Travel makes us a better person—it opens us up to the world, and in the process, to ourselves. Join host Jeffrey Saad as he explores how travel transforms our lives, from discovering new foods and cultures to embracing unexpected challenges. Drawing from vivid trips to Thailand, Brazil, and Cambodia, Jeffrey shares personal travel stories that highlight the beauty of human connection and the power of presence. Whether you’re planning a solo trip or a family getaway, this episode will inspire you to explore more deeply and connect more fully wherever you go.
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Why Travel Transforms Us: Lessons From Across the Globe
Thanks for joining. I hope this finds you starting off a great day, in the middle of a good day, ending a good day, or if you’re having a terrible day, I hope this makes it a little bit better. I wanted to talk about travel. For those of you who are just starting to tune in, this is not a travel show, but I thrive on traveling. I couldn’t help it. I don’t know how long this show is going to last, or where it’s going to go. I felt like I had to talk about travel for a minute because I think it makes the world a better place.
I know it makes me a better person. I know it makes me a better friend, a better husband, a better dad, and a better realtor for my clients because traveling opens you up to the world in every way, not just geographically, but your soul. It is so soul-fulfilling. It’s funny because I think about my mom. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of bad stuff. Everything in life, focus on the good stuff because that’s what’s going to make your life better, not dwelling on or retelling stories about the bad stuff.
The good stuff my mom brought me was a love for cooking, without a doubt. I give her credit. She cooked all the time. The other thing she gave me was a love of travel because we traveled like crazy when I was young. It was always first class to mostly Hawaii and Mexico. It was always first class until they went broke and lost the house, and then we had no money. The moral of the story is don’t spend it all, but if you are going to spend it, I guess travel would be a good place to do it.
The other good part of that story is that it doesn’t have to be first class. It doesn’t have to be the best of the best to be soul-fulfilling. Ironically, it’s the travel that’s not expensive that usually is the most fulfilling. I always say I either want it to be bougie and do it up fancy, or be down and dirty. It’s the middle that bores me. I’ve had many of those trips. If you’re watching this on YouTube, check out the videos. I put a bunch of clips in there from past trips.
Traveling To Thailand
I’ve been traveling since I was young, but I never stopped to say, “What has it done for me?” It’s interesting. As a chef, I think it made me way better. For example, I was in Thailand one time with my wife, and we were staying on this little island. It was the coolest thing because you could only go into the village at low tide because you had to walk around these rocks where the tide went down to get to the village. If you stayed too long and the tide came up, you were either hiking through the mountains through this trail called Monkey Trail that you’re not supposed to go through at night, or you’re staying there for the night.
We would go around and get into town. I’m looking for the best of everything. They have these things called Nam Prik, which is like a Thai pesto if you will. Let me give a little disclosure header. Everything I share with you is my experiences, what I saw, what I tasted, what I smelled, who I met, and everything in life. You have to be careful because your experience is one version. If I misstate anything for any of you who happen to be experts in where I was, it is not intentional. It’s my experience and my memories.
There are these Nam Priks that were brilliant. It’s these umami deep flavors. They mix together all these spices. They do these beautifully grilled snappers. They mark the skin and they throw it on the grill, and the skin gets all crispy as the flesh gets exposed and juicy. They put these Nam Priks on it, and I would taste all these different versions. One of the things I wanted to master when I was there was Pad Thai, the most basic Thai dish.
I get to this one street vendor, and I’m like, “I’ve never tasted anything like this. What is he doing?” I’m sitting there watching. Not that many people speak English in Thailand, definitely not in some of the little island villages. I’m watching them and I’m like, “I recognize that. It’s beansprouts. That’s the pork. No big deal. That’s a little fish sauce, whatever it is. What is it? I don’t get it.”
I started talking to his son who spoke a teeny bit of English. He was so cute. He was sitting there at his dad’s little food cart, doing his homework and helping his dad when he could. He got his dad to understand that I wanted to go back there and check out the Pad Thai. I go back there and I’m watching him put each thing in. I’m like, “I don’t get it.” All of a sudden, he puts one little spoon of powder. I’m like, “That must be it. There’s the secret ingredient.” Lo and behold, it turns out that it’s MSG, which is fine. It enhances all flavors, but it was funny because I was looking for this magical golden bullet of what made this Pad Thai so amazing. It was just MSG.
I come back with all these experiences, and I’m a better cook for it. I also love missing my wife, my family, my work, my clients, and my friends. Whenever you travel, I talked about this in other episodes, my wife and I have done this thing for the last 6 or 7 years and we each take our own trip. We always take a trip together. We always take a trip with the kids, but then we each take our own trip.
