‘Being a foreigner in China is a very extreme experience. Either u love it or hate it. Either u get treated like a goddess or like a stupid tourist. Either you are instantly a VIP and get a free table at the club that usually costs 2500 RMB (about 360 USD) with drinks, or you have to wait in the longest line because there are lots of other foreigners wanting to get the same perks.’, said Thaís Ribeiro – the author of ‘Good Vibes’.
This week I had the privilege to interview a fascinating Brazilian-American author to feature on my latest series about Female Travelers of Asia. I met her in Germany during my past 7-month Europe trip last year. Read on to find out more about her life adventure and wanderlust journey to come up with this book.
About the Author
Thaís Ribeiro was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 1982. As a child, she moved to Florida and spent more than 20 years there. Since then, the travel bug really got her bitten. She has been lucky enough to travel quite extensively. Besides Brazil and America, she also lived in Spain, Romania, China and currently Germany.
One of her favorite experiences was working on a cruise ship, where she actually got paid to travel the world. Traveling, learning and teaching languages, singing, playing the clarinet, and writing are just some of her favorite things. After teaching English in small town named Zhangjiagang in China for about a year, she moved to Germany and is now living there – where she believes her routes set. Thais speaks English, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, Galician and German fluently. Her great grandmother is Austrian, and her dad encouraged her to start picking up the language at a very early age.
About the book – ‘Good vibes’
The book was based on real-life stories of the three women who started off having a hard life and were able to turn things around. By writing ‘Good Vibes’, the author brought some more significant messages to her readers: ‘Everybody has made mistakes, everybody has hurt someone’s feelings and some people have done even worse but that doesn’t make them any less worthy of redemption then you. What it does mean is that they need some extra help to get to the point they need to be. What they need is a helping hand, kind words, and guidance. This is what everyone needs at some point or another and there’s nothing wrong with that, that’s normal! Take the time to see the good side of the people around you, but before you do that, take a good look in the mirror. But don’t just look at what’s on the outside…’
Thais also mentioned: ‘When I worked in customer service, my favorite stories to tell were the ones about the crazy bitchy angry customers, who just needed somebody to listen to them. Nobody has probably really listened to them because they could not get past the giant brick wall of “bitch”. After being treated badly so many times in life, they slowly built this wall around them as a defense mechanism. Then when somebody come around and actually listens to them, these walls fall down and the real person is able to come out. Some people are ready for that. Some are not. But I’m going to try to help if I can.’
Everybody needs a hand sometimes…and everybody can use some good vibes! Find her book on kindle here.
