PT: Well, it must happen a lot because you certainly have traveled a looot…. You know you’ve hit five out of the seven continents? What’s next - Australia or Antarctica?

DZ: Actually, next I’m visiting family in Russia and then riding the Trans-Siberian Expressway with friends from Moscow to Beijing. Then, I’m traveling around China by train. One day I was thinking about it, and I decided if I’m going to live in the world, then I’m going to live my whole life out in the world. It became my mission to get to all seven in my lifetime, and within a year I went to three. Sometimes I get a little too motivated and push myself too hard. I need to sit back and enjoy it more instead of just doing it to do it, so now I’m trying to go to them all but go to them all more. It’s easy to say I’ve been to five out of seven, but the truth is I really know nothing about most of them. I have to put more effort into experiencing each continent for what it’s worth. Like Africa, I went there, but only to Morocco. So, I can say I’ve been to that continent, but I definitely haven’t experienced that continent enough.

PT: It’s better to push yourself too hard than not hard enough. So many people (myself included) talk about doing so much more traveling than they actually do. They have a problem with following through that you clearly lack.

DZ: It’s cool to talk about. It’s harder to do. If you’re going to do it, you have to do it right then and there because if you don’t there’s always going to be reasons that pop up and tell you not to go. Everything is a reason to not go. School is a reason, but when you get out of school, work is. Then, when you’re steady with work, other things in your life - the family you’ve had, the girlfriend you’ve met, the school loans, the bills - it’s never a good time. Right now for me it’s a terrible time. I’ve been living the last seven months essentially off of my savings, and in a month I’m trying to go to Russia and just live for four months traveling all over that region of the world. That’s just a stupid thing to do, but I’m going anyway. You can always list off tons of things that make a trip a bad idea. You just have to go and forget about everything else.

PT: Out of all the places you’ve visited, where is your favorite?

DZ: I feel like everywhere I go, I feel kind of the same when I get there. I love it. I walk around, and it’s this wonderful experience. I just can’t be more thankful that I’m there and experiencing all the new and different, but I don’t think I’ve been to a favorite place yet. I think I have an idea of what that’s going to feel like. I’ll feel like I want to live there, and I probably will. I think that’s the way it will work out because if found myself in my favorite place I’ve ever been, why would I leave?

PT: Well, what about a least favorite place? What’s the worst experience you’ve had traveling that made you want to leave wherever you were ASAP?

DZ: I’ve been pretty lucky. Nothing that bad has happened to me, just typical stuff like delays and flight changes. I’ve had people put little knives up to me and take my wallet, but that kind of just happens. I got heat exhaustion in Thailand. I was in an outdoor market in Bangkok completely motivated to get a piece of artwork for my dad, so I was relentlessly searching these little markets and stands. I got extremely sick. I was feeling terrible, but the plan was to go eight hours north to Chiang Mai to explore and play in the jungle around the city. I bought a flight while I was sick, flew to Chiang Mai, took a tuk tuk to a hotel, got into bed, and stayed in it for a day. I thought to myself, “Here I am. I’m going to die in fucking Thailand. Here is the end.” It really wasn’t that bad, though. Being that sick was just really bad for my thought processes. Sleep and six IB profeun cured me.

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