colored, self-edited, social-media nomad content is glorified BS. 

Permit me to explain something else: Before van life, I was feral. I spent four years snorting coke inside a Virginia fraternity house before moving to downtown Baltimore to steal alcohol from neighborhood bars before running the streets of New York City for 10 years, where, in my neighborhood of Harlem, the residents affectionately called me White Mike.

The point of that is that I’ve lived, in my own little way — but, admittedly, not always in the best or even healthiest way.

It’s only dawned on me recently — a debt that’s probably owed to lab-formulated edibles from central Florida — that I enjoy living. I was sick and sad for so long, inundated from all sides all the time, that I completely forgot who I am and what I’m here for. 

That’s not to sound grandiose, either. Quite the opposite. It’s just to say that I think I finally get what they mean by “We’re here for a good time, not a long time.”

Those things I thought were most important in the past — the material ones — have become the least important part of my life.

The anger that’s had a stronghold on my heart since I can remember has loosened its grip.

My creativity is returning, and I’m starting to forgive people for however I think they’ve wronged me, but, more importantly, I’m starting to forgive myself for how I’ve wronged them. 

That forgiveness hasn’t come without apologies, either. In a move that surprises even myself, I’ve reached out to individuals to formally apologize for my past behavior, and I plan to continue that. 

These years of solo travel have afforded that growth, and a full-time, nomadic life on the road also has changed my perspective on travel.

I don’t travel to show off or to pretend that I’m cultured — although I have been guilty of that in the past. Instead — now that I’m comfortable with who I am — I travel to see stunning sights with my own eyes, meet interesting people, and elevate my understanding of the world and my place in it.

That’s the experience that appeals to me, and that’s what I want out of this life experience as well. Furthermore, those epiphanies have only come from dedicating myself to a purposeful life of open-minded exploration — without worrying about what other people are doing with theirs.

People make a big deal because some travelers only want to hit tourist traps or grab a Big Mac at McDonald’s on their vacations. So what. That’s what they’ve deemed the best experience for them, so who should argue?

Living — and letting people live in whatever way brings them joy and peace and happiness — is all any of us should strive for in these United States that are consistently divided; among people who are increasingly negative and dissatisfied, especially online (both the cause and the effect); and in a world that often seems hopeless.

Travel, for whatever reason we’re doing it, helps us forget about those soul-crushing constants, however briefly, and in best-case scenarios, sometimes restores our faith in ourselves and each other.

At the end of the day, I’d like fries with that.

Mikey Rox is an award-winning freelance journalist whose passion for travel has taken him to all 50 states, 17 countries, and a couple drive-thrus he couldn’t get into. Follow his continuing adventures on Instagram @mikeyroxtravels.