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Welcome to the Travel Transformation Podcast, where we talk all things travel and all things transformation. My guest today is Meredith San Diego, also known as Bag Lady Meredith San Diego on social media. 

I met Meredith in 2018 in Thailand when we were both staying at a writers’ house on the beautiful island of Koh Samui. We worked together, we hung out together, we explored the island of Koh Samui together, as well as the neighbouring island of Koh Pha Ngan when we dog-sat for our boss. 

And, on one of the last nights, we cemented our bond – along with two other of our housemates, Sandi and Mel – when we went and got bamboo tattoos together, followed by dancing for hours in a Wild West-style saloon on the side of the road and then trying durian fruit for the first time. An interesting night.

I had such a great time with Meredith in Thailand, and it was so nice to catch up with her now and reminisce for a bit and find out all about her travels and what she's doing now. So thank you for coming on, Meredith, and let's get straight to the interview.

Hi, Meredith. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. How's it going?

Meredith San Diego

Absolutely. Hi. Thanks for having me. It's good to see you.

Jessica Grace Coleman

It is, it's good to see you. It's been several years now since I've seen you. It seems ridiculous, but I think the pandemic – the timeline of the pandemic – just makes everything crazy anyway, doesn't it?

Meredith San Diego

It does. It kind of makes everything feel like a lifetime ago. Like pre-pandemic was an entire lifetime ago.

Jessica Grace Coleman

It really does. Definitely. Okay, so for our listeners, could you give me a bit of background about you, what you do for work and where in the world you are right now?

Meredith San Diego

Yes. Well, I am Meredith. I go by Meredith San Diego – it’s my pen name, if you will. I am basically a freelance copywriter and content creator currently in Andalusia, Spain, formerly a corporate ladder climber, former beauty technician for Sephora, former Peace Corps volunteer, former solo female backpacker, former lots of things, all of which have completely constructed this very unique kind of existence that I am very humbled to call my life.

Jessica Grace Coleman

Did you say beauty technician at Sephora?

Meredith San Diego

Yeah, once upon a time.

Jessica Grace Coleman

I did not know that. Wow, that's really cool. I love Sephora. Also, I'm going to ask you about the Peace Corps. I'm not just going to gloss over that and mention the makeup thing. I do have a question about that later, but just for the listeners, so they know, we met in Koh Samui – an island in Thailand – in 2018, wasn't it?

Meredith San Diego

Yeah, I believe it was. 

Jessica Grace Coleman

The start of 2018, at a writers’ house called the Content Castle, which, sadly isn't there anymore because I thought it was such a good business model. Basically, we wrote and edited articles in exchange for room and board, and it was this beautiful big house, and they had this awesome chef called Cherry, and it was a very cool time. I was there for two months, I think. Were you there a bit longer?

Meredith San Diego

I was about three months. Yeah, I think the maximum stay was three months.

Jessica Grace Coleman

Yes, that's it. So what do you remember most about the Content Castle and what made you apply to go there?

Meredith San Diego

The Content Castle was just one of those steps along my journey that I didn't see coming. It was actually recommended to me by a very dear friend who is just one of those amazing people who likes to mention your name in rooms that you're not in. So she found this opportunity through, I guess, an advertisement online and she sent it to me, and she's like, you should apply for this. So I did. 

I actually have vivid memories of filling out the application and submitting everything from the floor of my friend's bedroom on the Big Island in Hawaii where I was crashing at the time, because during that time, I was full-time backpacking. So I did a lot of couch surfing, a lot of staying with old Peace Corps buddies and friends and stuff like that, as I trotted strategically around the world. So I applied for it and got a reply back, and the rest was history. I was super pumped to be going to Koh Samui!

Jessica Grace Coleman

Yeah, it's a beautiful place, isn't it?

Meredith San Diego

It’s enchanting.

Jessica Grace Coleman

We were in a little fishing village area, and it had a giant statue of Guan Yu, the God of war, next to the house.

Meredith San Diego

Like, right next door to the house. And they were always doing, like, drumming sessions. I mean, it was like cultural immersion to the max, and it was fantastic.

Jessica Grace Coleman

Yeah, I remember getting there at about midnight – after my flight had been cancelled, and I had to wait at the airport for, like, 12 hours. And then on a big flight and then a little flight, and I got there and I was completely out of it. And I was lugging my case along the road, and then I saw the giant Guan Yu statue. It was lit up at night, and I was like, oh, yeah, there it is. It really freaked me out. Anyway, it was a really cool time. And that was my first coliving experience, actually. And I've done a few others since, post-pandemic.

