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Chelsea & Dan’s Gap Year 2025
  • Dan Squire
  • Chelsea Haith
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  • Dan Squire
  • Chelsea Haith

Chelsea & Dan’s Gap Year 2025

Moving from Sydney to the UK in the slowest way possible. Läs mer
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  • Chelsea & Dan’s Gap Year 2025
    Maksim face
    The offender1Good bread, at leastGorge-ous views (when we weren't being jostled to the edge of madness in the taxi)1Scenes of Osh2How long do we think he would survive in the army? Answers in the comments.

    Osh

    24–26 sep., Kirgizistan ⋅ ⛅ 20 °C

    [Accidentally left this one in drafts instead of publishing the other week! Here it is, a little late]

    Quick stop in the unremarkable town of Osh. This is our departure point for a much more exciting adventure for the next 9 days... 🤫

    We got here in a 12hr shared taxi from Bishkek, which is just as hectic as you might imagine. In Osh, we tried the traditional Kyrgyz drink 'Maksim', which was... awful.

    At the Kelechek Bazaar, we picked up some extra warm clothes, and were very tempted by all the military gear available. Somehow we managed to restrain ourselves from buying balaclavas, gas masks and knife belts.

    That's all for now. We may have limited signal until early October, so if you don't hear from us for a bit, assume we're having fun!    Läs mer

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  • Chelsea & Dan’s Gap Year 2025
    Absolute filth
    Seven Bulls viewpoint at Jeti-Ogüz, one of our stops en route to Song KulJust blending inJeti-VOGUE-uz, am I right?Pink sand beach at lake Issyk-KulReading on the beach, post swimWe were not 100% convinced that this was the main road that the map said it was...Don't tell ChyngyzThe Tank, triumphantChelsea reuniting with the car crew at the top of the passKyzart passYurt campYurt lifeBig dipper spotted over the campCommemorative plaque of overnight iceBeach cleanup operationDrying her hair after a Song Kul dipChelsea, Dan, Laura & NikHorse timeGot into a canter, but still not a horse girlAla Kul gangA very cold boiWhat could go wrong?Snow manDon't tell ChyngyzNot the colour we were expecting at the self-serve car wash

    Song Kul

    21–23 sep., Kirgizistan ⋅ ❄️ 7 °C

    ‘Don’t tell Chyngyz,’ we said to each other every half hour or so on this side quest. To get to the alpine lake of Song Kul, we took The Tank to places that Chyngyz—the car hire guy—probably would not approve. Song Kul lake delivered on all counts, but it was not without incident.

    After our big Aka-Kul hike, we spent a rest day in Jeti-Ogüz, where we tried to visit a sanatorium for a radon bath (apparently radioactivity is good for inflammation 🙃) but it was closed (wonder why?). Instead, Chelsea took an unplanned dip trying to cross a river, adding to her leg injuries from Japan. We gave it up as a bad job and decided to head back towards Bishkek. On our way we stopped and spent an afternoon reading on the beach at the famous Issyk-Kul, a huge geothermally-heated lake visible from space. The next morning we began our campaign on Song Kul, driving through old Soviet outposts still decorated with symbols of rockets, tanks and pictures of infrastructure (though without rockets or much actual infrastructure. They do still have tanks though).

    The thing about this region is that Google Maps isn’t very accurate. So we rely on Maps.me, which is supposed to draw on better data. It’s pretty good for hiking trails. What it’s not good for is distinguishing between ‘road’ and ‘dirt that someone once rode a horse across’. In consequence we blithely followed an increasingly vanishing path into the mountains and over a 3,400m pass. Dan took over the more technical driving in the mountains after Chelsea skidded the Tank out on one of the dirt tracks (and we had only paid for one driver, don’t tell Chyngyz). When it got even steeper and scarier, Chelsea bravely walked behind while Dan piloted, in case the car literally fell off the mountain. Don’t tell Chyngyz.

    On arrival in the camp on our first day, already gasping from panic and low oxygen, Dan informed Chelsea that in addition to the perilous paths we’d just traversed, we were also very low on petrol. We decided to ignore it and went for a swim (as usual, without telling Chyngyz). The lake was surrounded by smooth, flat pebbles, so Dan—like any responsible, self-respecting male—helped clear up the debris by throwing as many of them into the lake as possible.

    Our yurt camp was a rest stop for the popular horse treks, though we only rode for a morning, preferring The Tank’s horsepower to cover significant distances. We had dinner, played cards with friends from Ala-Kul, and star gazed, before returning to our toasty yurt. We were very smug with this situation when we woke up to snow and were the only people in camp not required to get on a horse. We did have to drive the Tank back to civilisation through the snow though. Don’t tell Chyngyz.

    We were also faced once more with the problem of getting off a mountain without much petrol. We grumbled through the icy pass on as little gas as possible, then rolled downhill from town to town trying not to touch the accelerator or brake pedals. Chelsea ran into every magazin asking ‘Spasiba, benzin?’ without any joy, so that eventually we covered about 70km with the Empty light on. Don’t tell Chyngyz.

    Later, to give Dan a break, Chelsea drove the highway and through Bishkek, which is largely roadworks and chaos. This gave her an opportunity to put her Joburg-taught defensive driving to the test, dodging sheep, horses, and nearly running down not one but two police officers in the rush hour traffic. Don’t tell Chyngyz.

    We were relieved to get the Tank back in one piece, and celebrated by painting her pink. Chyngyz bid us a fond farewell with exhortations to have fish and chips in his honour and much hand shaking (impressed by our unscathed return?). Stay tuned for more high altitude adventures and remember: whatever happens, don’t tell Chyngyz.    Läs mer

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  • Chelsea & Dan’s Gap Year 2025
    Peak performance
    Forest rangerBeware: 30-50 feral hogsFirst-person gaming POV1A rare flat section... it wasn't all this straightforward!Throwing some hornsAs you can see from the tracks, some people shortcut this hike on extreme 4x4 taxisCrystal clear mountain waterAutumn colours starting to come inYurts in the sunshineSame yurts in the morning1What a spot for a campRapid ascentSnow on Ala-KulThe instigatorsRIP swimtrunks, you served Dan well since he bought you in Thailand in March.6°C water, according to the Canadians, who we have no reason to disbelieve.Heading to the passMade it.Ala-Kul Pass panoramaNo photos from the steep descent, we were too busy screaming.Chelsea said Dan's hair looks like Hozier, to which he replied: "Take me to yurts"This was marked as an official bridge on the trail map.Well-earned brews at Camp 2Tasteful hot spring shot.

    Ala-Kul

    15–18 sep., Kirgizistan ⋅ ❄️ 10 °C

    This post is mostly a chance to show off some incredible photos and videos from our most recent stop, so apologies in advance for the FOMO you're about to experience (if you like hiking—if not, enjoy the schadenfreude).

    We've spent the last three days on a 45km trek through two national parks to the high altitude Ala-Kul lake, staying two nights in mountain yurts en route. It hasn't been entirely comfortable, but it has been exceptionally beautiful. And the challenge has made it even sweeter.

    On day one, we hiked around 13km and ascended 800m in bright sunshine to the first camp. As the evening closed in, it started raining, then marble-sized hailstones pelted down as it turned dark. Luckily we'd already reached the safety of the camp, but other hikers weren't so fortunate.

    We knew day 2 was the hardest hike, so we intended to get up early and steal a march. The alarm rang at 6am and it began hailing at 6.15. Opening the yurt, the ground was covered in ice, thick mist was blotting out even the nearby slopes, and it was bitterly cold. We held off for a bit, ate breakfast and left at 8am instead with most of the other campers, reaching the highlight—Ala-Kul lake—by mid-morning. It immediately began snowing, in between patches of warm sunlight, meaning we truly had every single weather type within 12 hours.

    Two American men ahead of us stripped off for a quick dip in the icy lake. Dan didn't like to be outdone by wimpy Yanks, so decided to jump in as well. Only afterward did we find out that they were in fact CANADIANS! If he'd known this, Dan might not have been so brave.

    [Side note: we tied the wet swimtrunks on the back of Chelsea's bag to dry, but they had disappeared by the evening—lost somewhere on the trail. A shame, but a heroic swansong for the trunks in any case.]

    Next, we climbed up a gravelly slope to the Ala-Kul Pass at ~3900m altitude, before a terrifying 45min descent down a steep scree slope on the other side. Chelsea is not too proud to admit that she descended on her hands and bum for a lot of the way down, like a terrified and very lost crab.

    Eventually, after 19km, having climbed 1,000m up and 1,400m down, we reached the 'hot springs' village of Altyn-Arashan where our second yurt camp was located. This hot spring was quite different to the Japanese onsen experience: more like a tin shed in a freezing field, which you can only enter for a half-hour slot. But it was actually very good considering it only cost us £4. A hot (sulphurous) bath after 8.5hrs of hiking is not to be sniffed at (not least because it’s quite eggy).

    Day 3 was just a 12km steady decline back towards town—basically a stroll in the park after the rigours of the day before. We're now back in Karakol, nursing aching limbs, and planning our adventures for the second half of our Kyrgyz roadtrip.    Läs mer

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  • Chelsea & Dan’s Gap Year 2025
    Burana TowerNarrow stairway up the minaretMade itStill going hard on town signsChelsea standing on top of one of the heads, for scale.1Just in case you didn't know where you areBeautiful cemeteries and mausoleums dotted all around Central AsiaTank top in the top Tank1Glimpses of majestic skylines. Kyrgyzstan is over 90% mountains.Sirgak, age 18Tamerlane and SirgakNot a horse girlMaster huntressAttempting the bullseyeDan only just beating Chelsea's score in round 1Dog hunting demonstrationHeavy bird"I must go to search for my father"Traffic jam in Barskoon valleySnow melt river1Deploying the new hike chic outfit from Bishkek1Chelsea considers spaceMountains and lake

    Bokonbayevo

    14–15 sep., Kirgizistan ⋅ ☀️ 18 °C

    We're on the road again! We hired a new car in Bishkek, which is somehow even bigger and more powerful than the last 4x4. We are calling it the The Tank. Driving in Kyrgyzstan is fairly death-defying, so it's good to have something big enough that we can bully other drivers off the road when necessary. The road around Issyk-Kul was patchy at best seven years ago–now it’s being repaired, but that means driving through roadworks. We are grateful for The Tank all the time.

    Our road trip will take us all the way east to the hiking hotspot of Karakol, but on the way we have plenty of scenic stops, including an overnight in Bokonbayevo. This is a small town, most famous for traditional eagle hunting. We turned up at the meeting point coordinates, only to find that it was the house of a middle-aged woman, who just hopped into The Tank to direct us to the eagle location. She kept referring to Joanna Lumley as ‘Joanna’, having apparently become besties off the back of ‘Joanna’s’ Silk Roads series. Casual name dropping.

