The first man to visit every country on earth – plus outer space – has shared some of his best travel tips.
Jim Kitchen, a 57-year-old entrepreneur, has been to all 193 UN-recognised nations and was part of the civilian crew on Blue Origin’s space rocket (the one Pete Davidson was originally supposed to fly on).
The founder of group tour company SBT estimates he has travelled between seven and 10 million air miles in his lifetime.
So what has all that globetrotting taught him? Kitchen shared his top travel tips with Bloomberg.
Leave your wedding ring at home
If you have means, “travelling through the developing world is not the time to express that,” said Kitchen. “It’s the time to fit in and lay low. I don’t wear my wedding ring, either, because I don’t want people to know that I’m married, because they could kidnap me and call my wife and say, ‘Hey, we’ve got your husband,’ and she would probably pay the ransom.”
Forget restaurants with views
Kitchen says: “In my 30-plus years of travelling, I’ve experienced that restaurants offering spectacular views of the city or sunsets often have terrible food.”
Keep a spare credit card hidden
“I always put one credit card in the bottom of a pair of tennis shoes, so that if all hell breaks loose – like I’m robbed and everything’s taken – if they don’t take my shoes, I’m probably OK,” he advises.
Take a sheet
Kitchen says he finds polyester too itchy to sleep on, and so he always takes a sheet from home on his travels.
“I cut a king size in half, and I pull it over me, and wrap myself into the sheet,” he says. “I don’t sleep that much when I travel, so being able to get five or six hours is worth [the extra baggage] weight.”
Wear a nappy to space
Real-life astronaut, Mike Good, gave Kitchen the following less-than-glamorous tip for travelling to space: “wear a male adult wetness protector – I don’t want to call it a diaper.”
Once you’re loaded into the capsule, the departure might be delayed and there’s no way of nipping out again to use the facilities.
“The last thing you want to be concerned about is the bathroom; it’s a short enough flight, and you want to enjoy every second of it, right?
“Mike said: ‘Hey, just do the full astronaut experience, man. Just don’t worry about that.’ And so I kind of embraced it. The reality is I didn’t have to use it, but I just wanted to take that risk off the table.”