Meredith San Diego

I have to say, that was the first and only for me. Not that it was a bad experience, I'm just saying it just happened to have been my first and only. But I really liked the idea of it and we had some random adventures when we were there, some good times, and lasting memories. When I look back at it and I go over it, I’m just nonstop laughing and cannot believe that we managed to do so much and see so much and achieve so much, all in such a short amount of time. And the amount of bonding that we were all able to do over such a short amount of time is just really awesome.

Jessica Grace Coleman

That's the thing, isn't it? If you're staying with someone 24/7, you're working with them, you're socialising with them, all of that, then you do bond a lot faster than you would normally in ‘normal life’, which is what I love about it. 

But my favourite memory was our last night there – well, it was one of our last nights there – when it was the four of us, me, you, and our friends Mel and Sandi. And we went and got bamboo tattoos. We all got a tattoo. And then there was this random Wild West saloon bar on the side of the road, which we hadn't gone to.

Meredith San Diego

That's right. We stopped there on the way back. I remember that now.

Jessica Grace Coleman

And the guy who ran it, I don't know if he was German or something, he was lovely, and there weren’t many people there, so he put us in charge of the music. He gave us his laptop and said, ‘Play what you want.’ So we played all these nineties and noughties pop and R&B songs, dancing along.

Meredith San Diego

We were just wailing to ‘90s music on this radio, like having this whole bar to ourselves.

Jessica Grace Coleman

It was so fun.

Meredith San Diego

We were completely high on life. Amazing day.

Jessica Grace Coleman

Yeah. And our friend Sandi, who's a bit younger than us, didn't know some of the songs and she was just sitting there like, what is this? What?

Meredith San Diego

But thankfully she was there to capture a lot of the video and stuff because we were so enthralled we wouldn't have captured anything.

Jessica Grace Coleman

And then we ended the night off by going back and eating durian fruit for the first time.

Meredith San Diego

You guys ate it; I recorded you guys eating it because I knew better, because no, thank you.

Jessica Grace Coleman

It's definitely a thing.

Meredith San Diego

And Sandi went in hard. She took a giant piece and honked it – and she immediately regretted it. However, she chewed it and she swallowed it and that was commendable.

Meredith San Diego

For anyone who hasn't had the pleasure, the smell of durian fruit is on a whole other level. I went to a hotel straight after that, before I went back, and they had a sign on the hotel side and it said, ‘No smoking and no durians.’

Meredith San Diego

And on domestic flights – or some international flights, also – you will see that they will say, no durian on board. Like, do not eat durian on the plane or anything like that. This pup… sorry. Yes, but it’s because it stinks so badly. Like, it literally stinks up everything.

Jessica Grace Coleman

Yeah, it's a lot. I think we should mention that you've got a puppy there, because we came on the Zoom, and the first thing I saw was this cute little puppy that you've fostered or adopted… she had been abandoned, and oh my God, I can't get enough. She's so cute.

Meredith San Diego

She's adorable. Look at these ears. These ears are the winners. Look at that.

Jessica Grace Coleman

What's her name again?

Meredith San Diego

Nenita. It means, like, little girl. So Nenita, my little tiny girl.

Jessica Grace Coleman

Cute. I'm easily distracted by dogs, as anyone who knows me will know.

Meredith San Diego

Luckily, she was not there with us in the saloon.

Jessica Grace Coleman

Yeah, beach dogs as well – that was a big part of our life on Koh Samui.

Meredith San Diego

Big thing. Yeah. We were easily distracted by beach dogs. I remember we would take off running down the beach to record them. I also remember us – or me – getting terrified by snakes on the side of the road and clinging to you like some sort of, I don't know, baby marsupial to its mom.

Jessica Grace Coleman

Well, I don't know if we remember this differently, but I remember walking along the road with you, a snake appearing, you jumping out of your skin, jumping behind me, and essentially pushing me in front of you.

Meredith San Diego

Oh, is that what happened? 

Jessica Grace Coleman

It would have got me first.

Meredith San Diego

Well, I remembered it as if I was trying to get some sort of bear hug. Whether I was trying to get that bear hug from climbing behind you, I don't know. But it's also quite possible I pushed you towards the danger.

Jessica Grace Coleman

Yeah. And I think this was on our second day as well. We'd walked along to get a drink, we came back, and then you were like, oh no!

Meredith San Diego

I have a little crazy, irrational fear of snakes. So I don't doubt that I completely jumped out of my skin.