    The eagle hunter was a 19-year-old called Tamerlane (like the king), who showed us how Kyrgyz warriors traditionally trained and hunted with golden eagles and hunting dogs, as well as horseback archery. At one point he said enigmatically: "I must search for my father," before galloping his horse to the top of a nearby hill... it was very badass behaviour.

    Other highlights so far included a visit to the Burana Tower—an 1,100yo minaret in the middle of the steppe, which is the oldest in Central Asia—and a lunch stop in Barskoon valley, next to a giant carving of Yuri Gagarin's head (the first person to go to space).

    On our drive to Karakol, we passed a couple of European hitchhikers but couldn’t stop, and then felt bad about it. So to assuage our guilt, we decided to pick up the next hitchhikers that didn't look too insalubrious. The first was a local woman and her baby, which was absolutely fine. Emboldened, we then stopped for a middle-aged woman who turned out to be quite the passenger. She was desperate to communicate with us but had no English, so just shouted at us in fast-paced Russian for ten minutes without seeming to need much response. Dan pieced together that she was an Uzbek doctor (her miming skills leave much to be desired). When we paused in a traffic jam because some trees were being felled at the roadside, she frantically tapped our shoulders to encourage us to just drive AROUND the queue along the dirt. When we eventually stopped in Karakol to drop her off, she decided now was the time to launch another long diatribe instead of getting out of the car, when we were obviously blocking the entire road.

    10/10 hitchhiker experience, we look forward to more.    Läs mer

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  • Chelsea & Dan’s Gap Year 2025
    At the State History Museum
    Sound on 🔊Dan at the Kazakh-Kyrgyz borderBishkek public artOsh Bazaar'No no no no no!'Dan as LeninYour friendly local redsWe were going to take this before Chelsea chinned her beerDan sipping vodka, making pastaHostel poolOn our way out of Bishkek

    Bishkek

    11–14 sep., Kirgizistan ⋅ ⛅ 22 °C

    After a long drive to drop Nash Mash back in Almaty, we were rewarded with a horrible 5hr coach journey with no air con, broken seats, and too little legroom. But despite the discomfort, we made it across the border into Kyrgyzstan! 🇰🇬 This is the only democracy in the region, and they take it very seriously here, which means more religious freedom and laidback police. Nice 👍🏼

    This has been a fairly uneventful stop, where we've had time to restock on supplies, buy some warmer clothes for autumn at higher altitudes, and stretch our muscles ahead of another big road trip. We went to Osh Bazaar to get more dried fruit and bags of pistachios, cashews, and almonds.

    We spent one day wandering around the city centre, and one day basking by the swimming pool at the hostel. This is the first swimming pool at a hostel we've seen since Southeast Asia—what a treat! It was a delight to spend a day by the pool and prepare our own meals. We haven’t cooked for ourselves in months, which feels deeply strange given that in our ‘normal’ lives one of us cooks every single day. Dan whipped up a pasta, the envy of the kitchen.

    Chelsea has visited Bishkek before, for a friend’s wedding back in 2018, and things have certainly improved since then. The roads are still terrifying and potholed, but more of them have tarmac, and it feels like a city on the up, with more cafes and development in evidence. The local Uber, called Yandex, works in English now (it didn’t 7 years ago), and there are more recognisable brands in pharmacies and stores. The theory is that the war in Ukraine is taking all of Russia’s attention so Central Asian states have more latitude to build relationships further abroad, most notably with China and Turkey. Bishkek feels like a slightly more Muslim, slightly less vibey version of Almaty, quickly approaching cosmopolitanism, though with worse roads and drivers (somehow) 😅 There’s much more of that to come though, as we’ve picked up a new 4x4 and headed out into the wilderness...    Läs mer

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  • Chelsea & Dan’s Gap Year 2025
    Kolsai Lake
    Meet and greet with the guesthouse animalsAqtus, the excellent but flea-ridden dog that slobbered all over Dan's feetRockabilly goatAll the seasons in one driveBlack Gorge viewpointRoot finderSpruced upKolsai 2 (they don't have the most imaginative lake names)Glacial lake. This photo makes it seem like we spent a lot more time in it than reality 😅🥶Bit chilly, don't zoom in.2Hero of the hour, despite having our internal organs rearranged by the roadRiver bossPicnic pond1The dead forest of Kaindy LakeIn KaindylandMountain streamNo car to ford this bit, had to go barefoot. Feet were numb within two steps of entering the water.Actually not bad chocolateAutumn incomingOur rival marshrutka. We got them in the end though!Need to bulk our winter wardrobes quickly... Dan is wearing all his layers here and still cold.Taking out the trashBreakfast with our wonderful host family

    Kolsai Lakes

    7–11 sep., Kazakstan ⋅ ☁️ 20 °C

    From Charyn Canyon, we drove another 300km to the Kolsai Lakes National Park, the road mostly holding up. This was good luck, as Nash Mash had a dodgy front tyre by this point. We arrived mid-afternoon, and were met by a very industrious 13-year-old named Kausar, who welcomed us to the eponymous Kausar Guesthouse—she’s the only family member who speaks (some) English. We stayed with the family for four nights, hiking during the day and delighting the guesthouse children with our Uno prowess in the evening.

    The lakes in this region were formed during the 1911 earthquake that shook everything as far as Almaty and beyond, and caused rock slides that dammed up several valleys. Since then, the snow melt from the Tien Shan mountains’ has created new glacial lakes, which are gorgeously blue but impossibly cold. We discovered this after a sweaty 3hr hike to reach Kolsai II, where neither of us could manage more than two minutes in the water.

    Another highlight was driving up to Kaindy Lake, along the second worst road either of us have ever seen (Namibia still holds the No.1 spot). It’s so bad that many 4x4s without high enough clearance aren't up to the task—tourists have to rely on a fleet of ancient marshrutkas (grey Soviet mini-buses), which shudder their way up the ravine at vomit-inducing speeds. But we believed in Nash Mash, and we had paid for bulletproof car insurance, so we decided to brave it ourselves. And boy was it an adventure! This wasn't just a bumpy road: it was a world-class collection of rocks, occasionally visited by hallucinations of roadhood. It was like driving over a cheese grater. We brought a 6L bottle of drinking water with us; by the time we arrived, it had carbonated itself. And that doesn't even take into account the two ford crossings...

    The drive was worth it though, both for the adrenaline rush of driving through two rivers, and for the lake itself. The electric blue waters are punctuated by a skeleton army of dead spruce trees, which were drowned when the valley flooded in 1911.

    On our way back, one of the marshrutkas broke down, having flooded its engine with water in one of the crossings. Dan and a strapping Russian pushed it out of the way and we continued on, only for it to come barrelling past, apparently revived, before breaking down before the next river, blocking the road again. We waited and cheered when it coughed back to life, zooming away ahead of us. However, the third time it broke down we were not so patient, and it was a sweet sweet victory to sail past on the uphill and beat it back to the main road. We have truly embraced the Kazakh people's competitive, 'zero sum' approach to driving.

    This was a restful stop after a few long driving days, with landscapes more like Canada or Scotland than the desolate Steppes we drove across last week. Tolsya, the matriarch of the guesthouse, pressed some raspberry jam on us as we left, we suspect as thanks for keeping her youngest, Nurai, entertained—or rather, inverted (see photos for more).

    We’re now on a sweltering bus, with thankfully opaque windows, braving the Kazakh driving to the border. This wraps up our two-week Kazakh adventure... the next dispatch will come Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan.    Läs mer

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  • Chelsea & Dan’s Gap Year 2025
    Evening stroll at the top of the canyon
    Surprise!Heeere's Danny!Paradise within... just no bathroom!Fulfilling his childhood LotR fantasies. Left and right handed, very impressiveActually not bad. Hit the target 9/10 times, although no bullseyeIce cold vodShe's ready to tell your fortuneWhat a view to wake up toRise and shineThe best light for photos!Sogdian AshBy the mighty river Charyn, which carved the whole canyon1Dan is sitting on that central rock, for scaleThe view down from the same rockWe found a window, Dan insisted on posingReverse viewLot of these guys around!

    Charyn Canyon

    6–7 sep., Kazakstan ⋅ ☀️ 29 °C

    Another one-night stop, this time at Kazakhstan's answer to the Grand Canyon, Charyn Canyon. This is the second stop on Kazakhstan’s ‘Golden Triangle’ of sights, including Altyn-Emel (previous stop), and Kolsai Lakes (next stop). Dan navigated some dreadful roads to get us to the canyon, and an even worse parking lot on arrival.

    Charyn is a massive geological feature in the middle of nowhere, with no towns nearby, meaning accommodation is very limited. We also know that it gets very busy during the daytime, especially on weekends, because it's doable in a long daytrip from Almaty. So we bit the bullet and paid for a glamping yurt right on the edge of the gorge, way over our usual daily budget, so that we could hike into the canyon early in the morning before the tourist buses arrived.

    We went for a sunset stroll at the top of the gorge, Dan practiced archery (and hit the target!), wrapped up with a brilliant evening in the yurt, listening to oud music, playing cards and making decent head way on a bottle of vodka that a nice man in Zharkent insisted we buy. In retrospect, a rogue call to sink half a bottle of vodka before a 5.30am wake up for a hike, but wake we did.

    The good news: the canyon is stunning. It's called the 'valley of castles' for a reason, with soaring towers and minarets of red, white and black rock, layered like cake and especially vivid in low light. So much so, it's a popular spot for wedding photoshoots and even music videos—we spotted one particularly intense clifftop dance routine (see video, which we may have ruined with our giggling). Luckily, the canyon is empty in the evening and early morning, meaning we could walk around at sunrise almost alone—it would never be possible in China! Plus, the inside of our yurt was cosy and had an incredible view across the canyon to enjoy in the evening.

    The bad news: they hadn't told us in the booking listing that the toilet and shower block didn’t actually exist yet. So we had to use bathrooms in the visitor centre, which were 200m away, locked up overnight, and rammed with tourists during the daytime. There was only one staff shower, shared between at least 20 guests, and with no lock on the door 🙃 Not ideal, especially for the price tag! Dan is currently making a fuss with the manager to try to wrangle a partial refund.

    All in all though, despite the bathroom debacle, a beautiful stopover. Now onto somewhere less expensive, but no less insane...    Läs mer

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  • Chelsea & Dan’s Gap Year 2025
    The 'minaret'
    Mosque interior, wood, no nailsIs it a temple or a mosque?In the naveKazakh Fashion circa 18--Inexplicable bird costumeCars that remember glastnostSoviet bus stops are a whole thingThey go hard on town signsHorses on the highwayEagle statues aboundHalf naked men directing roadworks2

    Zharkent

    5–6 sep., Kazakstan ⋅ ☀️ 30 °C

    We divided a long drive with a single night stop at the town of Zharkent, the last town before Kazakhstan's eastern border with China. Zharkent only has 40k residents, but it has a supermarket, many gas stations, more than one hotel, and at least one cafe with one English-speaking server. Which makes it a megalopolis compared to our previous stop, which was just three tumbleweeds in a trenchcoat masquerading as a village.