Insights From Brazil
My friend Adriano and I got back from Brazil. He and I go somewhere every year together, a friend of 40 years, fellow chef, restaurateur, and awesome guy out of San Francisco. We got back from two weeks in Brazil. We went to São Paulo, which is more inland, a huge city, big and spread out like LA, but evolving. A good friend of mine lived there for a year. He gave us a lot of input. Thank you, Kevin. It’s cool. Lots of clubs, bars, restaurants, and things happening.
We went to the Iguazu Falls, which is one of the natural wonders of the world. I love traveling. I’m standing there under the fall, and it’s this behemoth waterfall. The amount of water coming down constantly for decades doesn’t stop. It is amazing. You could hike up to the top and you could see the river that dumps into it. We were blessed enough to stay in the park.
There’s one hotel in the park called the Cataratas. When the park closes, the falls become yours. The hotel is not that big. My friend and I walked down there, and it was just the two of us, sunrise to sunset. It was so majestic. What I love about those experiences as well is they force you into total presence. That’s it. Every podcast you’ve ever listened to or every book you’ve ever read is all a version of saying, “Be present, be in the moment, and your life will be great.” That is the secret to life.
Traveling makes you present. It makes me present, especially when it’s such a natural wonder like that. We then went to Rio. For those of you who haven’t been there, it’s this incredible natural setting. You go up to the Christ statue and you go up to Sugarloaf, the other famous mountaintop, which you’ve seen in a million movies probably. You go up the gondola to the top of this peak. You look across and you see this incredible beach coastline. It’s stunning. You see all the houses and the high-rises built up into the hills. You see it striped with the favelas or the slums.
It’s a great reminder because, as a local told me that I was talking to for the day, the thing that makes Brazil unique is that it doesn’t hide. Because of the landscape, they’re right in your face. It’s a good reminder that we need to figure this out. We need to help people. Not everybody is in the same blessed situation, and that’s the other thing that travel does. For most of you, your worst day would be a dream come true for most people. We have to remember that.
Your worst day would be a dream come true for most people. We have to remember that. Share on XThe other lesson I got out of Brazil was that all we got were warnings from friends and family here. Even the concierge, the locals, and the tour guide, we had, “Be careful. Watch out, be careful.” It’s a beautiful thing and it’s a shame. It’s beautiful because they’re being honest and transparent, and they’re worried about your well-being, but it’s a shame because there’s such a buildup of “be careful” that if you’re not peaceful and open to not worrying about these things, circle of control, it can ruin your trip.
For us, we were like, whatever. It’s outside my circle of control. That’s what this show is all about. What happens to me on the streets, walking down, the only thing in my control is I don’t wear a gold watch and a gold necklace, or put the gold watch on your friend. I’m kidding, but don’t do anything silly like that. Don’t be out at 3:00 in the morning in a dark alley. It’s common sense. I felt nothing. The only warning I have for you about Brazil is to be careful because you will have way too much fun.
All we experienced was amazing people. I love the Brazilians. The Portuguese are awesome. The sights are incredible. The food is incredible. To give you a few highlights, they love manioc, which we know as cassava. It’s a root. It’s white. They grind it and they toast it into something called farofa. It’s this beautiful little toasted grain. My buddy thought it was a little bland and boring. I found it fascinating because I got this toastiness from it. What they do is sprinkle it over these juicy chunks of roasted beef with sweated slightly browned onions. It absorbs the fat and becomes part of the texture. It’s delicious.
It makes you realize how, in the US at least, and in so many parts of the world, we’re so spoiled because we can get the best of anything from anywhere. In a lot of countries, they maximize what the locally available food is. They turn it into a million delicious things, some places even clothing or whatever else. They also do tapioca. They’re huge into tapiocas. They make this almost like a quesadilla. It’s this chewy, slightly crispy tapioca, and then inside is a fermented ground beef. I don’t remember the exact name of it, but it’s delicious.
From Buenos Aires To Mexico
Incredible amount of pork, fried ribs, like crazy pork belly. Delicious. I grabbed that açaí bowl in the mornings when I could, which açaí is such a trend in the U.S., and you’re like, “That’s a berry from Brazil. It’s a very local thing.” Incredible, but sometimes those warnings can be true. We were in Buenos Aires a few years back, and my wife and I were sitting at a café at 3:00 in the afternoon in the nicer area of Buenos Aires. Three motorcycles pull up, two guys on each bike. They jump off. They choke this guy out on the curb and slide his watch off.
