Celebrity Travel: Go away with Keeho

A: Yes. While other kids went to summer school or summer camp, my mom thought it was so important to travel and go to different countries and really experience new things with our own eyes and eat new things and hear the languages we didn’t speak and just know that we're not in this world alone. People need to coexist in order to survive. It's so important to really respect and love different cultures and experience it instead of just [reading about it]. We did our fair share of trips to America. We went to Austria, Czech Republic, Japan, Cuba … I feel like those are the kind of memories you can never replace. When I look back at the pictures and videos I took, I remember how much fun it was back then. That's what my mom really wanted us to experience at a young age.

Q: Did your family trips to different countries help you adapt when you moved from Canada to South Korea for your career?

A: I never really thought about it. But now that you've asked, I think it definitely helped me. When you're in a new country by yourself, there's nothing greater for character development than putting yourself out there. Having traveled so much as a kid helped me adapt to new environments. Honestly, it was not difficult for me when I moved to Korea. There was some culture shock, but it was overall just fun for me.

Q: Had you been to Korea before you moved there?

A: Yes. When I was younger, we used to go every other year. And then we stopped going for about four or five years. When I went back in 11th grade, it wasn’t like I didn’t know what the country was going to look like. But I remember it being completely different than what I remembered as a younger kid.

Q: Which destinations stand out for you?

A: We've been to so many different places. Singapore was such a beautiful place to go. I wish we had more time to look around because Singapore was amazing. It was very humid and super hot, though. New Zealand was amazing, as well. We had so much fun there. I love Europe – London, Paris, Madrid.

Q: Is there a downside to traveling so much?

A: I ran out of pages on my passport and had to get a new one. [Laughs] But I remember looking through all the pages [of where I had been] and thinking that I could not be more thankful to have had all these experiences.

Q: What would you say to encourage people to visit another part of the world?

A: I would say the same thing that I did to my friends in Canada. It’s so important to explore the world at this age. Just travel and live somewhere for even a month. Put yourself out there. Overcoming difficulties really develops you as a person.

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(Jae-Ha Kim is a New York Times bestselling author and travel writer. You can respond to this column by visiting her website at www.jaehakim.com. You may also follow “Go Away With…” on Twitter at @GoAwayWithJae where Jae-Ha Kim welcomes your questions and comments.)