    Zharkent's main (only) attraction is the wooden mosque, which was built entirely without nails in the 1880s, and is a mix of Islamic and Chinese architecture. It’s a Chinese Buddhist temple masquerading as a mosque, and also a mosque masquerading as a Chinese Buddhist temple— genius work on the part of the designers.

    Honestly though, we don't have much to say here, so we'll mostly just use this post to share pictures of the weird and wonderful we've seen on the roads of Kazakhstan so far. Enjoy!    Läs mer

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  • Chelsea & Dan’s Gap Year 2025
    Rainbow stripes in the red dirt
    Steppe horsesYurt in progressQuick lunch break at some ancient Genghis Khan stonesSand blastedMuad'dib1Big dune... Chelsea for scale2The grin doesn't betray just how bumpy these unsealed roads are at 60km/h1Our guy with the abacusKhleb i syr, breakfast lunch and dinner700yo willow tree3If anyone knows what this means, please enlighten usGood thing she grew up driving dirt roadsStart of the Aktau hikeHonestly some of the most incredible, alien landscapes we've ever encounteredThis guy just ran up to Dan to chill out in his shadow for a bitAktau valleysRaw quartz lying all over the ground1Katutau mountainsWide angle for context1Our hostess, Mama, and Nash Mash in the background

    Altyn-Emel National Park

    2–5 sep., Kazakstan ⋅ ☀️ 24 °C

    A golden eagle rose over the dusty plains as we rattled our way towards the Aktau mountains, following Genghis Khan’s path to that most sacred of locations: a decent lunch spot. He was on his way to invade China, and we are merely plundering the tiny ‘magazins’ of every one-horse town in southwest Kazakhstan for something, anything, to eat.

    Fortunately the locals make a round flatbread (khleb), a hard cheese (syr), and they love pickles. We ate a breakfast of gherkins, flatbread and cheese in the shade of a 700-year-old willow tree mangled by radiation poisoning. Felt pretty Soviet.

    On arrival in Basshi (or Kalinino as the Soviets renamed it), we were met by... no-one. This is a town of 1,000 souls, on the edge of the Altyn-Emel National Park, only 120kms from the border with China. After waiting an hour outside what we hoped was our homestay, a gnarled elderly lady appeared and began a three-day campaign of shouting cheerfully at us in a mix of Kazakh and Russian. ‘Mama’ as this esteemed personage insisted we call her, gave us apricot jam, fed us bread, and berated us to eat it by saying "NYAM NYAM"—we will love her forever.

    We have a rental 4x4, named ‘Nash Mash’—short for ‘nasha mashina’, meaning ‘our car’ in Russian. Somewhat worryingly, Nash Mash doesn’t always start on the first try, but we persevere. We put her through her paces driving out to the Singing Dunes, 5,000-year-old sand hills which emit a sonic boom when the sand shifts. Dan hiked to the peak and ran back down, while Chelsea investigated the local wildlife.

    There were a handful of other tourists here, but mostly our only friends were just lizards, hares, beetles, birds, domestic cows and donkeys, occasional gazelle in the distance, and (rogue) loads of huge eagles. They're everywhere, just sitting blithely at the side of the road.

    Nash Mash was further punished on the second day as we drove on thoroughly rutted dirt roads to the rainbow mountains of Aktau and the volcanic sea floor rock formations of Katutau. Because of our Chinese visa shenanigans we never managed to get to the rainbow mountains in Zhangye, China. But these are striped mountains very much in the manner of rainbows, and unlike China, we had them all to ourselves. So we feel like this was a big win.

    Back in Basshi, we went past the only marked shop on the map, and discovered the owner is a man who probably remembers the Romanovs, only sells alcohol, and calculated the bill using an abacus. Time travel is real!

    We are so excited to be in such isolated landscapes, often the only people for kilometres. Now and then you might see a man on a horse shepherding cows, or a man on a cow shepherding horses, or a cow on a horse shepherding men, but that's Kazakhstan. Just the way we like it.    Läs mer

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  • Chelsea & Dan’s Gap Year 2025
    It's nice!
    My wahf1A rare indulgence in good quality brunch, latkes are 'draniki' herePosing at the Green Bazaar with a bag full of local horse-milk cheeseHORSE.HORSE LEFTOVERS.European-style cafe cultureIn which Chelsea accidentally chops a flying pigeon with her fingers (at the Ascension cathedral)1Ascension cathedral. Note: we haven't been in a Christian country since we left Australia.3Copying Soviet statue poses. Who pulled it off best? Answers in the comments.Space heritageChelsea outside the rather large Central State Museum of HistoryLots of vegetables! It won't last 🥲On Kok Tobe Mt, sitting with an inexplicable statue of... The Beatles?Fortuitous timing... we spotted the moon rising over the mountains.Sunset from Koktobe hillTrying to pose without including too much carpark

    Almaty

    29 aug.–2 sep., Kazakstan ⋅ ☀️ 23 °C

    We're in Kazakhstan! Most of our travels so far have been *relatively* easy, but we're about to turn it up a notch. We’ve done some reading, but we don't really know much about Kazakhstan beyond what Dan learned from the cultural touchstone Borat, so it's exciting to smash those preconceptions. And the good news is: Kazakhstan it's nice, I like.

    Almaty is, apparently, the most European-style city in all of central Asia, so it means we are starting in the shallow end. Almaty DOES feel like a European city, although maybe that says more about how long we've been out of Europe than it does about Almaty. It has wide tree-lined avenues, large parks, statues, historic building façades, and shopping malls full of western brands. There is a good range of international food, and we were impressed by how many hospo staff speak decent English. They have quite a lot of British, Irish and Scottish themed pubs, for some reason. Chelsea was in rapture when we found a local chain of brunch restaurants serving halloumi, croissants, shakshuka, and eggs benedict. We know this absolutely won't last once we leave the city, so are making the most of it while we can (we already had a foreshadowing of what's to come at the Green Bazaar, where horse and goat meat predominates, and they keep unwanted horse ribs in old shopping trolleys when they run out of storage 😳). Despite such vibey establishments, there still aren't many people around, though perhaps we’ve become inured to the crowds of East Asia. Dan described it as 'wide, empty Prague', which feels apt.

    Another way in which Almaty diverges from its European front is the scale of ethnic diversity. It was an ancient Silk Road city, acting as a melting pot between East and West since the Mongol Empire (Dan is reading the travels of Marco Polo for background research). There are white Russians and eastern Europeans, central Asians, South Asian Muslims and Sikhs, Poles, Volga Germans, Uyghurs, and a surprisingly large contingent of Koreans. Some of these populations have been here for hundreds of years through regular migration, and some were forcibly transported to Kazakhstan during the Soviet era. You wouldn't know this from the Central State Museum, of course, which suggests that Kazakhstan went from a glorious period as world-conquering warriors of the Mongol golden horde, straight to a multi-ethnic paradise and space race leader, with nothing in between. They also record slightly different dates for the two World Wars. Hmmm.

    A side note on the weather: at this time of year, southern Kazakhstan has great weather (hot and dry during the day, cool at night). We are SO relieved. After months of sweating and avoiding the sunlight, we have finally turned the corner and left the humidity of the Pacific summer behind. Dan bought a jumper and we both picked up new trousers in Almaty in case we get cold in the evening: unthinkable between January and August! The sunscreen stays on all day! We can wear layers again! It goes to show how far our frame of reference has shifted this year, that we're now talking about Almaty in Kazakhstan as an oasis of relaxation and comfort.

    Never fear though: the comfort is short-lived. The most obvious way Almaty reminds you that you're still in a crazy country is the driving. After a hiatus in East Asia where the driving was generally tolerable, we're back in Mad Max territory. Taxis with cracked windscreens and no seat belts, clapped-out Soviet-era jalopies, vans with a 10% suspension lean, cars with huge metal poles strapped to the roof taking corners like it’s the Indy 500. At least in Southeast Asia, the roads were bad quality and crowded, so the scary driving happened at low speed. Here, as Chelsea commented, the road quality is quite good, so they just drive straight at each other at 100km/h. This was all typified by our Yandex taxi driver, who blithely swerved her busted green Toyota Yaris across three lanes of traffic while singing along to 'Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word' (the Blue cover version). A very apt song for an unapologetic nation.

    We're now leaving Almaty and heading into the backwoods for a 9-day roadtrip. Wish us luck!    Läs mer

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  • Chelsea & Dan’s Gap Year 2025
    ...for more reasons than we can count.
    ...also South Korea has the best flag....although China & South Korea were very close....and most expensive too. Not good holiday value....and special shout-out to Chongqing cyberpunk future city, our fave spot....also Best Art Galleries....plus hikes in Busan, Sacheon, Jeju & Seoul. You're never more than 30 mins from a mountain in SK....especially outside of Taipei....Chongqing noodles, Mapo Tofu and Sichuan Hotpot will burn forever in our hearts (and stomachs).

    East Asia in review

    29 augusti, Kina ⋅ ☀️ 22 °C

    Closing out another chapter of the year, East Asia has delivered some surprise big wins over the last three months, most notably in China and in our budget spreadsheet. There were some losses too: we had to cancel the second half of our plans in China, Dan’s waistline continues to recede, and we never want to visit Hong Kong again. When we wrapped up Southeast Asia at the end of our Vietnam visit, it was much easier to say different strengths and weaknesses of each of the eight countries we explored. This time, looking back at the five countries we've toured in East Asia, it's much more difficult. That's because (spoiler alert), Japan is outrageously fantastic by almost every measure. But we'll give it a fair go anyway!

    Favourite country: Japan 🇯🇵
    Although it's not the cheapest country we've visited this year, you absolutely get what you pay for. We could have spent the whole year travelling up and down the country without getting bored. Japan has the most varied cuisine, the best seafood, the best beer, the best public transport, the best hot springs, the best art galleries, the best service availability, the most chatty English-speaking locals. It's the easiest to navigate, the most reliable, it's safe and fun and colourful at every turn... it just never misses.

    Best city: Seoul 🇰🇷
    This is one area where Korea has the edge on Japan. We had a mixed experience in Korea overall, but Seoul is incredible. The variety of experiences, the natural beauty, the cultural richness, the affordable public transport. We also loved Osaka, Tainan (Taiwan) and Chongqing (China), but Seoul was the best all-rounder.

    Best value: Taiwan 🇹🇼
    China was also cheap, and (against popular wisdom) South Korea too, but Taiwan was even cheaper—and much more fun! We loved this island and think it probably packs the best 'bang for your buck' in the region. The culture is quiet and respectful, and it still hasn't been discovered by too many tourists like other parts of Asia. It has efficient, modern cities, sprinkled with beautiful temples and historic colonial buildings, as well as being covered in mountainous national parks. A hidden gem, that only cost us around £110/day for two people.

