- Check it out, guys.
It's Trevor James.
We are in Guangzhou, China.
We're gonna do a Q and A video today,
and we're hanging out at my favorite little jiaoziguan.
Best dumplings in Guangzhou that I've found.
We're gonna enjoy some dumplings and do a Q and A.
We're gonna talk about how we afford to travel,
tons of your common questions,
and it's gonna be really good.
Let's try it out.
(upbeat music)
I just posted on YouTube, asking you guys for questions
for me to create a video for, and I have 646 comments here.
Thank you so much for giving me
all of these questions that I can answer for you.
The top question is, when are you and Ting getting married?
43 up-votes on here.
And Ting and I are planning on getting married
in probably, what do you think, Ting?
- I don't know. We don't have it planned
- [Trevor] A year?
Yeah, probably about a year.
Yeah, we are just loving being together,
and creating this content together.
Blacky Herdez says, "How many people travel with you?
"And have you ever been mugged or anything like that?"
It's just Ting and I when we travel, no one else.
Sometimes we meet with locals behind the scenes
to make some friends and ask questions
about which local foods to try,
but 99% of the time, it's Ting and I.
We don't have a huge crew.
Ting's the one filming, she's got the camera.
I carry a back up camera in case I need to shoot anything,
but it's just Ting and I,
and I think that's why we can create this content,
because it's really low-key, we can just walk in.
We ask permission, that's another question
we get all the time.
Even right now, before the jiaozi,
before we started rolling with jiaozi,
we walked up and we said,
"Can we please shoot your jiaozi?
"We would love to share your jiaozi with the world."
And 99% of people are just happy to be able to do that,
and if they say no, it's completely fine.
We're not looking to pressure anyone to come on camera.
Joseph Mendoza says, "When recording have you
"or any of your crew gotten sick or food poisoning?"
So the crew is just Ting and myself.
My fiancee, Ting,
and myself.
- [Trevor] Have you ever gotten sick?
- Once in Delhi.
- [Trevor] Once in Delhi.
- [Ting] That's it.
- [Trevor] That's it.
And myself, I've been sick a few times actually.
A couple times in India, a few times in China.
It happens but usually it's just from water.
Street food, 99% of the time, is fine.
Like, look at this,
they're boiling the jiaozi in hot, boiling water.
It's gonna kill any germs.
So my advice to anybody going on a big trip for street food
is to just stick to stuff that's really hot
and that's busy with a big line up.
If you have anything with ice in it,
or water from the tap or anything that uses
local water, stay away.
So, Ekansh Priyam says
"Did you find any difficulties while traveling
in a new country?
If yes, what were the difficulties?
Language, ambiance, culture or budget.
Oh xiexie, oh thai bongla.
Awesome. More jiaozi here.
This is the perfect setting to do a Q and A.
Look at this guys.
Oh, womp.
Corn and carrot jiaozi.
So the language is...
I practice a bit before we go
and I think a part of the Food Ranger philosophy
that I'm trying to share with you guys
is that you don't have to study for years
or practice for years to get by with local people
when you're ordering street food
or when you're hanging out.
Just do your best.
I think the number one thing
is to not be afraid to make mistakes.
If you make mistakes you learn.
And as you see in a lot of my previous videos
they are full of me making language mistakes
and that to me is the best situation to put yourself in.
Because when you make mistakes people correct you.
You guys correct me, the vendors correct me.
And that's how you learn a new language
so just don't be afraid to make a fool of yourself,
make mistakes and practice.
And that way you can learn a new language.
That's the fun of traveling.
Going in somewhere with an open mind
and doing your best, interact, and have fun.
And sometimes it will be awkward, really.
If you go up to people and try to chat with them
with only a few phrases of their language
it might be a little difficult and you can
probably see that in some of the videos.
I'm walking up to people trying to speak
it might be a little awkward.
But that really is what I'm trying to show you guys.
Is that, you just have to not be afraid and have fun
and that can really elevate the whole travel experience.