Jessica Grace Coleman

To be fair, it's not a very irrational fear. It's understandable. So that's fine.

Meredith San Diego

Yes. And I remember Gecko Jesus, which was a gecko that lived inside the metal rollers in front of the main doors. And I, for the first few nights, thought Gecko Jesus was a giant snake that was living in it because it was the shape of his head, remember the way he looked? And he only poked his head down, and it was super straight, like shaped like a snake snout. And I thought he was one for the longest time, but he was a friendly little gecko. And he had his little wife. They were having their life in there.

Jessica Grace Coleman

Yes. We saw his little feet one night and we were like, oh my God, it's a gecko. And then… he was absolutely huge, wasn't he? Well, I think he was.

Meredith San Diego

He was huge.

Jessica Grace Coleman

And then we saw he had a friend, and we were like, oh, it's Gecko Mary.

Meredith San Diego

I still have my little gecko Jesus thing that we bought in the market on our few last nights together. I still have him on my work desk.

Jessica Grace Coleman

Me, too. Yeah, we got a little beanbag Gecko Jesus. I think Mel's got one, too.

Meredith San Diego

Yeah. Good times, I'm telling you.

Jessica Grace Coleman

Right, so for people who might not know – because it's obviously not a big thing in the UK, as far as I'm aware – what is the Peace Corps? What do you actually do? What does it involve?

Meredith San Diego

Yeah, so the US Peace Corps is a branch of the US federal government. So, in a lot of ways, it kind of operates like the military, except it's not recognised as one. And that's because there's no weaponry involved. So you don't need to have any military or combat training of any sort. You basically just come representing your own background, whatever that might be. Mine was business and volunteering in grant work. Other people's are medical, some people that are agricultural… it just depends. But the Peace Corps itself covers about nine different branches. And if you have a strong background in that, in addition to a strong background in volunteering, you are welcome to apply for the Peace Corps. 

I know that it's a pretty quote-unquote elite kind of situation because they only accept – at the time that I applied – it was like one in four applications that they got. So it was a very long process. It was about a year and a half-long interviewing process. You have to go through a medical clearance, psych clearances, all of these things, before they bottle you up and ship you across the world to a very developing nation where there's probably no English spoken at all. And you are very much on your own to do a lot of stuff. So it's like a strong mental game and they need to make sure people are up for that. 

But, nonetheless, it's amazing. The Peace Corps itself is only in countries that it's invited to. So the point of it is to be there to help enrich the people with the knowledge that we have as Americans and the access to different opportunities for knowledge – and software, even – that we have as Western countries… I want to say developed nations… but anyway, also for us as foreigners to be impacted by that foreign culture and to be able to learn and take away from it and then share that culture back in our own culture by way of volunteering. 

So it's not something that you get paid a lot of money for. In fact, you get paid the average or just under average of what the local people make on a monthly basis. So from my experience in Macedonia, I was being paid just under about $200 per month for being there. So it really is a volunteering kind of mentality and you really do need to be there out of the kindness of and the willingness to want to give back, because you're asked a lot of yourself. It's a 24/7 gig and that's why you get 25 paid days off for being a part of it because you literally are on all the time. But it was an incredible, incredible experience for me.

Jessica Grace Coleman

So you went to Macedonia? How long were you there for?

Meredith San Diego

I was there just about three years. A significant amount of time. I mean, a blitz on the timeline of life, but yeah, significant.

Jessica Grace Coleman

So what would a normal day be like? What kind of things were you doing day to day then, as part of your volunteering?

Meredith San Diego

Well, I mean, I was working with a local NGO, which is a non-government organisation. And my specific focus was on trying to find them grants that would help fund projects to keep the youth in my village because flight was a really big issue. My village was high up in the mountains, just about as far east as you can go before you run into Bulgaria. And then, if you just go a couple of hours north, you would hit Serbia. So we were in the Osogovo Mountain range, and there were maybe about 2800 people total in that village, which was insane enough as it is for me, going from San Diego, which has like 4.4 million, I think, in the county, to a village of just 2800 folks. It was insane, but awesome. 

Anyway, what was I saying? So I worked with the NGO on the day-to-day because kids would want to leave, to go to the bigger city to go to school or to find work to eventually leave the country for better opportunities. And so we were looking for things that would help enable their artistic sides in music and drawing and photography and these kinds of things. Also in ways to help them find enlightenment and empowerment in the traditional art forms like weaving and salt making and the way that they make bread, and the different kind of agricultural concepts that they have – to keep those alive as well, because we felt that those were really important. So that's the kind of stuff that I focused on. 