    Biggest disappointment: Hong Kong 🇭🇰
    The badge of dishonour goes to HK, which was the least interesting place we visited in East Asia. Maybe you need a local friend to show you the secret side of the city, but we found very little that we enjoyed here unfortunately. The food was worse than mainland China, there was much less to do, the streets were less vibrant, and the CCP's tightening grip was noticeable. A shame! But we won't be coming back when there are so many better options.

    Surprise hit: China 🇨🇳
    We expected China to be one of the most difficult and uncomfortable countries we visited this year, and had a lot of preconceptions about it before arriving. In reality, China vastly exceeded our expectations: vegetarian food was delicious and readily available, payment systems were efficient, transport was slick, hotels were cheap and comfortable, and people were nowhere near as rude as we'd been warned about. It was beautifully weird in places, with strange architecture, intense surveillance, hilariously bad translations, inexplicable products and bizarre clothing choices (Beijing Bikini!), but that was part of what made it so fun. There were downsides, especially the overcrowding at major attractions, but we would absolutely visit again to explore further!

    A few other notes...
    • Best landmark: Itsukushima Shrine, Japan 🇯🇵
    • Best hiking: Seoraksan, South Korea 🇰🇷
    • Least crowded: Taiwan 🇹🇼
    • Most expensive: Hong Kong 🇭🇰
    • Spiciest food: Sichuan, China 🇨🇳

    For now, we're off to the third and final chapter of our Asian experience: the Silk Road. Expect another big review post at the end of November 🌏    Läs mer

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  • Chelsea & Dan’s Gap Year 2025
    Tamsui streets, bubble tea to hand
    1Elephant Mountain sunset, Taipei 101 in all its gloryTaipei 101 dominatesWith our Polish friends we met in South Korea (and draft Taiwan Beer, finally!)1Tea eggs for breakfast—a Taiwanese innovation Chelsea highly approves ofSunsets in Taipei hit different1Taipei Fine Arts MuseumDan with an audiobook on, spotted interacting with the art228 Memorial Park - the rushing water is a lovely featureCatching our last cable car... maybe for the rest of the year?2Dinner in the tea fields hillsZhinan Temple in the foreground, Taipei 101 in the middle, Yangmingshan in the backXimen cocktails at Geography Bar - we both chose south east Taiwan fruits 🤷🏻‍♀️Tamsui water frontSpanish colonial fortFort San Domingo, former British consulate (and Chinese pirate base 🤩)Tamsui fort serving the goodsChelsea very pleased to be in possession of a whole bag of cakeTamsui poseur, waiting for happy hour

    Taipei (again)

    25–29 aug., Taiwan ⋅ ☀️ 33 °C

    Our last four days in Taipei were spent chasing final experiences of our favourite and most habitual things from East Asia (see the next post for the full wrap-up). Good food, bubble tea, excessively hot hiking, spitting, convenience stores, excellent seafood, and mixed bag public transport.

    We hiked up Elephant Mountain in obscene heat to see Taipei 101 at sunset, along with hundreds of others. A couple of Polish friends we met in Korea joined us for dinner, and we finally had Taiwan Beer on tap, which was excellent. We did however struggle to get home as the Taipei buses have taken a leaf out of the British playbook, and sometimes just don’t arrive. Chelsea managed to squeeze in a swim, surrounded by screaming children and old men performing glacial breaststroke. After 30 mins she quickly got out when an elderly gent decided to hawk and spit a yellow globule directly in the pool. We will not miss this habit.

    Taipei is full of vibey areas and interesting museums. This time we were here during the week, so we enjoyed drifting through neighbourhoods in the evenings when the heat dissipated somewhat, but did find them to be surprisingly quiet. We also caught the cable car to the tea plantations and had a sunset dinner of 'tea fried rice', again with very few people around. We finished our Taiwanese adventure with a visit to an old colonial fort and Japanese dinner in Tamsui port, after walking around for a while trying to find a restaurant open on a Thursday night. This relaxed pace was a welcome break from the hectic overstimulation of mainland China, but maybe we've become more accustomed to crowds than we realised over the last eight months. We'll have a rude awakening in our next few locations on the barren steppe!

    Taipei is great, and there's definitely more we could do here if we ever came back (especially at a cooler time of year). Tainan was our favourite city on the island, but we feel like we mostly 'completed' it there. The culture here is wonderful, the city streets are green, the mountains and national parks are enticing, the costs are low, and the people are friendly. It's been a fitting end to our tour of this part of the world. But now, to the airport for the next chapter...    Läs mer

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  • Chelsea & Dan’s Gap Year 2025
    Cocktails and Taiwanese whisky on the very cool 'Snail Alley'
    1Dan ordered the medicine-themed tray of shots at the 'Chinese pharmacy' speakeasy barOn top of Hayashi Department StorePlotting his future careerWeird and creepy exhibit in the Art MuseumTemple furnace burning symbolic paper money for Ghost Month. These are everywhere!Rolling aroundAnping colonial districtAnping Treehouse is pretty good for photo spotsAnping Fort—so good you could visit twice without realisingPeanut noodles in the Anping backstreetsOld Street delightsLanterns out on Shennong StBeer tasting in prison. The glass pane in the back is actually a door... the whole wall rotates.Chimei Museum approachEASTER EGG. He's been visited by Taiwanese spirits.

    Tainan

    22–25 aug., Taiwan ⋅ ☁️ 32 °C

    Ash and paper fragments swirled across the road, catching in our clothes and hair, a heat haze rising as we cycled past roadside shrines, their fires ablaze. Its 'Ghost Month' in Taiwan, and Taoist temples across the southern city of Tainan are stocked with symbolic paper money to feed the furnaces, appeasing the dead and obscuring the paths between worlds. So to celebrate Ghost Month in our own way, we did what any responsible tourists would do on our first night, and went out to discover some Taiwanese spirits in the city's cocktail bars! 🥴

    Tainan was the first place where Chinese and later European settlers landed on Taiwan. In fact, the term ‘Taiouan’ came to represent the entire island, and cities are designated by their compass location; Taipei is north, Tainan is south, Taitung is east, etc. Hence place names sound very similar! As the oldest ‘settled’ city Tainan was the capital for around 260 years, a key trading port for the Dutch, British, and later the Japanese, and is still considered the cultural and culinary heart of the country.

    Day two, having banished the ghosts of drinks past, we zipped around the city centre on YouBikes. Cycling showed off Tainan's Japanese colonial past and the ancient markets. We also went to see the Shinto shrine on the roof of the art deco Hayashi Department Store, and the Tainan Art Museum, designed by the same architect.

    Tainan doesn't have too many high rises, with most buildings no higher than ~6 storeys, covered galleries along the pavements, and plenty of open green areas, which we really love. The Art Museum had a triennial exhibition on architecture and urban design, and so we have both naturally been googling how long it takes to retrain as urban planners when we get back to the UK.

    Day three, we had a more relaxed day in the Anping neighborhood, where the original Dutch fort and colony were established. One of the main landmarks here is an old colonial shipping warehouse which has become overgrown with strangler fig trees since it was abandoned 100 years ago. We also explored the Anping Fort, before walking in a circle around the backstreets. Chelsea remarked on a beautiful old colonial building... only for Dan to point out that it was the fort that we had visited 90 minutes earlier 🥲 In the evening we visited Shennong St for some vintage shopping, and found a craft beer pub in a bare concrete room, which you could only enter by swinging open an entire wall of the building 😮 We also had dinner at a self-proclaimed 'Authentic Japanese restaurant', where a man from Hong Kong (who didn't speak any Japanese) served us the only properly spicy Taiwanese food we’ve had here 🤡. Only very old people speak Japanese in Taiwan nowadays so Dan has been causing offence when checking if Japanese is welcome, assuming people are either: geriatrics, or colonists.

    On our last morning before catching the high-speed train back to Taipei, we visited the Chimei Museum. This is an enormous building inspired by renaissance palaces, which looks like the White House and is home to an astonishing collection of European art and antiques. It has a natural history wing with taxidermied elephants and giraffes, Greek marble statues in the grounds, a hall of medieval weaponry from around the world, one of the world's best collections of antique violins, and artworks by Picasso, Dali, Chagall, Rodin, etc. It's like someone shaved off a chunk of the British Museum and plonked it half an hour outside the city centre in rural Taiwan. Completely bizarre.

    In conclusion, we had an amazing time in Tainan. We love the atmosphere, the environment, and the culture and silliness of it. (In the spirit of silliness, swipe to the last pic for an Easter egg...)    Läs mer

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  • Chelsea & Dan’s Gap Year 2025
    See our Koh Yao Noi post for the original
    Dan will skip anything (even roof tiles from the typhoon), in any waterBeach bar catTaiwan beer working its way up the beer ranking, though we've yet to have it on tap, the true testWhen your legs are too long for scooter 😂1Trees growing through ancient coral reefs in Kenting National Park 🤯Narrow gorge hiking'Wind-shaped tree'More gorge(ous) hikingCoral reef cliffsBeatles glasses and Gollum-like rock crawling... true British behaviour.GroovySweeping downhill in the sunViewpoint near the lighthouseMany stepsLighthouse installed because the Japanese kept getting shipwrecked and locals kept beheading them 😳Ice tea and book after we'd been hustled off the loungersMacca and Gollum both looove fish and chipsKenting Night Market1Dan tries a pineapple style in our boudoirFormost on Formosa'Land on me, when you're not strong' - Dan serenading this beetle

    Kenting

    20–22 aug., Taiwan ⋅ ☀️ 29 °C

    Signage at the southernmost point of Taiwan announces it is ‘The Heart of Asia’, a dubious claim given its location and history. However, scratch at the surface and you find Japanese influence, Korean bathrooms, Buddhist sculpture, and South East Asian night markets. Alright, Tourism Taiwan, let ‘em cook.

    We rented a scooter to hike in the Kenting National Park, trek round Eluanbi lighthouse. This gave us a chance to recreate a pic from our very first scooter of the year, on the Thai island of Koh Yao Noi (go back to mid-March to see the original). Dan's scooter handling has improved so much since then that he now gets road rage at slow drivers in front, like a true Asian expert (although, very Britishly, we never exceeded 50km/h). On the hike we were beset by very excitable lizards wearing jazzy green waistcoats who sprinted under our feet like they had a deathwish. The butterfly game has been exceptional, both in size and variety 🦋 Dan also serenaded a beetle friend who was very keen on his salty skin 🫠

    After hiking, we took a dip at the Bar Beach. We were admonished for sitting on the ‘hotel only’ loungers, despite the fact that they’d just sold us drinks 🤡 Back in town after yet another sweaty day in the hills and on the sand, we enjoyed the Kenting night market, where dozens of stalls pop up every evening selling local delicacies: BBQ oysters, scallion pancakes, and stinky tofu. The latter smells like Birmingham when the bin men strike. Absolutely rancid. We had drinks at a bizarrely out-of-place ‘cantina’, across from the ‘Formost Hotel’ (genius name) and were intrigued to discover a Fish & Chips stall that advertised its British credentials with pictures of Paul McCartney and… Gollum?

