A Review of the Best Three Travel YouTubers

In the future “armchair internet” will be how people mostly travel for recreation and I am an excellent armchair tourist. We can “walk” though most cities on google maps street view, click through unlimited museums, art galleries, restaurants and click into places that even were we wealthy we would never see. What amazing times we live in.

To “flesh out” the armchair travel experience are independent travel youtubers of varying quality. Being a former frenetic traveller myself I watch many and three of the best I present here.

First would be “Escape with Emily.” Emily is a 20 something (very) American woman who has the temerity, courage and curiosity to visit all 196-ish countries and she’s nearly done with about a dozen to go.

Her appeal is her honest appraisal of the places she’s visited over the past six years. Like an autist with a new atlas her curiosity is obvious and she’s journalistically careful with her facts on the history of her destinations. She’s not a backpacker but rather stays at places where a lone female traveller can be safe and (a bit of an obsession for her and also with women I’ve travelled with) have a perfectly clean bathroom.

I’ve travelled to some of her destinations in the Third World and she doesn’t shirk from reporting, with measured emotion, the hassles: grifters, beggars, the shocking filth, the dangerous hazards, infuriating inefficiencies and scams. In several African countries, exasperated, she proclaims (accurately) there’s “really very little to see and do here.”

Yet she manages to find and gleefully report magic and beauty in all this mess. On occasion she aids the terrible plight of third world cats and dogs which although I’ve done myself, strikes me as adorable. Seeing her go out of her way to buy food for a suffering puppy in Gambia nearly broke my heart.

She’s also honest about health problems, an unavoidable consequence of “exotic” travel, yet she comes up portraying even the worst machetlands, jihadistans and hell holes in the best light she can.

Lots of young male youtubers do this “every country” box ticking routine but one gets the feeling many of the boys are trying to “conquer” countries or are at best passport stamp collecting. Drew Binksy comes to mind though he is pretty good.

Another recommendation is (British) Matt and (Russian) Julia, an early 30s married couple seeing the world, particularly Eurasia with an emphasis on Russia and East Asia. Julia’s English is perfect and Matt’s Russian is very impressive. They experiment with other languages, lately Chinese and like the other two youtubers here they’re intellectually curious. Another enjoyment of their show over the many years is watching how their obviously loving marriage endures while they frequently move bases and show us their adventures.

“Bald and Bankrupt” is the most scandalous on our list today. A very British GenXer he started his channel about a decade ago specialising in Soviet aesthetics in the former USSR. There’s hardly a concrete Brutalist monster or delightful leftover USSR mosaic he hasn’t admired. I love that. In recent years he’s expanded to most of Eurasia.

B. & B. has copped a lot of flak from younger, scornful and probably jealous critics on youtube and social media. He’s a middle aged guy with last century’s jokes, bawdy at times, but he’s so not the raging sex pest he’s made out to be by young incel scorns and modern school marms. If he worked in a corporation he’d be in trouble for sending spicy but hilarious memes, a detriment to both human warmth and humor. His young critics paint him wrongly, like he’s Benny Hill or some other atrocity by today’s puritan values.

His blokey observations and an eye for passing female beauty seem like authentic honesty to me. His Russian (which I speak) is very good, his analysis is solid and his adventures – often with a beer (of all horrors!) are worth our viewing time.

With travel youtubers the central questions are: “Am I interested in where they’re going, what they’re showing, and were I travelling and run into them randomly would I enjoy the experience?” We live life virtually now, a vast civilizational level improvement. If you agree, these folks are your best fellow travellers online.

https://www.youtube.com/@EscapewithEmily11
https://www.youtube.com/@baldandbankrupt
https://www.youtube.com/@MattandJulia