Now, in Macedonia, a workday is not nearly the same as what you would think a normal workday is. So we might start out with coming into the office, everyone's getting in, we have the rounds of coffee. I don't drink coffee, so I usually defaulted to making it because I got tired of explaining to people I don't drink coffee. It's just not something I like; I prefer tea. But anyway, so we would do a round of coffee, then we’d crack into the day. And then, maybe after a couple of hours of that, people would just stop in. And they were in from town, they wanted to come say hi. They had a class there once or something like that. And then that turns into a whole thing where we're going downstairs to the pizza place to have lunch, which turns into lunch and drinks and business conversation, which then turns into, everybody should go home a little bit early for a nap. And then this just turns into, like, nobody worry about coming back for the rest of the day; we'll pick this up tomorrow. So the work ethic was very different, but we still managed to get plenty of good things done and make some really good impact.

Jessica Grace Coleman

That sounds like a pretty good work day to me, especially the nap.

Meredith San Diego

I'm not going to complain. From the very beginning of my Peace Corps experience, during our pre-service training, they kept asking you, what do you feel like is going to be your biggest setback, your biggest challenge? And I always said my efficiency. Because as an American-born person who likes to get things done like this, I knew going into a culture where things were much slower than that was going to kill me. And it did. It was very difficult for me to cope and to try to not be like, why don't we not do lunch for three hours today and then maybe focus on the eight things that we procrastinated on from before? You know what I mean? It took a lot for me to not do that, but that's not what I was there for. I was there to also integrate and get to know the people and their culture and the way that they work. I guess it was all a part of that. And building relationships and that kind of stuff. So when in Macedonia you have rakia with lunch, that's just what you do.

Jessica Grace Coleman

Nice. Okay, so you're from San Diego, as you mentioned. When did you start full-on travelling and why did you start travelling? Because you've been travelling… I know you’ve sort of settled down a bit now… but when I met you, you'd been on the road, constantly moving, for a while. So could you talk a little bit about that?

Meredith San Diego

Yeah, I've been travelling my whole life, really. Living so close to Mexico, and my grandparents were quasi missionaries and we spent a lot of time donating – again, a large volunteering background. Why I did the Peace Corps… so we spent a lot of time in Tijuana and Ensenada with different families. So I was in and out of Mexico very often as a child, but I think my first time overseas to Europe was with my father for a school trip when I was in middle school, like 8th grade or something like that. But I always had a passion for travelling, was always obsessed with the encyclopaedia, loved Carmen San Diego, which is what was the motivation for my own travel blog, name of Meredith San Diego, and ‘Where in the world?’ But it wasn't until I joined the Peace Corps, which I used as a really big stepping stone for my travels, that I really got to dive into it hardcore. 

Because, as I said, we had 25 paid days off, and living so close to so many different countries… I could just hop on a bus for two or three hours and be in another amazing country. It was easy to travel. So in the Peace Corps alone, I saw ten countries, mostly on my own, as a solo traveller. 

And after some ridiculous trauma and unexpected tragedies in my life that played out during the Peace Corps, I didn't want to go back to the nine-to-five and the hustle and bustle of the West, of the American life that I was conditioned to understand as successful or to rate myself as successful. Instead, I wanted to spend time healing my heart, which was in a thousand different pieces from the loss that I experienced, which, for those who don't know, was my mother, who was my adventure partner and best friend and life coach and all of those things. Like someone I spoke to a minimum of four to five times per day. She took ill very suddenly and lost her life as a result of the illness while I was in the Peace Corps. 

So, as a result of that, home was no longer really home for me on an emotional level. So I wanted to just go. So I did. I just started travelling. I started planning where I wanted to go, the places I knew I always wanted to see, the places I knew my mother and I wanted to go to together. And I just went and I started travelling and writing about it and experiencing so many different challenges and empowering and enlightening moments as a solo female traveller.

Jessica Grace Coleman

That's so awesome. And I remember hearing about your travels when I met you and I was so impressed. But I was also really impressed about your backpack, because I cannot travel light, and here I am with a giant suitcase and you've been on the road for years and you’ve just got your backpack. And I'm like, how do you do it?

Meredith San Diego

Well, I mean, to be fair, Bee – which is what I call my backpack – is not tiny. She's like a 60-litre pack and I got really good at stuffing her really well. But it's a different kind of lifestyle, when buying a new piece of clothing meant leaving another piece of clothing because there's no space for something else. So it was very different and really set me on my whole quest of minimalism and a more sustainable approach to life just in general.