    Chelsea had hoped we’d left windowless hotels behind in SEA, but alas no, and our accommodation felt like the interior of a 70s boudoir, satin bedspread, cigarette smoke-infused walls and all. Dan managed to scrape his back kneeling in the shower because nothing is built for his height, and the heat and sun continue their assault on his delicate British skin, rendering him itchy and sore each evening. Chelsea’s South African childhood has insured that her skin suffers nothing more uncomfortable than a sandal tan. Dan’s only got to last a week more, and then we’ll be on to cooler climes for the rest of the year 🙏    Läs mer

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  • Chelsea & Dan’s Gap Year 2025
    Doraemon, and Chelsea in matching coat
    DIY Taiwanese hotpotHot pants?1Views across the valleyReminders of Taiwan's past as a Japanese colonyTyphoon damageJackfruit, the hostel catLoaded up for the next step. See Dan's new backpack on full display

    Luye

    18–20 aug., Taiwan ⋅ 🌩️ 28 °C

    In a small rural village on Taiwan’s East Coast, an enormous inflatable shoe hovers over the lush green tea plantations. Luye’s annual hot air balloon festival appears to be the only thing drawing tourists to this remote part of the island. Taitung is the nearest major city, but we jumped off the train a stop early and spent two days cycling around the tea plantations and marvelling at the balloons.

    Chelsea caught the sunrise balloon flights, seated on a hill above the flight field at Luye Highlands. The blue animated cat Doraemon is a major draw and extremely popular in Taiwan, drawing many oohs and aahs from the crowd as he expanded into the sky. Other popular balloons included a small Shiba Inu, and a pair of giant green inflatable pants, advertising an online betting platform (though gambling is illegal in Taiwan…).

    We stayed at the only guest house in town, about 30mins walk from anywhere. On our walks and cycles we saw much of the damage from the recent typhoon, and the power was out for most of second day to enable repairs, reinforcing our appreciation for aircon. We sweated and waited. Dan went cycling round the tea plantation in the midday heat (Chelsea had her fill in the early morning) and spent an afternoon in the only tea shop open, book in hand. To cool off in the evening, we visited a hot springs hotel (they always have a cold pool), but having travelled through Japan, it does not even merit comparison.

    It’s lovely to be out in green spaces, surrounded by mountains and close to the sea after a few very urban weeks. Chelsea is reading the harrowing novel ‘Green Island’ about Taiwan’s history. It is fascinating to reflect on the changes democracy has wrought here in the last ~30 years, and the tension that underlies a nation unrecognised by most governments.

    We’re looking forward to just under a week more along the coast, traveling by train (magnificent!) and bus (not quite so magnificent) to the southern tip of the island.    Läs mer

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  • Chelsea & Dan’s Gap Year 2025
    Chiang Kai Shek Memorial hall
    We have no idea what any of it says, but we looked at it like we understood for a whileJust casually spinning bayonets around at 2,000km/h.Bonsai admirerTemple parade at the night marketFood tour crew"give me more of that one"Oyster omelette. Would you take a chance?The Museum collection was all nabbed from Beijing by the retreating KMT army in the 1940sSo now they have all the best Chinese artefacts in the world 😅Sunset outside the National Palace MuseumEverywhere high rise apartment blocks loom over historical architectureEvening light2Intricate finials (a new word we just learned) on the Dalongdong Bao'an TempleA quiet temple, for once!Dan debates the next best Go move with the other gnomesSwishDalongdong Bao'anChelsea loves lamplight, like a mothTuna, egg and mashed potato sandwich from Taiwanese 7-Eleven. Total game changer.Just a man casually walking his pig.3Dan having his arse punished by the train station slide

    Taipei

    15–18 aug., Taiwan ⋅ 🌙 27 °C

    Throughout Japan and South Korea (and on social media) there is an enormous advertising campaign to promote Taiwan as a holiday destination—the Taiwanese government are keen to make as many international friends as possible, in case of a threatened Chinese invasion. It's not as famous for tourism as many of its regional neighbours, but many people we've met this year have raved about it, so we were excited to finally see the island for ourselves.

    We knew it was going to be a hit immediately, when there was a big slide right outside the train station exit 🤡

    Since Hong Kong was a bit of a disappointment, we were keen to get moving quickly and make the most of our trip here. It's still extremely hot and humid (all the travel blogs say to avoid coming in August!), but we compiled a long list of Taipei attractions and got moving immediately. These included:
    • Da'an Forest Park
    • Shida student neighborhood
    • Nanmen indoor market
    • Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall
    • Jianguo flower and jade markets
    • 1914 Huashan Culture Park
    • food tour at Monga Night Market
    • National Palace Museum
    • Dalongdong Bao'an Temple
    • Taipei Confucius Temple
    • Ningxia Night Market

    😳 A lot crammed into 2 full days!

    Some first impressions of the city: it's clean and efficient, with great public transport and signage, and an excellent network of dedicated bike lanes. Chelsea is extremely impressed with how much greenery there is on the streets, which helps to cool down the temperature and is also just aesthetically pleasing. The food is more oily and less spicy than other places in Asia, but the variety of street food is great and there are night markets everywhere.

    We've been really impressed with the temples here, and the historic art and sculpture we saw at the Palace Museum was perhaps the most incredible we've seen anywhere in Asia (which is a very high bar).

    Our hotel, despite being vehement about their non-smoking policy, smells very strongly of old cigarettes 😅 but it's a small price to pay for great location and cheap laundry.

    We're now off on a whistlestop tour around the island for a week, and then will be back in Taipei later. We'll give our final report on the city and the country then!    Läs mer

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  • Chelsea & Dan’s Gap Year 2025
    Up on the Peak
    Dropped into an amateur footie matchCat St/Upper Lascar for antiques snoopingNot particularly busy at the marketView from the poolAngel Hui's work in the art museum amusedRest day, with tea and digestivesYe Olde Anti-immigration1Walked around the Peak to get away from the crowdsChelsea is always getting dragged into doing photoshoots for strangersCharmed by the trams!Interesting architecture in HK at leastUbiquitous red taxis on Bank StGave in to some Sydney nostalgia 😭

    Hong Kong

    11–15 aug., Hong Kong ⋅ 🌧 28 °C

    Soooo... Hong Kong. We had been looking forward to this stop for a while, as what would hopefully be a small oasis of sanity in between the craziness of mainland China (much like Singapore was during our southeast Asian adventures). We’ve both visited Hong Kong very briefly before on long layovers, but had never had more than a few hours to explore. So pulling into our hostel at nearly 11pm, we had high expectations. Things weren't exactly as we had hoped though!

    On the plus side, Hong Kong is full of home comforts. Everywhere accepts contactless card payment. People stand to the side politely on escalators. English language is widespread, and the people we encountered were friendly and helpful. The visa office was on 'Gloucester Road'. Chelsea had a good swimming session at Tai Wan Shan pool. There was a Messina ice cream shop on the Peak. We even found some dark chocolate McVities digestive biscuits (Chelsea nearly cried with relief).

    Unfortunately, there are some elements of home which we didn't like as much! It was rainy. We found the food to be bland and uninspiring, like bad Chinese takeaway in Britain rather than the rich and exciting dishes we ate on the mainland. And most of all, Hong Kong is extremely expensive. To go from £12 a night in a private room with en-suite on the mainland, to £50 a night for uncomfortable bunks in a shared room opposite sweaty teenagers was a big dropoff in travel value. We also considered doing a half-day trip to Macau while we were here, only to find out that Macau is somehow even more extortionate—no thanks!

    Unfortunately, most of the activities we tried in Hong Kong were also a bit disappointing. It was surprisingly hard to find things to do, despite being such a famous city. The National Museum of Art was a big building without much in it. The National Museum of History had seen the recent, heavy hand of the CCP, with the main exhibition being on “National security” following the recent protests. We learned all about how the “Hong Kong Independence Movement” threatens the “stability of families and the economy”, and "Hong Kong's journey to true democracy". Do they know that quotation marks imply irony?

    We also went for a rubbish Indian dinner (Hong Kong's answer to Singapore's little India is pitiful), and Temple Street Night Market, which felt like a ghost town. Meanwhile, trying to get up to Victoria Peak on the tourist tram was a nightmare of overcrowding, with an hour-long wait to get both up and down along with ten thousand other tourists, just for an awful shopping mall on the summit, and a delay that nearly made us miss our flight.

    Overall, the city feels defeated. The markets are almost empty, many shops are shuttered. For geopolitical and financial reasons, it feels like the glory days are over, with investment shifting to Singapore, culture and tourism going to Japan and Taiwan, and Chinese shoppers staying on the mainland. We wondered if we were missing something, but it seems like a lot of commentators online are coming to similar conclusions. A big shame, but we can safely say that after four days, we never need to visit again.

    One last note: we went to the Chinese visa office, hoping to expedite our application process for the second half of our trip to China. To our dismay, we found out the process would take nearly 10 days, even paying for express service, and cost five times as much as we paid in Seoul: £250 for two visas! And we'd need to rearrange our entire trip to accommodate the wait, staying in an expensive but rubbish hotel in Hong Kong in the meantime. This led to a rapid recalculation, and a big change in plan for the next few weeks. Since we've already spent two weeks in China, we've made an executive decision to skip the visa headache of going back, and will redistribute the time to other countries that will give us more time to enjoy Central Asia instead.

    Hong Kong has been a disappointment. Especially considering how much we enjoyed mainland China by contrast. But it can't all be five-star experiences, and we're excited to move onto our next country... Taiwan!    Läs mer

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  • Chelsea & Dan’s Gap Year 2025
    Good luck prayer ribbons on top of the No.1 Bridge Under Heaven
    2Karst mountains topped by snack infrastructureCable car viewThe Avatar mountains1.5hrs up these (and many more) stepsViews across the mountainsCarol's son serving our drinks: he's learning the hospo trade earlyDan's modeling continues to be in high demandChelsea is forced to pose aloneThe 'mini-train' we refused to takeView from the mountain elevator 😮Crowds on the mountain topVR to see the mountains... that the VR room is on top ofMid-way up Tianmen Mt7am arrival at the base of the 999 steps to the Gate of HeavenGreat chance to look at fog on the ski lift, glass walkway, cliff path, suspension bridge...There is nothing for about 1000m to Chelsea's right, just imagine it2Cable car descent

    Zhangjiajie

    8–11 aug., Kina ⋅ 🌫 32 °C

    Zhangjiajie (we're still not 100% on the pronunciation) is most famous for its mountainous national parks. After a lot of time in Chinese cities, this was our chance to see some of the country's natural beauty... in theory. It has been a mixed bag!