So another question was,
"Where do you see yourself three years from now?"
Myself and Ting, we want to keep traveling
That was always my dream,
to keep traveling and make an adventure out of life.
So that's what we're going to keep doing.
Keep traveling, keep creating content for you.
It's a dream. I can't believe we're able to do this.
And it's all because of you guys watching these videos.
Mar Rodriguez says,
"When do you rest? The traveling, shooting,
and film editing must be draining."
And the truth is, it is a lot of work to create these.
But I wouldn't trade it for anything.
It is so fun.
The people we get to meet everywhere we go are so friendly
and the food is delicious.
That being said,
every piece of content we put on YouTube
takes days to create.
A full food tour where we have six foods
it actually sometimes takes more than one day
because we can't fit it all in
and it takes more than one day to edit.
So every time you see a 20, 25 minute piece of content
for us it's been one or two days of shooting
and one or two days of editing.
Where I'm in the room clicking and cutting
and you know, putting B roll, we have two cameras.
So I always get the close ups,
Ting always gets the wider shots.
And I cut it all together and make a story for you guys.
Try to show you how friendly the world is
and how amazing the food is.
To be honest it can get draining.
Sometimes I'm exhausted.
And for me the number one,
It's kinda funny,
but my number one goal for 2018 is to stay hungry.
So to do that I have to exercise and be healthy.
Because if I'm not hungry I can't do this, right?
So exercise is really important.
And that's another question we always get
is how do you not stay fat.
It's because when we're shooting
and I eat six foods or seven foods
A lot of the time it's over two days
and we're walking a lot
and then we, I go back to the computer
and I unload the footage
and then I spend another two days cutting it.
So for those two days that I cut it
I'm not eating as much and I'm usually trying
to get some form of exercise, like pushups
you know, in the room
to keep myself energetic and pumped.
The next question, Eda Asack says,
"Is there something that you won't eat?
It seems that you're willing to try anything."
And I think for the most part
I am willing to try anything
Unless it's endangered or a household pet.
But there have been a few times when I've said no.
Where the food just crossed the line.
When we were in Mexico last month
we had that bug salad and that was completely fine
but after the bug salad with the mescaou
and the lime and the salt.
That was okay,
it was a little bit crazy but after we finished that
the owner brought out these live cockroaches,
madagascar ants and to me that really crossed the line.
I couldn't have done that.
And there was another thing in Jakarta.
We were exploring downtown Jakarta
and Ting was rolling.
She was filming behind me
and we were walking up to this snake stall.
They had snack blood and snake heart.
And it was dark and really deep in the alleyway.
And um,
There was this cage of snakes,
and he pulled out this snake.
And I don't have any footage of this
because I said stop rolling.
But he pulled out a snake and he was about to kill it
And it was just disgusting,
like a cage full of snakes.
It didn't seem very clean
and he was gonna drain the blood
and let me eat the heart as well
and that was the second time apart
from the cockroach that I said no.
And maybe if I give myself a little time to warm up
I might do it but I think that's something that
I don't necessarily need to do.
Lebotub says, "Would it be possible for you to tone
down the Wow! And the Ohh!'s?"
And I think this really shows that
It's really hard to
sometimes make everybody happy.
Because that's just what comes out
when I'm pumped, you know?
And we've got other comments here that say
When you say Ooh, it's my favorite part of the video.
So for me, I think the most important thing is
to do what's natural,
to try to enjoy the food
to stay really pumped and hungry
and if I say wow, look at this, ooh look at that
or mmm, you know, do that face.
It's just because it's coming out of me naturally.
And, I'm just trying to have fun guys that's all it is.
I'm just trying to have fun and create
some fun content for you.
Ayush Chaurasia says,
"What's your comfort food? And can we have a bit of Ting's
reaction as well in your videos?"
And I think to be honest
my comfort food is jiaozi and noodles.
Beautiful Jiaozi we just ate three plates
and dan dan noodles in schezuan.
