Interview with Dave of Travel Dave

Dave was born and raised in London. Even though he is just 26 years old, he has managed to travel to 86 countries while sticking to a backpacker’s budget. He has no plans to stop any time soon, but wishes to impart what knowledge and experience he has gained over the years to make others’ travels abroad worthwhile. He blogs at http://traveldave.co.uk/

Dave took out time and answered some questions about his travel experiences being a digital nomad.

Q 1. If there is one thing that nobody can pretend to be or pretend to love, is travelling. Tell us what attracted you to globetrotting? 

Answer. It all started back in 2005 when I was invited by some scout friends to come and visit them in Finland. i’d never travelled alone before and my Mum wouldn’t let me go (I was only 15!) After booking the flight with some savings I had for a bike the adventure was about to start. My mum agreed that I could go if I kept her up-to-date every day with what I was doing. That was how traveldave.co.uk was born and well the rest of history. There was something magical about Finland in the winter time and staying with host families that allowed me to connect with the culture directly. I couldn’t have asked for a better introduction at such a young age, that first trip really did kick start my travel bug to see more! 10 years later I’m still going for that first trip.

Q 2. A lot of people wish to become travellers, but are not able to because of, to put it simply, life. Please tell us how you were able making your wish come true? 

Answer. That’s exactly it, you have to transform your life. Every day I eat, sleep, dream travel, I don’t really know how doing anything else. I made a decision very early on to dedicate my life to travelling the world and transformed it into my lifestyle. Most of the time sleeping in airports, friends’ couches, eating street food, grabbing red eye flights, travelling with hand luggage, many look at this and decided it’s not for them, it takes dedication but the passion always shines through. Just like anything in life actually, you have to make sacrifices and no one said it was easy, but if you love what you do every day, then it keeps you going.

 

Q 3. What, according to you, is it about travelling that makes it so exciting and worthwhile? 

Answer. The unique people you get to meet along the road, everyone has something different to offer and I love exploring unique cultures and getting to the heart of what makes a country tick. Every day life is interesting in different countries too. I like to wake up early to enjoy a sunrise and watch locals get up to work and see what they get up to, every country is different and very interesting as well.

Q 4. Out of the countries that you have travelled so far, which is your favourite destination?

Answer. Out of 86 countries its hard to pick one, but I always say Iceland! The country is alive geographically and on every corner is something else, waterfalls, glaciers, icebergs, you name it, they have it. Icelandic people are great fun too, I like how they have a very dark humour, that’s my type of comedy any day, I guess you have to take life like that if you live in complete darkness half the year and pretty much live on a diet of preserved fish, but that’s since changed, they have hot dogs now, and good ones at that!

Q 5. What are some of the major digital difficulties that you regularly encounter during your travels, assuming that you take your laptop/tablet/Smartphone with you?

Answer. Grabbing a good connection! I’m currently sitting in a hotel lobby in Hong Kong, as the room doesn’t have wifi or the restaurant. Got to do what you got to do to grab a connection. One day I hope they come out with a full data global 5G SIM card, then my life would be complete, until then, I’m constantly hunting a connection to share my travel content with my audience.

 

Q 6. What is you general overview about the availability/accessibility of the internet when visiting new countries? 

Answer. It’s getting better, funny you should mention this because 6 years ago, my view would be different, but countries such as Thailand have incredible connections when it comes to 3G they have been installing data around the country and gets better better but most importantly its affordable. Countries such as Australia who you would think would be leading in this field funnily enough are not and well behind with expensive, terrible connections whilst everyone is going forward with good data connection. Catch up Australia 🙂

 

Q 7. Do you know about possible issues using public Wi-Fi hotspots while travelling?

Answer. No such thing as a free lunch? If you have to put in your information to unlock a free wifi spot, then ask yourself where is this data going? Might not be free wifi after all, you have to be careful when signing up to these free spots as you don’t know what they will do with this information. You can get around this by coming up with a second email account to use as a dummy account for situations like this.

Q 8. Any tips and tricks for your fellow travellers to benefit from while using Wi-Fi networks abroad? 

Answer. Do a speed test to see how well connected the wifi is, sometimes a connection can be next to useless. Generally, I purchase a local SIM card and get data to avoid wifi when possible. Many smart phones these days come unlocked and allow tethering.

 

Q 9. How has your experience been with PureVPN so far? Would you recommend it to other travellers? If so, why? 

Answer. VPN is handy as you can access sites where countries have restrictions such as in Morocco you, can’t use Skype, this can be annoying when needing to use VOIP in these countries, A VPN solves this issue very easily. Don’t want to miss that important call after all.

 

Thank you very much for your time. I hope we will make an impression with this and travelers will learn something from your answers.

Thank you for having me.

All photos are taken from TravelDave.co.uk