    There is one budget hikers’ inn in Zhangjiajie, fortunately run by the only English-speaking person in a 200km radius. It meant we were staying with more white tourists in Zhangjiajie than anywhere else in China so far (bizarrely, mostly Italians). Host Carol gave us excellent advice for how to get the best out of the park while avoiding the worst of the crowds. We woke up early all three mornings to steal a march, and took a series of buses, cable cars, and steep stairs to explore the Wulingyuan area. The park features the towering sandstone stacks that are most famous as the backdrop for the Avatar film. The stacks are extraordinary, with some precariously balanced like Jenga towers, and others smoothly striated like the shaved sides of a döner kebab spit. Some of them echo when you shout across the valley, which was justification for domestic visitors to indulge in bellowing and screaming into the void at top volume. Curiously, they kept screaming everywhere else in the park too—perhaps hoping for more echo opportunities?

    There are hundreds of viewpoints along the walkways, all of which follow the Chinese hyperbolic naming tradition. '#1 Heavenly Jade Cloud Bridge of General Zhang Inspecting his Magnificent Turtles' or 'Fascinating Golden Platform where Imperial Dragon Reaches Towards the Gods', etc. Dan was absolutely furious because all the maps in the park change orientation at each new location and are consistently mislabelled. Plus, the 'You are here' marker is always rubbed off because so many people have touched it, making it almost impossible to work out where you are. "I may be a Humanities student, but even I know it's cartographically unjustifiable," he raged. This led us, at one point, to take a "shortcut" which actually involved climbing up 1.5 hours of unbroken steps... a sweaty endeavour.

    Our last day, we woke at 5am to catch the world's longest cable car (7km!) up Tianmen Mountain, the most popular spot in Zhangjiajie. The clouds gave us an incredible swirling view on the way up, although it was unfortunately too foggy to see anything more than 20m away once we were on the plateau. A nightmare for domestic tourists... what are they meant to photograph? We saw a lot of forlorn Chinese taking pics of pure blank fog, and wondered what they were hoping for. Tianmen is also home to the 999-step staircase to the Gate of Heaven, which we bravely completed. 999 steps sounds like a lot, and after a 5am alarm, it bloody felt like it too. And we couldn't even see the ‘gate’ at the top. Bit of a bummer, but assuaged by our smugness for completing it.

    Some reflections on Chinese domestic tourism so far. Chinese cities are exciting: big crowds, loud noise, structured activities, focus on convenience and minimal effort... these things make the cities vibrant, intense, efficient and full of life. But the same things become disadvantages when you visit somewhere that ought to be serene and natural. Zhangjiajie is very busy, with food and souvenir stalls everywhere, heavily curated walkways, lots of cable cars and escalators, and blatant disregard for animal welfare: signs telling people not to feed the monkeys or pick up baby turtles are universally ignored. You can hire a drone and VR headset, or ride a simulator, to imagine what it must be like to be right there at the mountains (despite being right there at the mountains). There are a lot of bins and litter pickers around, but still plenty of trash near the pathways. Tour guides with loudspeakers screech at their groups, who block the paths and force you to push past unless you want to walk at negative km/h. If you are unlucky enough to be going in the same direction as them at the same time, you can end up queuing for hours just to ride a 2-minute elevator. We are abandoning British manners out of necessity, pushing past slow walkers and shoulder checking kids who try to cut into queues ahead of us. No one appears to mind getting shoved. Live by the sword, etc.

    This is all the inevitable consequence of having an easily-accessible, world-class landmark in a country of 1.4 billion people. It really is incredibly beautiful! And when you get a moment away from the phones, flags and crowds, you can appreciate just how monolithic the sights are. We can see why everyone wants to come, and why the government has spent so much time and money on the infrastructure to allow thousands of people to visit every day: the demand is high, and the scenery justifies it. We're glad we came, crowds notwithstanding—visiting overcrowded, consumerised landmarks is part of the Chinese experience anyway. Besides, if these same mountains were in Europe or the US, they'd be just as popular and overcrowded with Instagram tourists, so it's not an exclusively Chinese problem.

    The question is, does having all this tightly-controlled infrastructure help to protect the park by keeping tourists contained, or turn it into a Disneyland and bastardise the natural beauty? Debate in the comments 😅 in the meantime, we're on our way to Hong Kong for an overdue anniversary meal!    Läs mer

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  • Chelsea & Dan’s Gap Year 2025
    Posing at the Liziba Station viewing platform
    Different kinds of posingLocal hotpot restaurantZoom in to see all the floating chillies 🌶️😳Sichuan street foodAnother photo opp at the People's Liberation Monument (bonus CCTV camera for added authenticity)Diagonal street marketNight view across HongyadongBridge timeSichuan opera highlightsSpot the subtle Beijing bikiniLiziba train, hotpot tunnel, nighttime skyline... just a few mad Chongqing moments compiledChongqing Arts CentreCity-inspired gallery artworksShibati culture areaEvening beers with a riverside view, at Longmenhao Old StreetWhat a sunset!Delicious Chongqing Noodles on our way to the next stop!

    Chongqing

    4–8 aug., Kina ⋅ ⛅ 41 °C

    Most people will never have heard of Chongqing, unless they've seen the viral TikTok videos over the last couple of years. It might be world's best-kept secret (though perhaps short-lived).

    Depending on how you count, it has a population between 23-32 million people, making it arguably the biggest city on earth 😳 it was the designated capital of China during WW2, where resistance against the Japanese was organised. Now, it's a manufacturing behemoth: one third of ALL laptops in the world are built in this city.

    The main attraction of Chongqing though is the city itself. It is built on a nest of rivers, gorges and steep hills—basically, they have squeezed 30 million people into a landscape with no flat land. That means buildings, public transport, roads and infrastructure become an internecine maze of levels. You enter a shopping mall at what feels like the ground floor, only to go down five escalators and exit onto a tree-lined boulevard. You descend into a tunnel to catch a cable car, but go up three floors in a lift to hail a taxi. It has the world's deepest metro station, but within three stops you'll see rooftop bars out of the train window. There's a monorail that runs through a residential building—a tourist attraction in its own right, with a viewing platform seven storeys below, and that viewing platform (which feels like it’s at regular road level) is itself ten storeys above the river. It's the most discombobulating place imaginable. They call it the "8D city" for a reason: it's got layers like Shrek and a map like a hairball.

    Needless to say, we love it. The nighttime views of the illuminated skyline are mind-blowing. The cable car across the Yangtze was stunning. Even getting lost in a shopping mall was bizarrely fun too. We were a little disappointed not to be here on a Saturday, because they have the largest drone shows in China every week, but alas that just means we'll have to come back again some day. What a shame.

    Chongqing is also one of the most affordable cities in China. Our hotel (on the third floor of a 19-floor building that runs from -5 to 14, of course), cost us just £11/night for a comfy private room. It was also full of cats and right below the communist police HQ. Dan has been suffering with heat rash a bit, but we bought some mysterious medical cream at the Chinese pharmacy which is helping a lot. We don't want to know what the active ingredient is so have avoided translating the label. He is also recovering from a canker sore inside his lip, which means it's probably not the best time to be in the spicy food capital of China...

    Right now, Chongqing is at the heart of the catastrophic and news-worthy heatwaves in China—it's been consistently over 40⁰C for weeks, with people sheltering in tunnels and underground shopping malls to escape the heat. It is also the best place in China for spicy Sichuan food, so we killed two birds with one stone by visiting an underground restaurant for spicy hotpot (RIP Dan's tender lip). The restaurant is in an abandoned train tunnel, which doubled as an air-raid shelter during WW2, and diners sit along a 520m tunnel served by robot waiters. It's advertised as "the second largest cave hotpot in the universe": the #1 is also in Chongqing, is even bigger, open 24hrs/day, and seats nearly 6,000 people. That's a lot of Sichuan peppers! 🌶️

    The last thing we have to talk about here is the Sichuan Opera. It's a kind of variety show that's evolved over 700 years or so, and there are loads of small theatres running shows throughout the province. Our Finnish friends in Chengdu recommended this, and we're so glad we went in Chongqing since we missed it at our last stop. The performances are like nothing we've ever seen before: clowning acrobats with candles, shadow puppetry, long-spouted teapots wielded like weapons, ornate costumes, high kicks, fire breathing marionettes, and (the main attraction) 'face changing'. We'll let the video speak for itself.

    Overall, we're so glad we adjusted our schedule to spend an extra night in Chongqing, on the advice of everyone we've met along our travels. They were right! This place is incredible!    Läs mer

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  • Chelsea & Dan’s Gap Year 2025
    Bridge beers
    Busy scratchingBusy pooingBusy wrestlingThey're so naughtyThe giant pandas, a bit more sedateJust sorting through bamboo like a weary secretary reviewing paperwork.Panda art1Panda handlesPanda merchDumpling class (see 'Hongers' in the white top)He will not be distracted by Hongers' idle chitchatDumpling masters!Beers by the riverLittle LhasaMore girls out for intense, evening photoshoots

    Chengdu

    1–4 aug., Kina ⋅ ☁️ 37 °C

    Chengdu belongs to the pandas, and 21 million people just live there. The city has engraved being the ‘panda town’ so hard that even the public bins and the metro overhead handles are shaped like panda heads. It’s a wonderfully green city (or, as green as possible in a city this size), with vines growing artfully around pylons, highway struts, and lots of trees along the river. Approved!

    We arrived after a quick 4hr bullet train and checked in at our hostel. In every new location we mill about a bit trying to find our accom, as every hostel appears to have three names, none of which are ever on the building. Once installed at Local Tea/Poshpackers/Aloha Hostel, Chelsea settled in the common area to finish her newsletter, and immediately made friends with a couple of excellent Finns, Lotte and Ivan. That evening the four of us had imported Beerlaos (the champion beer!) and went for a spicy Sichuan dinner that had us sweating.

    Next morning, we got up at 6am to beat the heat at the Panda Research Base, and still stood in a 30min queue of salivating domestic tourists to enter. Chinese people looooooove pandas. Jack Black is a national hero because of his voiceover role in Kung Fu Panda, even though his voice obviously doesn’t even feature in the Chinese version. The amount and variety of panda products available for purchase across the city is mindboggling. Panda hats, backpacks, toys, bottle openers, keychains, ice creams, sweets, jigsaws, walking sticks. If you can slap a panda face on it, you can sell it here.

