Jada Yuan is traveling to every place on this year’s 52 Places to Go list for The New York Times
Last fall, when I was applying for a job I never thought I’d get, to spend the year traveling to each place on The Times’s 52 Places list, I got hooked watching Anthony Bourdain’s “Raw Craft” series on YouTube. It’s quieter than his food shows; he’s just highlighting master craftsmen, but his awe and appreciation of their skill is palpable. I had been trying to find someone less obvious for inspiration and just — of the hundreds of videos I watched, there was no one else who could make me care about a shoe or a sandwich the way that he did.
What would the world of travel and food reporting look like without the humanity he brought to it? Would I have had the confidence to apply for this job? Would this job even exist?
What I loved most is the gusto. Mr. Bourdain’s taste buds and legendarily steely stomach might have objected to a few of the delicacies he guzzled down on camera for our vicarious entertainment, and education, but he was, above all, a tireless ambassador for testing your comfort zone, for being all in.
He was even a fan of durian, the tropical fruit so pungent it’s banned from hotels in Thailand. “Your breath will smell as if you’d been French-kissing your dead grandmother,” he said. From him, that was a ringing endorsement. It was also the first time I had heard of durian. I’ve still never had the guts to try it.
Mr. Bourdain, for many of us viewers and admirers, didn’t just bring us to street carts in Cambodia and inside home kitchens in Mexico; he made them tactile and Technicolor. He was the friend on the road trip who jumps into the dark, dank pond first, and then ropes you in: “This is terrible! Get over here!” I could never make watching his shows a habit, though. He was too convincing. The wanderlust would hit like torture.
Trying exotic foods was never what got to me about what he did. It was the way he could wander into a village in Indonesia and spend the day having a laugh and a delicious roadside dessert with a trail of children who spoke no English.
He made travel seem like an accessible joy to anyone who could save up enough money to buy a plane ticket — which was a pretty powerful notion for someone, like me, who was answering phones for New York magazine when his first book, then first TV show came out. I’d devour his writing and grab quotes from him at parties (he was a wealth of colorful insights) and then see him out at a restaurant in the city. Before him, the only travel personality I remember knowing of was Robin Leach of “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.”
In recent years, so many have pointed out, he became an activist, speaking out on behalf of women like his partner, Asia Argento, in her allegations of rape against Harvey Weinstein, and questioning his own role as a man in ignoring women's stories. Looking back, his life's work was activism: Championing good food, showing the warmth to be found in a stranger's backyard, leading with humor through a miserable windstorm in Iceland, opening eyes.
News of Mr. Bourdain’s death of apparent suicide came extremely hard Friday morning. I was sitting in a hotel lobby in Bristol, England, after a few very tough days on this job that I owe in part to him. He had been in France, one time zone away from me, and people in the States were just beginning to hear. Sadness, for him, for his family, for his friends, some of whom I know, crashed down in overwhelming waves.
So did empathy. For four and a half months I have been on the road by myself, experiencing just a taste of Mr. Bourdain’s life of the past two decades. Traveling is a beautiful privilege but it is also incredibly lonely. You’re in new environments constantly, you feel untethered from a support system, and sometimes you even forget who your support system is. Lives move on, and often away from yours, when you're on the road and working intensely. I've found that the push-pull of seeing loved ones and having them leave, or having to leave them, can be harder than not seeing them at all. Talking on the phone with my therapist is some of the most important work I do every week.
People tell you often that you have a dream job, and you feel some obligation to keep up that fantasy for them, to not show the cracks. I can’t imagine what pain Mr. Bourdain was dealing with, but I do know what it’s like to have to go home to a hotel room in a city where I know no one and wrestle with mine. Always going first can wear on a soul.
Last fall, when I was applying for a job I never thought I’d get, to spend the year traveling to each place on The Times’s 52 Places list, I got hooked watching Anthony Bourdain’s “Raw Craft” series on YouTube. It’s quieter than his food shows; he’s just highlighting master craftsmen, but his awe and appreciation of their skill is palpable. I had been trying to find someone less obvious for inspiration and just — of the hundreds of videos I watched, there was no one else who could make me care about a shoe or a sandwich the way that he did.
What would the world of travel and food reporting look like without the humanity he brought to it? Would I have had the confidence to apply for this job? Would this job even exist?
