Today we’d like to introduce you to Chris Joondeph.
Hi Chris, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
My first experience ever traveling on my own was a trip to Ecuador while in college. I was on my way to study abroad in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and I stopped to visit a college classmate in Quito. It was an eye-opening experience to see how a close friend lives, meet her family, and experience the local culture in an immersive way in a totally different country for my first time ever. Ever since then, I was hooked on travel.
My first job after college was as an English teacher in Thailand. While there, I was doing a lot of traveling by motorbike throughout Northern Thailand. I made a major effort to learn Thai language and found myself visiting homestays, eating local foods, and really experiencing the culture. This was how I started my first iteration of “Authentic Traveling” in 2013 as a travel blog detailing my trips throughout rural Thailand.
The blog was never big, but it helped me really define my travel style, which is all about experiencing a country as a local would. I would post photos and videos to my Instagram of my travels to nearly 160 countries before I started to make a real pivot into video in 2022. Starting that year, my new year’s resolution was to start making travel videos just documenting my experience from my perspective. The original videos were horrible, and I experienced little growth but learned a lot about editing. Eventually, I started posting these to TikTok and that’s when things really started to grow.
TikTok is a platform where anyone can become a celebrity overnight and I was easily able to find an audience first sharing my trip to Iraq and then future trips to Nigeria, Tajikistan, and Congo. With more reps, the videos and storytelling got better and eventually, we’re here now with nearly 1 million followers across TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram.
One of my most popular video types is when I try foods from around the world. Whenever I would travel to a country, I used to look up the most common dishes and relentlessly try to track them all down and try each one. All I am doing now is filming what I have always been doing.
Another common theme is sarcastically mocking or making fun of all the bad travel advice I get. Someone once told me I was suicidal for taking a taxi from Lagos airport to a hotel in the city. After traveling there, I found this statement to be so absurd that I made a video in Lagos sarcastically saying how I was “here and I’m not dead or dying”. This really blew up and was one of the few videos that really gave my Instagram account a lot of momentum. I hear so many bad things about traveling to certain countries, about how dangerous they are, and I always end up going and having a wonderful time and meeting amazing people.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
I’m a pretty positive person so it really has been a smooth road at least from my perspective. Of course, social media always has its challenges with negative comments, burnout, and algorithm changes, but despite all the negativity online from a small amount of people, it’s easy to forget the enormous amount of supporters you have. I try and remind myself of this regularly and it keeps me motivated.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I work in the corporate world. I have an MBA from the University of North Carolina and a Master in International Affairs and Economics from Johns Hopkins SAIS. I am fortunate enough to have a job that gives me flexibility on where I work and this allows me to travel while still doing a job and working for a company that I really enjoy being at.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/authentic_traveling/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/authentictraveling.org
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/authentictrave
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/authentictraveling
- Other: https://tiktok.com/@authentic_traveling