Jessica Grace Coleman

Yeah. And you said that San Diego doesn't really feel like home as such anymore, but do you ever get homesick for the area or the States or any of your old life? Do you feel homesick at all?

Meredith San Diego

Listen, let me tell you, I am lamenting when I actually go home because the amount of money that I'm going to spend on the food that I miss from my hometown alone is going to be a small fortune. So, I mean, I thoroughly miss my authentic Mexican food. I miss fresh ceviche, like taking a weekend drive to Ensenada just to get some fresh ceviche. I miss that and the ease of being able to do that because of the location in which I lived. And I don't really miss people so much because social media does a really great way of allowing everybody to stay in touch. 

That's not to say that it doesn't get lonely doing what I do, because you do see everybody else's life going on, and then you have your life in the way it's going on, and the two never really kind of meet up or match, and you can't really explain to them what your everyday, non-mundane kind of life is like. And vice versa, I guess. No, I don't really get too homesick for it. It's been almost nine years now since I left San Diego, so maybe in the first two to three years, yes. But now, being so far gone from it and having lost so much from there and having no kind of links to the city much anymore, not really.

Jessica Grace Coleman

So have you been back in those nine years?

Meredith San Diego

Yeah, I was back just before I moved to Spain to get everything to relocate myself here. So that was just before the pandemic in 2019, in the fall. Yeah, I got to Spain in September of 2019, so just around then.

Jessica Grace Coleman

Okay, so you're in Spain now. Did you mean to stay in Spain or did you stay longer because of the pandemic? What was the story?

Meredith San Diego

Well, I came to Spain because I was selected for co-teaching a program that they had, for co-teaching English. And I knew that that would be a really great means to an end for me to have some stability and I could be still in a place and be building up my blog and doing the things I really wanted to be doing in the back end. So I knew that I was going to stay and be teaching as long as I could. 

I didn't know for sure if I would stay in Spain. I wanted to, but I also know my nomadic heart and so I didn't want to make any promises. Even now, still, as I'm going for a more permanent residency here just for the legal purposes of everything, I still don't know if I will stay in Spain forever. But I will probably definitely invest in a property here eventually. But yeah, I'll be on the go as long as I can. As long as my body allows me to do it, I want to.

Jessica Grace Coleman

Yeah, I was thinking about this when you said that you'd been in Spain for a while. I was like, oh, I wonder if she's got itchy feet to go somewhere else now?

Meredith San Diego

Sometimes, but this place is so beautiful and, honestly, having to be grounded for the pandemic here and having the opportunity to slow travel in Andalusia in the capacity that I have has just made me fall in love with it that much more. It's so stunning in this country and there's so much rich culture and history and I love all of that about travelling in general. So when I have it all in the front yard, it's kind of hard to complain.

Jessica Grace Coleman

Yeah, true. Do you have a community there? Are there other expats there? How have you found it, making friends and that kind of thing?

Meredith San Diego

Yeah, there are tons of expats in Spain, and now that they're getting ready to launch the digital nomadic visa which will probably go live by March, there's only going to be more of that. Personally, I'm watching it from a different set of eyes and how it's impacting the locals here, because I do have a lot of local friends and watching them being priced out of their apartments or the neighbourhoods that they grew up in forever… that kind of stuff is hard when you are woke from that capacity. 

And it's also shameful, like knowing like, shit, am I part of the problem or what? But yeah, there are plenty of expats that are around here and there are plenty of opportunities to get to know some locals, because lots of Spanish people here love being able to practise their English with native English speakers, so there are tons of opportunities for language exchanges.

Jessica Grace Coleman

Nice. And could you already speak Spanish?

Meredith San Diego

Yeah, because I grew up in San Diego, but Mexican Spanish is much different than Spanish Spanish, and then, when you are moving around within Spain, the dialects are different, so the Andalusian dialect is way different than the Canarian dialect, which is way different than Catalonian dialect, which is way different than Basque.

Jessica Grace Coleman

Definitely, yeah. I went to the Basque Country last year and I’m hoping to again this year, and there are so many X's and T's.

Meredith San Diego

I've never been, but I want to go so badly. It just has never worked out. And I have a dear friend that lives up there and speaks the language and I just am kicking myself, but I still haven't gotten up there.

Jessica Grace Coleman

Oh, nice. Yeah, it was beautiful, but when I went, the first half of the time I went, the weather was exactly like the weather I’d just left in England, and I was like, oh, but I'm in Spain. But then it got really sunny and nice. Beautiful. 

