Away With Im
Bet you wish you had this guy’s job! Jimmy Im is a travel writer, who makes his home away from home 165 days out of the year.
by STEVE HAN
Jimmy Im spun a globe. He spun it twice and poked his finger onto random locations each time. The first try gave him Toronto, Canada. The second was Vienna, Austria. This was just after George W. Bush became president in 2001.
“I live to be spontaneous,” says Im, sitting inside a pub in West Hollywood, where he has lived since January of last year. “When I was graduating from college, he became president. And I was one of those guys who said, ‘Ohhhh, f-ck America!’ So I moved. I didn’t want to live in the States. It just didn’t sit well.”
Not long after that, the then-21-year-old packed his car and drove up to Toronto from Boston, where he had just graduated from Emerson College with a BFA in creative writing. He lived in Toronto for two years while working under the table at a bar on an expired visa. “I just loved it because it was very gritty, authentic and diverse,” says Im. “It felt like a mini-New York. There was so much culture. I felt so at home.”
Im has been a free-flowing soul ever since, “at home” just about anywhere in the world—only now he gets paid (above the table) to globetrot, as a freelance travel writer who has been published in Vanity Fair and The Hollywood Reporter. The 36-year-old also contributes regularly to Conde Nast Traveler and Robb Reporter, and makes regular appearances as a travel expert on various travel and news programs, as well as on the Travel Channel.
“It’s a really hard industry to get into,” Im says of his job. “Everybody wants to be a travel writer. Everyone glamorizes the idea of being one—as an expert in the industry influencing people on what to do, where to go and what’s hot. I love that idea of making an impact on people.”
Believe it or not, the travel writing gig, a dream job for many, virtually fell into Im’s lap in 2004. At the time, he was nearly out of money after quitting his nine-to-five job at Ralph Lauren’s advertising department in New York. By chance, someone told him about an editor job at Business Traveler, a travel magazine often found on the racks at airport lounges. He always had aspirations to become a novelist, not a travel writer, but he still decided to go for it.
“I applied and scored the highest on the editorial test and got the job,” says Im. Though his path there was random enough, the job proved a match made in heaven for Im. In a strange way, it allows him to live a “stable” life for once, in that the job gives him the opportunity—and financial means—to stay true to his free-flowing soul. Before moving to L.A. last year, Im was only at his home in New York for 165 of 365 days. And he doesn’t mind that at all.
One of his most memorable trips was visiting Greenland, a deceptive name for a country that has 85 percent of its land covered in snow. Because there are no pedestrian walkways in Greenland, Im said he had to get around by snowmobile.
“First of all, getting around was a sh-t show,” Im says, sighing. “After I got there, I literally drove a snowmobile with my luggage from the airport to the town I was writing about. The thing broke down at one point on a frozen lake. And there are no trees in Greenland, so there’s no sound. It was as if I was in outer space.”
Im, who has been to 97 countries so far, strongly recommends a trip to Egypt for anyone who can carve out at least week to see the country. “It’s fantastic,” he says. “Walking through the streets of Cairo, visiting Luxor, cruising down the Nile River. … You definitely want to do all that stuff. It’s really hot, though. Take an umbrella.”
Other than writing about his travels, Im also has years of experience on camera. He’ s on various travel networks and was recently on ABC’s Nightline, discussing the demise of hotel mini bars.
Additionally, he often works in tandem with hotels—the InterContinental Hotels Group recently hired him as the spokesperson to promote its new kitchen iPad cookbook apps. In fact, one of the reasons he relocated to L.A. last year was so that he could break into the TV industry; his ultimate goal is to host his own travel show.
“My goal is to have a massive impact on a larger number of people,” Im says. “I feel like I can serve as a great role model, too. Of course, my parents, just like any Korean parents would probably preferred having a doctor or a lawyer son. But they’ve always been very supportive of me as a writer. They think it’ s great that I’m traveling around the world, and they find it super cool that I’m on TV.”
But Im admits that one of the worst parts of his job is being away from family and friends. He says he rarely gets to see his parents and brother, who live in Atlanta, Georgia, where Im was born. He also admitted that he can’t envision himself getting married anytime soon.
“I love travel, but the worst part is the fact that you can’t really foster strong relationships because everyone thinks you’re always away, and you really always are,” he says.
And, yet, Im seems most at home away from it. A week before this story went to print, he was in Mallorca, Spain, about to head to Berlin the next day, and then Zimbabwe that Sunday. On his bucket list is a cruise to Antarctica.
He knows not everyone can be a travel writer, but he encourages people to leave the familiarity of their own home and realize the positive impact traveling can have on their lives. “It’s about keeping an open mind and seeing what’s out there, not limiting yourself,” he says. “There’s family travel, gay travel, millennial travel. It’ s about going out there and not being afraid of truly immersing yourself in the destination.
“I know that it’s hard for Americans to travel with their two-week vacations. It’s really important for people to travel and understand themselves and a different culture at the same time. Even if it’s driving to the closest cities from where you live, anything that’ll take you away, you won’t regret it.”
Travel photos courtesy of Jimmy Im. Headshot of Im by William Mike Dover.
This article appeared in our June 2014 issue.