I’m sitting there, sipping an espresso, staring at the sun, grateful, being present, and loving life. All I hear is my wife go, “Oh my God,” and I turn. By the time I turned my head, the guy had already lifted up her arms, slid off her watch, jumped back on the motorcycle, and they were gone. We went from scared to death to totally impressed. It was like, “How did they pull that off?” The first reaction is, “Poor me, victim. I can’t believe they did that.” My second reaction was, “Why are we wearing the watch? That wasn’t very smart”. My third reaction was there is a percentage of people that are bad to be bad, and they steal, fine. I believe that the majority of people don’t want to be that way. You are a product of where you’re brought up, of your surroundings, and your conditions.
You are a product of where you're brought up, of your surroundings, of your conditions. Share on XWhen you have the inflation they’ve had in Argentina and the suffering they’ve had financially for forever, how does the average person survive? I went and thought to myself, “I hope they did something good with that watch.” Maybe I’m naive and they went and bought drugs or something, but I’m hoping that maybe somebody sold that watch and had money for their family, for food, for whatever was needed for somebody’s surgery.
You don’t know what people are going through. I can’t imagine, even in the worst days of Mexico, we used to go to Mexico all the time. I was so proud of my wife because I don’t know how many of you remember, but it was probably about fifteen years ago. There was a time when they were even showing on the news tourists with a hoods on in Mexico had been kidnapped. It was extra violent. The kids were like, “Should we not go to Mexico this year, Mom and Dad?” My wife, Nadia, said, “If we do that, we’re hurting the people that need us most.” I thought, “You are amazing, my love,” because all those people there pr the majority of these Mexicans in these areas survive off of tourism.
We went anyway and we did go one time. There’s a beautiful resort called La Casa Que Canta, The House That Sings, and it was in a movie called When a Man Loves a Woman way back in the early ’90s. I know that because it was when I proposed to Nadia, and I took her to that hotel as a surprise because it was probably the first infinity pool or one of them. There was a scene in that movie with the infinity pool and Meg Ryan, and I forgot the other guy’s name in the movie. I was like, “I have to take my fiancée there and celebrate our engagement.”
I took her back there about 7 years ago, 20 years later, 8 years ago, and right in front of the hotel was a full-on shootout, two dead in the street. It was so scary, so nuts, but there was a cartel flare-up. They have these little territory wars, and then once somebody wins, it goes back to calm and normal. I know some of you listening are probably going, “You’re making me never want to travel.”
The real message is that’s after a gazillion trips. A couple of things are going to happen, but I would never want to lose out on all those amazing opportunities to protect from that one small, tiny percentage chance that something will happen. Even when it does happen, as the guy in Brazil told me, “You read these fantastical stories, somebody’s arm gets cut off because they want the watch or something, but 95% of it is petty. They grab your phone when they’re cruising by on the motorcycle. If you’re holding it up, taking the selfie for an hour, they’ll grab your phone. They’ll pull your necklace off or your watch potentially, but the majority of it is not violent unless you decide to head into the favelas recklessly.”
Lessons From Cambodia
It’s Cambodia. My friend and I went to Cambodia a few years ago. Look at some of these videos on YouTube. You’re going to see. I’ve never seen anything like it. We went out to the countryside. I was lucky enough to connect with this chef from England on Instagram, and he spent half his year there. He hooked us up, and we truly went to where no tourists go. I know we all say that, and you all want to be off the grid. This was off the grid.
We went out into the countryside, and there was a market. It’s where everybody goes to restaurants for their food. You’ll see in the videos, a little Vespa piled up with enough groceries. It looks like a grocery store is riding down the dirt road. He’s got so much stuff on there. A woman, sitting cross-legged on this big butcher block, surrounded by raw bloody meat as she eats her noodle dishes, and she’s selling the meat, flies everywhere, no refrigeration. We went inside this market, and Adriano and I sat down and had this dish. He looked at me. He’s like, “Dude, if we’re going to die, I’m going to kill you.”
It was like you don’t know what you’re eating. There was a roadside restaurant we went to, and we both were like, “This is not a meat we’ve ever tasted.” I don’t know what it was. I’m not going to start guessing, but it was not the basic categories. There was this grilled frog, spread out with arms and legs out, stuffed with this spicy sausage. Delicious. It’s these experiences that make you go, “Wow.” As my friend Charlie said, “We’re just a speck on this planet. We are a speck.”
It makes you realize how insignificant you are when you go to a place like Brazil and there are twelve million people in one of the cities. We think we’re the center of the universe. We think everything revolves around us, but when you get out there and start traveling, it’s such a beautiful reminder that it’s not just about us. You start to appreciate where people come from and why they do and say and talk the way they do. I find it so rewarding because that’s the key. If you take away what is racism and all these things, it is fear.