Okay, so you mentioned that you work as a freelance copywriter and content creator. So what do you actually do and how did you get started with this?

Meredith San Diego

That's a loaded question. I do a lot of different things, as content creators would be able to attest to. I do a lot of different things from blog writing, to web copy creating, to sales marketing messages to landing pages. That's what copywriters do. We do a little bit of everything when it comes to that. I also do a little bit of social media management and copy creation for some clientele. 

What else do I do? Oh, video editing work sometimes as well, or photo editing. I also do graphic creation that I do on Canva. I have a really sick pro membership there. And you have to utilise that platform a lot, so I'm very familiar with it, but yes, I do a little bit of this, a little bit of that, and I’m currently working with a freelancing hub that works as a liaison between me and the market and finds people that want to work with me. That's been really great and has given me a little bit more flexibility. 

But my deal with myself when I started doing this all was that I was only going to be working part-time, and thankfully I've been able to adhere to that. And that was a lot of the reason as well for wanting to stay in Spain and stay abroad because it is just much more cost-effective for me to be able to do that work part-time and still be able to save money to travel.

Jessica Grace Coleman

Nice. So you do that and then you do the teaching. Is the teaching in person or online?

Meredith San Diego

The teaching was in person, yes, but I'm no longer teaching at this time.

Jessica Grace Coleman

Right, okay, cool. Yeah, I remember… were you doing some teaching in Thailand when I was there?

Meredith San Diego

I remember doing some online. Yeah, I was teaching the Chinese kids online with that, which is a really great way for digital nomads… Actually, I take that back. I forgot that China changed the rules and they fired almost all of the Western-speaking teachers, so never mind on that. But anyway, I was working online and teaching Chinese kids online while living in Thailand, because doing that, I think I was making like 20 or $22 an hour. So that's pretty good money when you're in Thailand. Yeah, that money goes so far. Do you remember how much we could just blow in there in five minutes?

Jessica Grace Coleman

I remember the 7-11. I remember the wine coolers that we would buy. The Spy wine coolers were so cheap and really tasty. And also there was a cafe bar, like a couple of doors down from the house that was run by this guy from Manchester, of all places.

Meredith San Diego

Yeah. And they had your regular, like, beans and mash. They had all your favourites. I remember that.

Jessica Grace Coleman

They had mince pies. Mince pies in Thailand! And yeah, he had 89-baht cocktails, which we definitely made the most of.

Meredith San Diego

Which is why we really found that place. The mince pies came later. That was a discovery after the fact; we went because of the price of the happy hour.

Jessica Grace Coleman

Yeah. And he also had a cute dog called Jack Daniels, I remember.

Meredith San Diego

You have a better memory than I do when it comes to those details. Of course, with the dog, you would remember.

Jessica Grace Coleman

Yeah, if it's dog related, I will remember. Otherwise, my memory is not so great. Okay, so this is called The Travel Transformation Podcast, obviously, so I ask all my guests… I mean, we've already talked about it a bit, but how has travel transformed you personally, and how do you think it can transform people generally?

Meredith San Diego

Man, okay, this is not a flex. I'm just going to say I personally have four different college degrees, and I feel like I have learned more about life and people from travelling. It will absolutely bring you face to face with yourself, and that's the good, bad, and the ugly. And it also just shows you for real – for solo female travellers specifically – it will show you just how strong you are and that that is way stronger than you thought you were, and you're far more capable of doing things than you ever thought that you were. 

So, from that standpoint, I recommend travel for everyone, but especially for solo females. Especially for females who want to travel, who are waiting for their friends to be able to go, or they're waiting for this, or whatever the excuse is. I just want them to pick up their beans and get the ganache and just go. They will thank themselves – and me – much later when they do it because it will change the way that they see the whole world. I mean, you can agree; you've travelled on your own.

Jessica Grace Coleman

Yeah, it changes the way you see the world and it changes the way you see yourself – and yourself in relation to the world – and so many other things. And yeah, it's boosted my confidence no end, and it shows you how capable you can be, whereas if you don't even try, then you're never going to know.

Meredith San Diego

That’s it – it pushes that comfort zone so, so far. And, for me, going through the grief of all of it, and – unbeknownst to me then, but in hindsight now – having a complete identity crisis, bot being the person who I thought I needed to be for my family, et cetera, et cetera, during that time, but really being able to just rebrand and rewrite myself the way that I wanted to be. Spring boarding that off of travel, and was like the muse for my healing, you know what I mean? So it's really incredible what you can do with travel and how it can influence you and how you influence others just by doing it. It's so important to visibility.