What I loved most is the gusto. Mr. Bourdain’s taste buds and legendarily steely stomach might have objected to a few of the delicacies he guzzled down on camera for our vicarious entertainment, and education, but he was, above all, a tireless ambassador for testing your comfort zone, for being all in.
He was even a fan of durian, the tropical fruit so pungent it’s banned from hotels in Thailand. “Your breath will smell as if you’d been French-kissing your dead grandmother,” he said. From him, that was a ringing endorsement. It was also the first time I had heard of durian. I’ve still never had the guts to try it.
Mr. Bourdain, for many of us viewers and admirers, didn’t just bring us to street carts in Cambodia and inside home kitchens in Mexico; he made them tactile and Technicolor. He was the friend on the road trip who jumps into the dark, dank pond first, and then ropes you in: “This is terrible! Get over here!” I could never make watching his shows a habit, though. He was too convincing. The wanderlust would hit like torture.
Trying exotic foods was never what got to me about what he did. It was the way he could wander into a village in Indonesia and spend the day having a laugh and a delicious roadside dessert with a trail of children who spoke no English.
He made travel seem like an accessible joy to anyone who could save up enough money to buy a plane ticket — which was a pretty powerful notion for someone, like me, who was answering phones for New York magazine when his first book, then first TV show came out. I’d devour his writing and grab quotes from him at parties (he was a wealth of colorful insights) and then see him out at a restaurant in the city. Before him, the only travel personality I remember knowing of was Robin Leach of “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.”
In recent years, so many have pointed out, he became an activist, speaking out on behalf of women like his partner, Asia Argento, in her allegations of rape against Harvey Weinstein, and questioning his own role as a man in ignoring women's stories. Looking back, his life's work was activism: Championing good food, showing the warmth to be found in a stranger's backyard, leading with humor through a miserable windstorm in Iceland, opening eyes.
News of Mr. Bourdain’s death of apparent suicide came extremely hard Friday morning. I was sitting in a hotel lobby in Bristol, England, after a few very tough days on this job that I owe in part to him. He had been in France, one time zone away from me, and people in the States were just beginning to hear. Sadness, for him, for his family, for his friends, some of whom I know, crashed down in overwhelming waves.
So did empathy. For four and a half months I have been on the road by myself, experiencing just a taste of Mr. Bourdain’s life of the past two decades. Traveling is a beautiful privilege but it is also incredibly lonely. You’re in new environments constantly, you feel untethered from a support system, and sometimes you even forget who your support system is. Lives move on, and often away from yours, when you're on the road and working intensely. I've found that the push-pull of seeing loved ones and having them leave, or having to leave them, can be harder than not seeing them at all. Talking on the phone with my therapist is some of the most important work I do every week.
People tell you often that you have a dream job, and you feel some obligation to keep up that fantasy for them, to not show the cracks. I can’t imagine what pain Mr. Bourdain was dealing with, but I do know what it’s like to have to go home to a hotel room in a city where I know no one and wrestle with mine. Always going first can wear on a soul.
Lucas Peterson writes the Frugal Traveler column for The New York Times.
I like to imagine that Anthony Bourdain spent at least a few hundred nights over the course of his life in a similarly nondescript hotel room like where I currently am, futzing with the electric outlet by the bed, and pecking out words on a laptop while the moon rises over Jakarta, or Buenos Aires, or Istanbul. Fighting jet lag, fighting loneliness.
He had seemingly carved out for himself the gig of a lifetime, and paved the way for a lot of us who have also been lucky and able to make careers traveling and exploring different countries and cultures. I think that’s what makes this loss particularly confusing and devastating, and why so many have been compelled to share photos taken with him, personal experiences, and stories about the times they hung out with him. For many of us, he was not just another writer or personality to admire. He was literally who we wanted to be. And if success, respect from your colleagues, getting to eat your way around the world and generally just being the coolest person on the planet doesn’t guarantee happiness, what hope do the rest of us have?
I don’t know the answer to that, nor do I understand the extent of his pain and internal battles. But I know that, as a traveler and writer, I owe him a lot. I probably owe him more than I realize. Bourdain didn’t invent food and travel journalism, but he made it so exciting. He was like the one high school history teacher you had that made you feel like learning was actually fun. His voice was raw, and it was unique. And he took that voice, hooked it up to an old amplifier he’d jury-rigged with twine and electrical tape, and blasted his message to every corner of the world.