    The highlight of the Panda Base was actually the red pandas, who aren't related to giant pandas and are clearly made of sterner stuff. They were out and about, tumbling and eating and just generally being the coolest animal ever (Chelsea’s opinion). Their Latin name translates as ‘fiery red shining cat’, and that about sums up their appeal. We did see plenty of giant pandas too, early enough to be demolishing their bamboo rations before turning into snoozy lumps around 9am. At 36° it was almost double what they’re typically used to in the Himalayan foothills. They were therefore tucked into their airconned indoor ‘panda pavilions’ while we streamed with sweat outside.

    Our hostel offered a ‘Dumpling Making Party’in the evening, which we joined along with our new Finnish friends. Chelsea’s momo-making is a source of regular anxiety in our normal lives as her efforts inevitably fall apart in the pan, so this was not just a party: it was a research mission. We fashioned some extremely goofy looking dumplings, and then they were magicked away to be steamed, so Chelsea’s goal of discovering the secret to potstickers continues. We were also entertained (unintentionally) by a posh Cambridge student who had been fired from his teaching placement in Hong Kong, which he insisted on calling 'Hongers' 🤢

    Chengdu is the nearest we will get to Tibet, which we have sadly decided not to visit on this trip (9 days there would have cost about 7% of our annual budget) 🫠, and consequently has a vibrant ‘Little Lhasa’. We spent an evening in the area around the Wuhou Temple grounds, filling up on delicious, local, veggie street food. These included: a noodle wrap, griddle hot tofu, nutty nougat, berry tea, lightly sugared dough balls, and fried spicy potatoes (Dan is in heaven).

    We continue to fascinate the local children, eliciting plenty of shy requests for photos (which we don’t mind at all), and also a lot of covert filming and photography. Just ask! We suppose in a country of constant surveillance no one would think it rude to blatantly film a stranger 📽️

    It’s still mad hot, and this morning we thought we’d make our way sedately to the train station for our next stop, only to get caught short on time and end up racing through Chengdu East station. Public sprinting through crowds of slow tourists in 40° heat, 20kgs bags strapped front and back, through airport-style security, is not a repeatable experience. Needless to say, we missed our train anyway by about 1 minute 🥵

    But, we persevere. Next, the largest city on earth!    Läs mer

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  • Chelsea & Dan’s Gap Year 2025
    Bell & Drum Tower (our new nicknames?)
    Mount Huashan range, seen from the train. Chinese landscapes are mindblowing .Enormous renewable infrastructure 👀Amazed at the food optionsTraditional performance at our restaurant. It came out of nowhere, a bit of a shock tbh!Unreconstructed figures in Pit 2Pit 22Pit 1... the best preserved army....and the crowds coming to look at it at 10am on a Wednesday.Zoom in: every character is different.A General. (Model for the General in Mulan?)Every soldier was painted in life-like colours, although this has degraded over the last 2000 years.Defu Lane for dinnerCrayfish tray, before......and after 😳Evening photoshoots at the Bell & Drum towerMore than any other country, domestic tourists ask for photos with us (totally out-glamming Chelsea)South Gate of the Xi'An city wallsNice and quiet up on the walls at 8am, around 37°The edge of the city wall, and the ever expanding modern city beyondMalatang hot pot, in the Muslim quarter. Elderly proprietor was very happy to see us eat so much35° at 10pm in the bustling Xi'An Muslim Quarter

    Xi'an

    29 juli–1 aug., Kina ⋅ ☀️ 41 °C

    Despite our Qingdao Beer Festival adventures we were up early on Tuesday for our first high-speed train in China. Travelling over 1,200km in 7hrs to the inland Silk Road terminus of Xi'an, couldn’t help think of Marco Polo spending months to cover the same distance.

    First thing to note: coming inland means the temperature is even higher. This is the third time this year where it's been consistently over 40⁰C in the daytime, and it's always when we get far away from the sea (central Australia, southern Laos). Bodes well for us spending the rest of August and September crossing the world's largest landmass 🫠 Having learned this lesson in Qingdao, we have been trying to do our activities in the morning, spend most of the day indoors with aircon, and then venture out again for dinner when the streets come back to life. That meant getting up early for a taxi to see the main attraction in Xi'an: the Terracotta Warriors at Emperor Qinshihuang’s mausoleum.

    Only discovered in the mid-70s by drought-stricken peasant farmers digging a well, the terracotta army comprises 8,000+ life-size clay soldiers built for the mausoleum of the first Qin Emperor, over 2,000 years ago. There was no mass production so potters from across China were engaged (read: forcibly conscripted) meaning every single figure looks different and they represent a wide range of Chinese ethnicities. The buried figures were damaged in looting not long after they’d been made, due to the sudden death of the Emperor and the chaotic rise of the Han Dynasty.

    For the last fifty years, archaeologists have been painstakingly uncovering and reconstructing the figures, including horses, archers, chariots, soldiers and generals—it takes five years for a team to rebuild just one figure. The army is split between three pits, with Pit 1 being by far the largest and best reconstructed, but there's an enormous amount of conservation work still to complete. We can only imagine how it might have been to visit in the 80s when everything was still mostly buried, and again now when around 1,500 figures have been restored. It’s also now thought that there is more that will never be uncovered due to development: ancient warriors, sumptuous riches, and courtiers’ tombs sunk beneath sewing factories, highways, and government offices as Xi’an has expanded.

    We'd been warned that it gets busy in the summer, so it's best to do the recommended route in reverse: start with the least busy spots, and finish with the ones that would be busy regardless. This was good advice, as it meant we could explore Pit 3 and Pit 2 without too much traffic. The crowds in Pit 1 though were something else. We knew major tourist attractions in China would be like this, so we went in with our eyes open. Hundreds of tour groups standing dozens of people deep for hundreds of metres, shoving, sweating, waving flags, shouting, kids squeezing under your armpits, all for a view and a photograph does detract somewhat from any awe you might hope to feel. We found a gap to get a quick look, and moved on relatively fast!

    The army is buried a little out of town, but Xi'an itself is also fascinating. It was the ancient capital, and has an exceptionally well-preserved city wall. Chelsea loves a medieval city wall, and this ranks up there with York, UK and Lucca, Italy. Xi’an’s wall was restored in the 80s by a mayor with powerful foresight and an iron fist, following decades of the surrounding urban poor desperately stealing the wall’s bricks to build shelter. Because of the ancient history, Chinese domestic tourists—especially women—love to come here and dress up in period costumes. The streets are filled with girls in ornate headdresses, flowing gowns and intricate makeup, and in the evening they all congregate at the scenic spots for photoshoots. Whereas Qingdao is like a European beer town on steroids, Xi'an feels like it is straight out of a fantasy novel.

    Chelsea got up at 5:30am to do the 14km circuit around the city walls, witnessing early morning table tennis, group dance classes motivated by Boney M, and ladies in loose pink pyjamas glacially practicing tai chi. Dan had a lie-in and then a bumper day of travel planning. We've now locked in most of our travel and accommodation until early September, which gives us a break from the constant rolling admin.

    Despite our initial concerns, it has been surprisingly easy to get hold of varied and tasty vegetarian food so far (with some seafood). Sizzling tofu, stir-fried vegetables, veggie malatang hotpots... China hasn't been anywhere near as porky as we were worried it might be. We even took a chance on a Xi'an specialty, an extremely messy tray of crayfish tails, where you suck the meat out of the shells, wearing plastic gloves for protection: no cutlery, no plates. Not sure whether it will catch on worldwide, but it was a delicious novelty. We are very pro-spice; eating here would be much harder if you didn’t fancy setting your mouth on fire. We’ve already clocked an 8 on our 10pt scale 🔥

    And the food is only going to get more adventurous as we head to our next stop, Sichuan province. Stay tuned!    Läs mer

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  • Chelsea & Dan’s Gap Year 2025
    1L beers
    Ferry terminal a breeze, despite 15minute questioning at immigrationFeels like an appropriate, if worrying, sloganUrban beach street artTsingtao brewery museumQingdao beach. Tempting, but no.We like these strange characters on all the roof cornicesSassy dragon at the Temple of the Goddess of HeavenView from Signal MountainBreakfast beer and Spanish mackerel dumplingsDo as the locals doSwastika-emblazoned early Tsingtao bottlesBottle says 'absolutely pure' above a swastika 😬'Consume' leads to 'perceived attractive quality'... is this just a diagram for beer goggles?Qingxi King tent quiet early onTent got busier as the night went onKeep an eye on our hero in greenOur new drinking buddiesVibrant nightlife on the streets1German heritage 🤝 Chinese architectsTrain station for the high speed train

    Qingdao

    27–29 juli, Kina ⋅ ☀️ 35 °C

    Howzit, my China! (one for our South African readers). Bit of a long update, as we have a lot of thoughts to share 😆

    We arrived in the Middle Kingdom on Sunday morning, after sailing overnight from Incheon to Qingdao on a 15hr ferry, in a private room that included a bath! Luxury for all of £70. We are a little late as we forgot that the ferry only goes on alternate days. Whoops.

    Qingdao is an unusual starting point, but we have really enjoyed easing into China here. It’s the country's beer capital, boasting the Tsingtao Brewery and the Qingdao International Beer Festival (essentially a Chinese Oktoberfest). Unsurprisingly, this also means it is known as the most laidback Chinese city. A visit to the Tsingtao Brewery Museum provided historical context and two starter beers at 10am 😂 German occupation of Qingdao in the 1880s brought with it a brewery. The old bottles have a swastika on them with the words ‘Absolutely Pure’ above, which is… awks 🫠 (and predates the Nazis by 30 years, bizarrely). The Japanese conquest led to Tsingtao being refined into a Sapporo-style product. After 1949, Tsingtao was nationalised, and the brewmasters re-titled as ‘Party Secretaries.’

    The quality of the beer became a matter of national importance and pride. You can feel this throughout the city: beer flows in their veins! The museum and festival are completely family-friendly (for better or worse), with wobbly-floor exhibits for kids to experience the feeling of drunkenness, and fun mascots to help promote the health benefits of beer drinking. Is anyone going to tell them?

    The annual beer festival runs for a full month from mid-July, so we arrived with it in full flow. We visited the Qingxi King tent and had a ball in the Tsingtao tent, where we were adopted by a lovely family who insisted we have some of their seafood platter and several 1L beers 🍻 'Tent' is a bit of a misnomer—these are like aircraft hangars with enormous music stages and thousands of seats. Nothing is small in China.