Jessica Grace Coleman

Definitely, there's a huge ripple effect; even if you just go on a small trip and do something outside your comfort zone and someone else sees you doing that, then definitely. So we just kind of mentioned that, but in your content, you talk a lot about the power of travel as well as the power of being visible as a black solo female traveller. So can you tell me more about this?

Meredith San Diego

Yeah, I have come full circle with my own blackness through travel. I mean, I grew up in San Diego, in the suburbs, as a token. If people don't know what that means, that means you're typically the only black person in the room or in the classroom of students, et cetera, et cetera. So I didn't exactly grow up in the stereotypical African American, black American ideal that people will have based on what media shows them in this day and age. So my parents were stable parents. They had a plan, they had kids on purpose, you know what I mean? Like I had a kind of relatively stable introduction to life and from that regard, growing up as a token and growing up in a household that was making sure that we understood what our black history was, but was never really around me… when I got the opportunity to travel, and especially to travel to some more countries that were influenced by African history, it was so moving for me. 

I remember being in Cuba and going down to the area that's supported by artists, and also an area that supports and educates the world about the sanctuary of faith and how that came about and the history of it. And they have live performances of samba and rumba and all this stuff there on certain days. And that was one of the days that I happened to be there. And, I tell you, I had never felt more close to Africa in my life. And I have been on the African continent in Egypt and Morocco, but Northern Africa is quite different from sub-Saharan Africa. But yeah, it was just so enlightening for that. And I just felt the power from within bubbling outward of how important it is that I'm doing what I'm doing and how important it is that I share this story. 

Because I can't tell you how many times, when I talk to other people, they're like, I hardly see or I wish I saw more people of colour travelling like you, solo like this. And I'm like, I know tons. There are tons of us. There's a whole community. And this is even why it's more important now more than ever for that visibility to stay prevalent, because people need to know that we are out there and we are travelling. And this is something that's common for us to do, as well as brown and indigenous people of colour.

Jessica Grace Coleman

Yeah, it's something that's not only possible, but like you say, loads of them are doing it. People just might not be aware of it.

Meredith San Diego

Exactly.

Jessica Grace Coleman

And do you offer a service for solo female travellers, strategic solo travelling?

Meredith San Diego

I do – I do strategic consultations. Why are they strategic, you say? Because travel sometimes needs to be that way, especially as a solo female. So a lot of people just don't understand that or understand how strategy can work into basic travel plans. So I like to do consultations – I’m not a travel agent – with people about what they can expect, or little tips and hacks that they probably would have never even thought about or knew existed, that just kind of fall out of my mouth normally because I have travelled so extensively. 

And it's also to get down to the bottom of what's deterring them really from travelling and how we can address that so they can stop having it as an excuse and just get out there and go. So I do those on a 30-minute or a 60-minute trial, and I do free 15-minute introductory ones. So if anybody's interested in doing just a 15-minute intro to just talk about what it is they might be feeling… maybe that 15 minutes is all that they need, who knows? But I'm here to talk to you and I'm here to talk travel, and I'm here to motivate travel.

Jessica Grace Coleman

Nice. So if anyone listening wants to do that, where do they need to go to get the consultation?

Meredith San Diego

You can find all the information on my website, which is www.bagladymeredithsandiego.com. Or you can find that link, that customary link on my Instagram page, which is @baglady.meredith.sandiego. But otherwise, you can find me on almost all of the social media platforms that are out there, except Snapchat. But you can catch me on Twitter, you can catch me on YouTube – I don't really post much anymore, but I'm on there. You can see great videos that I've taken of my travels through South America and some of my travels through Thailand. Some of those really funny videos that we've taken, like when I was on the motorbike and passed the house and had to back the motorbike up slowly down the road. So there are some of those really great videos that you can catch on YouTube. Yeah, I'm also on TikTok nowadays as well. Facebook, the list.

Jessica Grace Coleman

The whole list, yeah. And we'll put those in the show notes as well, so you guys can easily get to those.

Meredith San Diego

Perfect.

Jessica Grace Coleman

So, before this, I asked you about your three favourite places you've travelled to, which I know is so hard to answer, but you said Thailand, New Zealand, and Iceland. And all of those are near the top of my list as well. 

Meredith San Diego

Do you sense a trend there? Iceland, Thailand, New Zealand…

Jessica Grace Coleman

Why those three? What's so special about these countries?