You Can Travel
Our instinct, for some reason, is when something is unknown, we’re afraid of it. When we’re afraid of it, we don’t treat it well. I think if everybody traveled, we’d all love each other so much more. It would be a better world. The good news again is it doesn’t have to be expensive. When you can afford a luxurious vacation, a beautiful hotel, a first-class flight, good for you, and that’s awesome.
You can do it for next to nothing. I met my French teacher’s brother, and he has been traveling for 25 years nonstop. He has a backpack, and in it, he has a hammock. Wherever he goes, he finds two attachment points, two palm trees on the beach, two fence posts on the side of the road. He sleeps in his hammock, and he’s managed his money, sold his house in Australia or something. He had been successful when he was young, and he’s parsed that money out very slowly. He’s probably been to almost every country in the world, but when you meet him, he has this peacefulness to him.
He’s got this long gray hair. He’s like 75-something with these bright beautiful eyes. You can tell that he has a warmth in his soul. To me, he was the complete reduction of what travel can do to the soul. It makes it so bright. It’s also not accepting the differences, but learning from them and thriving. I always say that the different lessons as a chef is it’s the food, the culture, the soul, and the people. It also makes me grateful.
Anyone in America thinks that we have challenges. We don’t. There are people around the world. One of the times I went to Mexico, I had my Mexican restaurant way back in 1993, and I was shocked when I first learned this. I wanted to go to Herradura, which is the tequila distillery in the village of Tequila. I was 25 years old. I had my first Mexican restaurant. I was like, “There’s a place called Tequila? That’s a village? I thought it was a beverage.” I was stocking Herradura on my well, which back in 1993 was a big deal. That was considered a premium tequila. That was our well tequila.
I hired this guy who took me on a bus that I had never even met with my buddy. My wife’s like, “No thanks, I’ll be on the beach.” We drove across the volcanic desert to Herradura, and there were armed guards at the gates, and they wouldn’t let us in. I’m thinking, “I’m an American. I buy all your tequila. You should be kissing my butt.” They’re like, “Get out of here, kid.” The things I learned from that were one, I had the best taco al pastor of my life, cooked on a hubcap, and turned over some coals on the side of the road. The woman had a little thing of water that was slightly gray. I think it was used for cleaning and cooking, but it was a delicious taco. It was a wake-up call because I was talking to people. Now it’s sadly not a whole lot more, but back then, the average person made $100 a month if they were lucky.
The reason they wouldn’t let us in that day is because it was payday. Whenever it’s payday, I guess there’s a lot of cash involved or whatever. They have these armed guards, and they shut it down, and people were walking out with a bag of eggs and some different produce they got with their pay. It was a reminder again of like, “Oh my gosh, they put an extra shot of syrup in my latte. I only wanted a half shot.” That’s a rough day for a lot of us, and here these people are trying to survive.
I think I could go on and on. My goal is to get to every continent for sure. Every country might be difficult, but I think you should go to the country that scares you the most, maybe not the Middle East, where wars are going on, but I want to get to Israel. I want to get to Lebanon, where my roots are. I want to get to Iran, where my wife is from. Right now, those aren’t the best options, but in general, think about the places that seem the most scary and the most foreign, and that’s probably where you should be going because once you go, it’ll open up your eyes to a whole new world of people, food, being present, missing your family, missing your life, and appreciating your life as a result of the travels.
The places that seem the most scary and the most foreign are probably where you should be going, because once you go, it’ll open up your eyes to a whole new world. Share on XTravel Tips
I do a couple of travel tips, again, this isn’t a travel podcast, but in case this helps you. I always create a note and I take the notes down. I try to learn the basic words, “Hello, goodbye, thank you, where it is,” and that kind of stuff. Google Maps is the best. All you have to do is flag the spot and save it to a new group. If anybody is traveling and wants some notes, reach out, and I’ll give you mine. I have a group for each country and each city that I’ve been to, with all the favorite restaurants, the favorite stores, and the best walking streets. Google Maps is a great way to organize it. Keeping a note is a great way to organize it.
If you’re a food person, this is the best tip you’re going to get. My daughter, Isabella, she’s 28 years old. She lives in Brooklyn, and she is a great chef. She’s not a chef by trade, but she might as well be. She’s a good cook. She also has an incredible sense of food. On this trip, my friend and I hired her. She booked every reservation for us, lunch and dinner. We ate so well without thinking and without planning.
I love concierges. They’re the friendliest people, and they give you a lot of good advice, but when it comes to food, if you’re a food person like me, you’re going to get all the obvious spots, and they’re maybe going to be okay at best. She set us up. We had an amazing food tour. Reach out and I’ll give you her information. I wasn’t sure exactly where this show was going to go, but the message is travel. It’s a beautiful thing. Have a great day.