Andrew Zimmern's cardinal rule is to always go where the line is longest, whether it's an Apple store or a stinky tofu stall in Taipei, Taiwan.
Zimmern is a freelance journalist, TV and radio personality, food critic, and chef, but he's likely best known as the host of the Travel Channel's Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern. On the show, he explores the world in search of the craziest culinary finds. He's gone lizard hunting in southern Thailand ("The big lizard is a little chewy."), tasted spleen sandwiches on the streets of Sicily, and gulped down raw crocodile eggs with aborigines from the Nauiyu Nambiyu community.
For Zimmern, the fresher, the better, and that dictum applies to his tech life, as well. On the road for more than half of the year, Zimmern keeps on the cutting edge of technology with the latest devices, accessories, and apps. PCMag caught up with Zimmern to find out how he uses tech in his travels.
PCMag: How often do you travel?
Andrew Zimmern: Thirty weeks per year.
PCMag: Where are you traveling and how do you pick the locations?
AZ: All over the world. We have a massive group that reports research and story ideas for dozens and dozens of locations. We vet them by quality of story. While someone may think "oh it's more exotic to go to Brazil," if we actually have better stories in Ecuador, we'll go to Ecuador.
PCMag: How do you get to those places? Are you riding in limos and jets or cabs and buses?
AZ: It's a complete and total mix and it always depends on who is paying the bills. Mostly it's the traditional car to airport, airport to city, van to hotel, and then we are out in the world. Often times I'm in a dugout canoe paddling down the Suriname River going to the tiny little villages that no one's ever heard of outside of Suriname, or even in Suriname, for that matter. Sometimes I'm in a helicopter flying over Angkor Wat in Cambodia, and sometimes I'm in the subway in New York City.
PCMag: Besides Tums, what do you always keep in your carry-on?
AZ: I actually don't carry Tums in my carry-on. My carry-on is a Patagonia over-the-shoulder single-flap bike messenger bag. It's filled with three sets of headphones [including Bose QuietComfort 3 Acoustic Noise Cancelling headphones and Microsoft LifeChat LX-3000], tons of cords, about 10 different magazines that I'm currently reading, the editor's proof of a book my friends wrote called Naked Civics, a lot of torn-out and scribbled-on articles from The New Yorker and Vanity Fair, and my iPad, my phone, my laptop. I carry the latest iPhone 4S (32GB), and I have two different Mophie batteries that I use for it: I have one that's the actual phone battery that goes around it—the GPS-compatible model—and then I have a small little Mophie block battery that can also recharge my laptop. I have a BlackBerry as well. I have two iPads (AT&T): the iPad 2 and the new iPad. The 2 is loaded with stuff for my kid, and I do all my work stuff on the new iPad. I have two laptops: a Lenovo ThinkPad X300 and a new Sony VAIO super-lightweight laptop. I have a massive extra battery on it and I custom built the inside. I think I have 350GB of memory.
Next: "What is the one piece of tech that you can't travel without?" and more >>
PCMag: What is the one piece of tech that you can't travel without?
AZ: My iPhone. Lots of people don't like to be so tethered and connected but I love it. I'm on the road so often that first, it keeps me sane, and second, it has my books, movies, TV shows, and social media. I also take pictures on my phone. I FaceTime and I talk to my family. I don't understand people who say, "oh, I can't wait to put away my phone." What do they mean "put it away?" I love what my phone does for me. I think people confuse "put it away" with "turn it off." I turn my phone off when I'm at dinner with my family or when we go to the beach for the day. There are plenty of times when I turn my phone off, but I always have it with me because what I can do when I turn it on is so valuable to me.
PCMag: What apps do you use?
AZ: Oh my gosh. I live in a Delta hub so I have the Fly Delta app on my phone to navigate the flights that I use most often. I have an app that I use all the time for work called RadarScope. It lets me accurately look at weather radar all around the world, which is just fantastic. I'll be sitting in the hotel room one night and trying to see if there will be a thunderstorm the next afternoon. I can actually see for myself where the weather is moving, which I love. I use something called Wikihood Plus, which tells me everything going on in the given neighborhood I'm in. Sometimes I'll be shooting something on the streets of New Orleans and I'll say, "it would be really cool if we could get me waiting in line at a bus stop." So the app shows me where the bus stops are, and where everything else is. I use Trippy—I'm wildly into Trippy because it's kind of like crowdsourcing the people who know best.
I have about a dozen different picture and photo apps that I love to play with: Hipstamatic, Paper Camera, Instagram, Slow Shutter Cam, and 8mm, which is one of my favorites. I've got Color Splash to color things. I have Radio Paradise and I'm really into word puzzles, so I have Scrabble HD and I have 7 Little Words and eight million versions of Angry Birds.
Next: "What's the most unusual food you've ever eaten?" and more >>