Paula Froelich is a busy woman. After a stint as deputy editor of New York Post‘s “Page Six” gossip column, she found her way back into what she loved — world travel. She is now the editor of Yahoo Travel and the host of the video series A Broad Abroad. Her motto: Be bold. Be brave. Reclaim yourself.
Paula recently took a few minutes out to speak with Uproxx on women in travel, visiting Iraq, and pig anus [obvs -ed].
Tell us about your career break.
I was at Page Six, in a job that I accidentally fell into. I started there when I was 25. It’s a great job when you’re 25, if that’s what you want to do, but 10 years later, it just wasn’t what I wanted to do with my life. I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I just thought, “Well, who the heck are you? When was the last time you felt cool? When was the last time you really felt like you?” There was a feeling of exploration and figuring stuff out that I really loved and I missed. I said, “Alright, you always wanted to go to Africa. Let’s go to Africa.” So, I went to Kenya and that started the ball rolling.
There were sources for Page Six who would still call me. One had high-level clearance at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad. The war was still going on. He was like, “Look at this. This is the Baghdad I just drove into.” It was a photo of a huge Ferris wheel taken from the top of the U.S. embassy.
I said, “Let me get this straight. Number one, what the hell is a Ferris wheel doing there? Number two, why haven’t we heard about it in the West?”
He goes, “The new theory in the U.S. Army is that tourism will cure all ills.” So, they had plugged in a bunch of money. They thought that what Iraq needed, during a war, was a Ferris wheel. I started laughing. I did some research. I was like, “Alright, well, there’s got to be some way to get in the country through tourism.” There was. There was one weird bus tour. I got on it and I wrote about it for Playboy. After that, I just started doing my own thing. I went to Timbuktu; I went skiing in Afghanistan for Newsweek.
Did those trips leave you with a vision for what you wanted next?
I realized that women were not being represented in travel at all, basically, in mainstream media. Especially women of a certain age. Yet, they were the ones who were traveling. Wherever I went in the world, whether it was Italy or Afghanistan, it was all women of a certain age. You’re invisible as a woman if you’re over 35, basically. Unless you have kids. Even if you have kids, you’re secondary to your children. I had tried and tried to talk to people about getting something done. I wanted a TV show. Finally, Newsweek was like, “You know what? Yes. You’ve got great ideas. These stories are interesting.” Then at the same time, I started my own blog called A Broad Abroad in January of 2014. Within three weeks, it got 55,000 unique hits with no publicity whatsoever. It was all just random fun posts. The one that still keeps going is the troop of aliens in the Baghdad museum because I was just laughing. Who the hell is ever going to go into the Baghdad museum besides me and five other Americans not in the military? They’ve got this crazy alien-looking art. I just did a tongue-in-cheek post and it went completely wild. To this day, it still goes wild. Anyway, at the same time I got the job at Newsweek, Yahoo was looking for a travel editor and offered it to me. I said, “Oh wow, thank you.” That’s how I made the transition.
It was really kind of like, nobody would give it to me, so I went and did it on my own.
Which is, we should mention, completely awesome.
It’s a little like my show, A Broad Abroad. I literally had people tell me, “Women don’t watch travel. We’ve tried female programming. It didn’t work.” Or, “You know, this would be great if you were a man.” I’m like, “What?” It does make me feel really proud that my show now averages anywhere between 750 and a million hits per week.
What I was told by one major producer was, “Women need someone to bounce off of. Women don’t really travel solo, Paula. Women need a buddy.” Which is hilarious, because that wasn’t what I was seeing, with boots on the ground. I just basically did my own research and hired someone to do an infographic for me. People love infographics. I was like, “Actually no, you’re wrong. Female solo travel is a pretty big trend.”
What are some of the experiences that you’ve had that really galvanized your philosophy on travel recently?
My worst nightmare is somebody saying, “I just booked you a two-week trip to the Seychelles.” I think, “Two weeks? Can’t you walk from one end of an island to the other to the other in a day?” I do love alone time and downtime [mentally]. But that’s not what’s going to inspire me. I love things like to going to Mexico — like our whole series in Mexico. Mexico is not just cruise ship or all-inclusive resorts, right? Let’s go wrestling instead.
My theory is, and I truly believe this: Everyone would be a better person if they just got up out of their office chair and left the office and got some perspective. I grew up in a lovely four-room house in Ohio, including the bathroom, by the way, travel was a luxury. That was something that rich people did. I didn’t get on a plane until I was 13. In this day and age, travel is cheaper. There’s a way to do it. There are places to go. The world, while it seems like it’s gotten a lot more dangerous, has actually become a lot safer. I just want people to get up, get out, get some perspective, and come back to lead better lives.
What I’m really seeing now is that a lot of the Baby Boomers, Gen X, Gen Y, are looking at the millennials and going, “Wait, what? You’re not following the rules. I did everything they told me to do. Why am I not happy? You’re 31 and doing whaaaaat?” I feel like the new big thing right now is that Americans are taking their own gap years, but they’re taking them after major life changes. They’re doing a gap year after a divorce. They’re doing a gap year after they switch jobs. This is my theory of travel. This is how everything influenced me. Take your gap year. Get out there and meet new people. You know what I mean?
What’s on top of your “go to next” list?
Oh, I just went to my number one, Mongolia. Loved it. I’m pretty much open for most places. I really would love, love, love to spend like a month in China. I want to spend some time in Japan. Just because, in China and Japan, there are still pockets where you go in culture and you go, “What is going on?” Like the entire business that’s set up around loneliness in Japan… cat cafes, owl cafes, bunny cafes, puppy cafes. You can go to a place where a guy will dress up like a panda and cuddle you. You can go to a café where they have chairs that will cuddle you. They’ve got bars where people will just talk to you. You don’t sleep with them, but you pay them to talk to you. I would love to do an I’m-so-lonely episode on A Broad Abroad.
Do you have any personal hacks that you use to get comfortable when you settle down some place?
Yeah. They’re called sleeping pills. They’re called, glass of wine, and a Lunesta.
Any food that you absolutely just couldn’t muscle your way through?
I didn’t like fermented bees. It’s not that the bee bothered me so much. The taste was just not that great, and I didn’t want to keep it in my mouth long enough to grind up any stingers. I usually find you can keep your gag reflex down if you just breathe out of your mouth and not smell it through your nose.
I don’t need to be like, “Look how cool and crazy I am. I just ate a scorpion on a stick!” However, if I was at someone’s house and they had made a meal, yes, I would eat it. If it’s for one of the videos, I’ll eat it. Oh, you know what the worst thing I ate was? I ate a pig anus.
Where did you procure said pig anus?
In New York’s real Chinatown, outside of Flushing. They serve everything. They served the entire pig from tip to tail. I gargled with Coke for half an hour after. I figured if Coke will take the rust off of cars, it’ll take that taste out of my mouth.