And the second part, Ting.
I think Ting is a little shy
to be in the videos.
But she's always there smiling behind the scenes
so what do you think Ting?
Do you want to be behind the scenes still?
- Yeah
- [Trevor] Yeah?
She's a little shy.
(laughter)
But that's fine.
You guys know she's behind the scenes,
happy filming and that's part of the fun right?
We've also got a few questions about
how much income we're earning.
How much money we're spending.
And I think the most important thing
I can tell you guys is that right now
we are able to support ourselves
traveling on a budget style.
It's pretty much the same style that it's always been.
Before I met Ting I was always staying
in backpacker dorms.
You know, a room with eight beds.
And creating content and coming back.
And I would actually edit the videos
like, sitting on the bed
or laying on the bed, you know?
Because there's no desk.
And now as the channel has grown
Ting and I are just so fortunate to have you guys watching.
And also getting the merch'.
The Tai Hao merch' really helps us
because now we can afford a room
with a desk where I can edit the videos.
And that is like a dream for me.
Next Question,
Stephychowy says,
"How much has your life changed ever since
you started going on this food journey?"
And she says,
"I love your vids."
Thank you Stephy.
This is actually what's completely blown my mind
ever since we started,
is how fast our lives have changed.
Our lives have changed really fast.
When I moved to China in 2014
I was a student.
I was broke.
I was studying.
And I had a dream to be able to support myself
through creating food and travel content on the internet.
And I just wanted to do that forever.
To be honest I could have done that for my whole life.
Being in a situation where I have to pay to do it.
So teaching english privately and paying for these trips.
Going on trips once or twice a year and creating content.
That would have been perfectly fine with me.
But over the last few years,
the channel has just skyrocketed.
And now we're able to support ourselves
and travel and create the content.
We still keep it on pretty, pretty budget.
Because we like to travel that way.
But we, right now.
It's just crazy.
We have the freedom to go where we want,
when we want.
And that's what I always dreamed of.
My dream was always to travel forever.
And create content forever.
And make an adventure out of my life.
But now it's actually kinda changed.
Just slightly because when I started
it was all about me being able to
to do what I want
but now I really want to inspire you guys
to show you how friendly the world is
and show you, you can do whatever you put your mind to.
Every little decision we've made behind the scenes
in order to get where we are is just,
it just blew me away.
I dropped out of university in China.
I attended culinary school,
I dropped out of culinary school.
I went full time on YouTube.
I met Ting in Turkey in 2015,
in the summer of 2015.
She came on full time shortly after to help make videos.
And it's just gone up and up.
And the whole thing has really taken me by surprise.
Because all of you guys,
Sometimes it's really hard for me
to wrap my head around how many of you guys are watching.
And it's, it's really hard to grasp.
So sometimes I just have to remind myself
to create content that I would like to create
because as this channel is starting to get bigger
it's getting harder and harder for me
to please everybody.
And I know the worst thing I could do
is to try and please everybody.
Some people want to see a certain type of content.
Some people want to see another type of content.
I think right now the biggest thing
is to do and create content that I love to create.
So, that's another question we're getting
is where are you guys gonna go
and what content are you gonna create.
We're definitely,
Since we're based in China.
Ting and I rent an apartment in Chengdu, In Sichuan
We keep it empty
It's cheap but we've honestly been there like,
I don't know, one or two months out of the last year.
It's ready for us to go there
so we're going to keep renting it.
Our base is in China.
And keep traveling around Asia and the world.
And to us, we right now,
the way we do it is just go when we feel like it.
And we usually don't plan more than one or two weeks ahead.
Because we like to have an open schedule.
And we like to go when the feeling is right.
And to me that's really important.
To do what you love and when you feel good.
So thank you so much for being part
of the Food Ranger community.
And I would love to know what you thought
about this video in the comments below as well.
And you can check out our merch'.
It definitely helps us create more of these videos for you,
create content for you
and keep making these fun travel videos.