The message was uncomplicated: Go to the place. Eat the thing. Talk to the person. Mr. Bourdain made you want to spend weeks in places you never would have thought to visit, and devour plates of food you may never have before dared to try. He made the unapproachable look appealing; the daunting look downright attractive. The first season of his CNN show, “Parts Unknown,” went to places like Myanmar, Libya, and Congo. By challenging the idea of what a travel show could be and where it could go, he accomplished more than just good TV; he helped give a voice to places and people that were absent or underrepresented in media. And that made the world a more understanding, more curious, and kinder place.
Mr. Bourdain knew better than anyone that travel and food were the two things that could hope to heal a fractured world. I always appreciated his honesty; he managed to be hopeful without sugarcoating reality. He understood there was both great beauty and great ugliness in the world and dared to present both to us. He didn’t equivocate or euphemize, and he championed and defended regular people.
Right now, I’m in Istanbul on a Friday night. When the sun sets, vendors selling mussels appear on the sidewalk in certain parts of the city. I don’t see them during daylight hours. The mussels guys tote big shallow baskets full of yellow lemons and shiny black shells that clack like mah-jongg tiles as they’re counted and stacked. And while they looked appealing, I wasn’t planning to try them. I had been warned against eating the mussels, and that seemed like pretty sound advice.
But Anthony Bourdain has just died and tonight, sadness and confusion outweigh all else. I’m going to have some street mussels even though I’m a little bit afraid of them. They might be good and they might not be, but that’s not really the point. I will eat them because I’ve never tried them before, because it’s what people do here, and because I imagine he would have done the same thing.
He had seemingly carved out for himself the gig of a lifetime, and paved the way for a lot of us who have also been lucky and able to make careers traveling and exploring different countries and cultures. I think that’s what makes this loss particularly confusing and devastating, and why so many have been compelled to share photos taken with him, personal experiences, and stories about the times they hung out with him. For many of us, he was not just another writer or personality to admire. He was literally who we wanted to be. And if success, respect from your colleagues, getting to eat your way around the world and generally just being the coolest person on the planet doesn’t guarantee happiness, what hope do the rest of us have?
I don’t know the answer to that, nor do I understand the extent of his pain and internal battles. But I know that, as a traveler and writer, I owe him a lot. I probably owe him more than I realize. Bourdain didn’t invent food and travel journalism, but he made it so exciting. He was like the one high school history teacher you had that made you feel like learning was actually fun. His voice was raw, and it was unique. And he took that voice, hooked it up to an old amplifier he’d jury-rigged with twine and electrical tape, and blasted his message to every corner of the world.
The message was uncomplicated: Go to the place. Eat the thing. Talk to the person. Mr. Bourdain made you want to spend weeks in places you never would have thought to visit, and devour plates of food you may never have before dared to try. He made the unapproachable look appealing; the daunting look downright attractive. The first season of his CNN show, “Parts Unknown,” went to places like Myanmar, Libya, and Congo. By challenging the idea of what a travel show could be and where it could go, he accomplished more than just good TV; he helped give a voice to places and people that were absent or underrepresented in media. And that made the world a more understanding, more curious, and kinder place.
Mr. Bourdain knew better than anyone that travel and food were the two things that could hope to heal a fractured world. I always appreciated his honesty; he managed to be hopeful without sugarcoating reality. He understood there was both great beauty and great ugliness in the world and dared to present both to us. He didn’t equivocate or euphemize, and he championed and defended regular people.
Right now, I’m in Istanbul on a Friday night. When the sun sets, vendors selling mussels appear on the sidewalk in certain parts of the city. I don’t see them during daylight hours. The mussels guys tote big shallow baskets full of yellow lemons and shiny black shells that clack like mah-jongg tiles as they’re counted and stacked. And while they looked appealing, I wasn’t planning to try them. I had been warned against eating the mussels, and that seemed like pretty sound advice.
But Anthony Bourdain has just died and tonight, sadness and confusion outweigh all else. I’m going to have some street mussels even though I’m a little bit afraid of them. They might be good and they might not be, but that’s not really the point. I will eat them because I’ve never tried them before, because it’s what people do here, and because I imagine he would have done the same thing.
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