309: Merging Travel with Human Rights and Founding The Hybrid Tours with Sibu Szymanowska

309: Merging Travel with Human Rights and Founding The Hybrid Tours with Sibu Szymanowska

Author: Matt Bowles: Full-Time World Traveler Since 2013 November 4, 2024 Duration: 1:20:00
Learn how to travel more responsibly, engage with the experiences of refugees, and merge human rights with tourism. ============================ Get the Monday Minute my weekly email with 3 personal recs for travel, culture, and living beyond borders you can read in 60 seconds. ============================ ON THIS EPISODE Sibu Szymanowska joins Matt over a bottle of wine and shares her experience growing up in Costa Rica before moving to China at age 17. Sibu reflects on attending University in China, learning fluent Mandarin, and starting multiple businesses over her 7 years living there. She shares the impact of her travels throughout Asia and then her experience moving to Poland and re-connecting with her Polish heritage. Sibu then talks about her experience working for an NGO, living in a remote village in Nicaragua, developing a passion for human rights, and eventually doing a Master’s Degree in “International Conflict and Human Rights”. She also talks about co-founding The Hybrid Tours and explains how it centers the experiences of refugees and displaced people in the various destinations. Sibu shares how her tours help people learn about Palestine through the stories of refugees living in Jordan, and help people learn about the Bosnian genocide by meeting with survivors and former prison camp inmates during the tour of Bosnia. She also explains how you can join a Hybrid Tour and get a special Maverick Show discount. ⁠ ⁠ → Full show notes with direct links to everything discussed are available here. ============================ FREE RESOURCES FOR YOU: See my Top 10 Apps For Digital Nomads See my Top 10 Books For Digital Nomads See my 7 Keys For Building A Remote Business (Even in a space that’s not traditionally virtual) Watch my Video Training on Stylish Minimalist Packing so you can join #TeamCarryOn See the Travel Gear I Use and Recommend See How I Produce The Maverick Show Podcast (The equipment, services & vendors I use) ============================ ENJOYING THE SHOW? Follow The Maverick Show on Instagram and DM Matt to continue the conversation Please leave a rating and review — it really helps the show and I read each one personally You can buy me a coffee — espressos help me produce significantly better podcast episodes! :)

There’s a certain texture to life lived in motion, a collection of stories that emerge not from postcards but from the messy, beautiful reality of planting roots in foreign soil. The Maverick Show: Global Travel Stories & Life Beyond Borders captures that essence through long-form conversations hosted by Matt Bowles, who has been navigating the world full-time since 2013. This isn't a guidebook podcast; it’s a series of intimate dialogues, often unfolding casually over a shared bottle of wine, where the destination is understanding. You’ll hear from a diverse range of voices-expats, digital nomads, women forging paths abroad, and diaspora storytellers-each sharing the raw, unfiltered nuances of what happens when you cross borders for good. The focus is on the human narrative beneath the itinerary: the cultural misunderstandings that become breakthroughs, the loneliness and liberation, and the profound ways a global life reshapes identity. Listening feels like pulling up a chair at a cafe somewhere in the world, eavesdropping on a conversation that’s equally about internal discovery as it is about geographic change. Matt’s own experience as a long-term traveler informs these discussions, steering them toward the substantive lessons learned far from home. If you’ve ever wondered about the true weight and wonder of building a life between cultures, this podcast offers a genuine, thoughtful window into that journey.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 100

The Maverick Show: Global Travel Stories & Life Beyond Borders
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