Meredith San Diego

Well, first of all, I love islands, so I'll put that out there. And I know Thailand is not an island, but most of the time that I spent in Thailand was on an island. Thailand is the country that I have been back to the most as a traveller who was limited when I could travel, especially when I was teaching; I could only travel around holiday breaks. So I purposely would be wanting to travel to a new destination instead of repeating going to other places. So I don't typically repeat destinations. However, Thailand I have been to four different times and I lived there for almost a year. So that one definitely is high on my list for that. 

Iceland was the trip that I gave myself as a birthday gift for my 40th birthday last year in January. And that was just mind-blowing. It had been a destination that was on my new top three after having travelled to all the places that I have so far, and that top three is Iceland, Japan, and South Africa. So I got Iceland off of the radar and I'm hoping to get myself to South Africa sometime during the summer, which would just leave Japan for me to be able to tackle next. 

But New Zealand was just so full of adventure, I can't even begin to say. And it was so enriching and full of all this beautiful nature that was untouched by man, and I just really fell in love with that entire culture and the history of the Māori people. So that's why those are my top three.

Jessica Grace Coleman

Yeah, I love all of them as well. And Japan is also on my list of places I really want to go to. Do you have any countries or places still left on your travel bucket list? You've just mentioned Japan and South Africa. Is there anywhere else you'd like to go?

Meredith San Diego

Yeah, Japan, South Africa. I really want to do just a lot of sub-Saharan Africa. That's really what I want to put my focus on. But there are still a lot of European countries that I feel half embarrassed, having been living on the European continent for almost six years, that I haven't been to, like Germany and Prague. So I would like to kind of knock some of those out as well while I'm still here, but I'm grounded until this immigration case is sorted – internationally anyway. But I can still slow travel through Spain as much as I want, which is great because I love overland travel and it's a really beautiful way to see this country.

Jessica Grace Coleman

Yeah, definitely. Do you have a country number that you know you've been to?

Meredith San Diego

Yeah, I've been to 58.

Jessica Grace Coleman

Wow, that's amazing.

Meredith San Diego

Austria last year was my 58th passport stamp in life, and I think maybe about 40 of those plus were done solo.

Jessica Grace Coleman

Wow, that is an impressive count, especially the solo ones. Oh, and happy birthday for this week, by the way – I know your birthday is this week. Are you doing anything special?

Meredith San Diego

Probably just working, honestly. It's on a Thursday, so I mean, what can you do? But we'll see. I take really great care of myself, so I'll definitely be doing self-care things that I love doing, but as far as, like, big celebrations or going out, probably not much. I like having a little pamper evening, just chilling out. The best birthday gift for me is having nothing to do.

Jessica Grace Coleman

Yeah, totally agree with that. Okay, so is there anything else you want to mention or talk about before we go? Anything else you want to promote?

Meredith San Diego

Other than, I mean, I would love to ask you questions too, but I imagine that's not really what this is about. However, I do think it's really awesome that you have circled back around to doing travel because I remember you discussing it as something that you wanted to do when we first met back then, something you wanted to transition into. So I just want to give you your kudos and salutes for making that happen in your own life. And I always want to support women who want to be multifaceted and go chase their dreams. So congratulations to you on that.

Jessica Grace Coleman

Thank you! Yeah, it's taken me a while and, you know, a bit of a break with the pandemic, but I got there eventually, so that’s all that matters.

Meredith San Diego

That's the main thing, all that matters. And I think that's one of the things I like telling people as well. It's like, it's never too late. 

Jessica Grace Coleman

Never. We're in our thirties and forties, but even if you're in your sixties or seventies, so many people are doing a similar lifestyle to what we're doing now, and travelling or digital nomadding or van lifeing… there are so many different ways of doing it now. And I think it's never too late to start going after your dreams.

Meredith San Diego

It's so true. It's so true. I think the oldest solo female traveller I've met was, like, 77 years old, and I was just like, man, I hope I can still do it that age. How amazing is that?

Jessica Grace Coleman

Yeah, that is incredible! Well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. So nice to see you and actually talk to you. It's been so long.

Meredith San Diego

Yes, thanks for having me. It's so good to see you. Also, feel free to reach out. We can chat even without a podcast if you want.

Jessica Grace Coleman

Yeah, that'd be awesome. And yeah, like I said, I'll put all your links in the show notes, so thank you very much – and, until next time, I'll catch you on the flip side!

Meredith San Diego

Bye bye. 

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