    This feels like the right time to share our beer rankings for the year so far, scored out of 10. Criteria include flavour, availability on draft, packaging, and whether it is good in the heat:
    🇹🇭 Leo: 2
    🇰🇭 Hanuman: 3
    🇹🇭 Chang: 4
    🇻🇳 Pasteur St: 4
    🇰🇷 Cass: 4.5
    🇰🇷 Terra: 5
    🇮🇩 Bintang: 5.5
    🇻🇳 Saigon: 5.5
    🇸🇬 Tiger: 6
    🇹🇭 Singha: 6
    🇻🇳 Hanoi: 6
    🇻🇳 Huda: 6.5
    🇰🇭 Angkor: 7
    🇨🇳 Tsingtao: 7
    🇰🇭 Cambodia: 7.5
    🇯🇵 Kirin Ichiban: 8
    🇯🇵 Asahi: 8
    🇻🇳 Bia Hoi & Vietnamese local drafts: up to 9
    🇯🇵 Sapporo: 9
    🇱🇦 Beerlao: 9.5

    Despite having an international festival, we seemed to be the only white people in the entire place. Dan has been a hit with Chinese children who all want a photo with him (especially when he lets his curls range free). We have been subject to a fair bit of staring, but it never feels malicious. At the Huilan Pavilion, which features on the Tsingtao label, we were greeted with smiles and reciprocated many a thumbs up.

    We also witnessed several cases of public urination 😂 China smells like the 90s, before smoking in public was banned, but there are clearly moves to tidy up, with many litter pickers sweeping and a ubiquitous police presence. As millions of people join the middle class from one generation to the next, there’s an inevitable adjustment period. But we have been pleasantly surprised so far by how clean and modern everything feels.

    Food-wise, things are also looking up after the challenges of Korea! We’ve found that if we look for Muslim-friendly restaurants, and Buddhist temples, we can get pork-free meals. Spanish mackerel dumplings have been a fast favourite, and we’re back in egg fried rice territory. Garlic is also back on the menu 🥳 Breakfast foods are still absent and dairy a distant dream, but having been in Asia for seven months now we are habituated to soy sauce in every single meal.

    It is still hot, cracking well over 35° daily, and the city seems to pick up at night, with rowdy tables appearing on pavements. We have resolved to sleep in later and shift our days to join the nightlife. The heat also means we are seeing a LOT of the 'Beijing Bikini', where chubby middle-aged men stay cool by rolling their T-shirt up under their armpits, baring their tummies to the world. We will endeavour to get Dan on this trend.

    Enjoying China is about being prepared: downloading Chinese in Google Translate, setting up eSIMS, WeChat, Alipay and two VPNs. Going from our cards being rejected 70% of the time in Korea to paying through WeChat QR codes on our phones has been a revelation. It doesn’t always work and sometimes we have to re-verify with our passports mid-payment (awkward as hell), but between us we get there eventually and have not yet needed to run for cash. We can see that this would be a nightmare if you landed here without prior warning, but so far everything has gone relatively smoothly for us 🤞

    Next stop, Xi'an 🚄    Läs mer

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  • Chelsea & Dan’s Gap Year 2025
    Namsan Tower at sunset
    The infamous 4-in-1 pint: double strength, double size.Inside a model of the 'turtle ship'1Excited to debut the orange sunglasses we bought in JejuChangdeokgung PalaceChangdeokgung PalacePappedCooking japchaeBibimbap & gimbap5Extremely full after seven coursesNamsan night views. The city is HUGEInwangsan daytime views, for contrastSummit panoramaItaewon drinksSquid Game-themed beers? Okay.Maybe those beers were a bit too effectiveKorean War MemorialGangnam StyleAustralian friends reunitedLast night feast with Kristian and Manti

    Seoul

    21–26 juli, Sydkorea ⋅ ☀️ 31 °C

    Seoul has redeemed South Korea for us! We've spent five days trying to cover a lot of ground around the city, clocking up 15-20k steps every day despite the heat and humidity. We've also been out late a few times, which has left us pretty exhausted and ready for the calm relaxation and slow pace of China 🫠

    On day one, we went to a craft beer pub with Kristian, an Aussie colleague of Chelsea’s, in the trendy student area of Hongdae. Dan felt it would be immoral to say no to a 1-litre glass of 8.8% beer, and we missed the last bus, which lead to a very slow morning after. We also spent an evening in the edgy neighborhood of Mullae with Manti, Chelsea’s friend from Rhodes days, and had drinks in the westerners' nightlife hotspot of Itaewon, where we finally took our chance to go into one of the 'self photo studios'. Mixed results, see above. We took a pilgrimage to upmarket Gangnam, which was underwhelming, despite the original K-pop banger. Nobody on the street was doing the PSY horse-riding dance move 😢

    South Korea is a hotspot for plastic surgery because of the K-beauty industry. Chelsea’s skin care process consists of two things: drink water, wear sunscreen, so K-beauty culture has been a source of constant bemusement. We met two Singaporean girls in our hotel who were on a cosmetic surgery tour, and very open about their procedures. They travelled to Seoul for two weeks: got their eyes reshaped and spent the rest of the time sitting in the cheap hotel with bruised faces. It's such an alien idea to us that anyone would travel this way, but this was their third such trip: boob jobs in Australia, lipo in Thailand, eye lids in Korea. Chelsea recommended the excellent Korean novel ‘If I Had Your Face’ to them and one asked ‘Is that on Netflix?’ 🙃

    Other activities: we explored Changdeokgung Palace, took a cable car up to Namsan Tower for sunset city views, and hiked Inwangsan in the sweltering midday heat. The hiking across South Korea has been exceptional—the entire country is mountainous, with cities squeezed in between peaks wherever there is space. We also went shopping and took a Korean cooking class in tourist-central Myeongdong. Gimbap, pajeon, japchae, tteokbokki, bibimbap... it was great to understand more about meat-free Korean cuisine, which has been a persistent difficulty since we landed in Busan. We'll 100% be bringing some recipes home.

    The museums in Seoul are excellent too—we visited the War Memorial Museum and National Museum, as well as a museum about the life of Admiral Yi Sunshin, who is something of a Korean national legend for repeatedly destroying the Japanese navy in the 1590s without ever losing one of his innovative 'turtle ships'. In more modern history, neither of us knew very much about the Korean War before we came here, so it's been an education! It's impossible to avoid comparing South Korea to Vietnam... both countries had a North-South partition after WWII, following a long history of colonial occupation. Both had wars where America supported the capitalist South against the communist North. But with very different outcomes, and with the US coming off as a saviour in the Korean narrative, a villain in Vietnamese history. The Korean War never technically ended, and tensions are particularly high at the moment with North Korean soldiers currently deployed against Ukraine, so it's no surprise that Seoul is full of uniformed soldiers and very visible bomb shelters. The shadow of a potential North Korean attack looms very large.

    Seoul has definitely improved our overall impression of Korea, and we can see why people rave about it so much. The public transport is slick and so cheap, the views stunning, the neighbourhoods varied, the people helpful and friendly, the Squid Game merch hilarious and unavoidable. But then some of the challenges we've had: transport outside Seoul is confusing and difficult for foreigners to book, payment systems are inconsistent (why don’t they accept Mastercard?!), food very meat-heavy, bathroom towels inexplicably tiny. Why does every hotel in Korea stock only hand towels? Why?! So we can't say it's been our favourite country this year—definitely a mixed review.

    We've now been on the road for 200 days. Our Chinese visas came through without a hitch, so we're jumping on the ferry across the Yellow Sea. We may scale back any spicy takes for the next while, so if you see an inexplicable emoji in future posts, read between the lines.

    We’ve done light Asia (Singapore), medium
    Asia (Korea), and now we’re graduating to extreme Asia.

    Bring it on!    Läs mer

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  • Chelsea & Dan’s Gap Year 2025
    Windy up top
    Sinheungsa TempleMega Choco-latte in Sokcho marketHeavy rain effects on the Seoraksan riverDan made a friendAnd another friendChelsea makes a friendUlsanbawi from below1Ulsanbawi from above1Bumping into our Polish friends from Jeju on the hikeVeggie malatang, our new staple dinnerMud walkA bit messyApproved!Sokcho lakeWe finally got some veggie pajeon!Sokcho skylineOur cute hostel, inexplicably Tintin-themed

    Seoraksan

    18–21 juli, Sydkorea ⋅ ⛅ 27 °C

    South Korea is a roughly rectangular country, and we've decided to do all four corners. That meant travelling all the way from Jeju (the southwesternmost point) to Sokcho, in the northeast, which was a bit of an arduous journey since public transport in South Korea is confusing! The journey was further complicated because we needed to stop off in Seoul en route to submit our applications for Chinese visas. Fortunately this was a painless process, and we're hopeful that we'll be able to pick up our approved visas when we're back in Seoul later this week.

    In the meantime though, we've spent the weekend in Sokcho, the gateway to Seoraksan National Park. Seoraksan is widely considered to be South Korea's best national park, so it was on our 'must do' list. Dan has been singing 'Seoraksan, you don't have to put on your red light' for days to get in the mood. The views of the north of the country on the 2.5hr coach from Seoul were stunning, so we had high hopes.

    Dan wanted to do a long hike across the national park, scaling the main peak, so he started early to give himself enough time. Meanwhile Chelsea took the very steep path to Ulsanbawi Rock. Unfortunately for Dan, South Korea has been experiencing torrential rain, flooding and landslides at the moment (which we've somehow managed to dodge), and the long hike was closed. So he ended up coming back and going up Ulsanbawi too, meaning we did the exact same hike but separately. Still beautiful though!

    Back in Sokcho town, Chelsea went for a walk around the lake, which included a mud path for foot massage and wellbeing, unexpectedly fantastic. Her feet felt amazing afterwards: top hike recovery. In the evening we went for a few drinks and found a recently-launched, open air pub on the waterfront, with just a handful of people drinking. After ordering drinks, the bartender came to tell us that we could go into the nightclub area for free. This was behind an industrial sliding door that you had to pull a lever to open. Inside was a cavernous warehouse with blue strobe lights, pumping club music (all automated, no DJ), oil drum standing tables... and no people. This whole setup, a complete ghost town. It was bizarre, but we're glad we found it 🥳

    With that, we're on our way back to Seoul to see some friends and wrap up our Korean adventures in the big city.    Läs mer

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  • Chelsea & Dan’s Gap Year 2025
    We don't know what the caption says, but probably "I love Jeju" or some similar lie.
    2The resident giant husky at our hostel, whose name is Doggy.Dry waterfall #1Beach time1We found the ice cream fish again!Tornado potatoVideo art protected onto the building side'Healthy But Awesome Flavours' almonds are one of the few meat-free snacks we've enjoyed. Cute tho.Should have known better, this island has so many red flags.A brief break in the cloud coverSummit gimbapThe volcanic crater at 1,950m (it was completely filled with clouds on first arrival)Halla-san panoramaSign on the landing of our hostel, after 6 flights of stairs. Very true for Dan's calf muscles.Pork & tangerine marketTangerine merch (the orange glasses will be debuted in an upcoming post, rest assured)Chelsea breaks the rules for the first time in her lifeLooking for dry waterfall #2The only waterfall in Asia that flows directly into the sea.Street sculpturesStreet paintingsOn our way back to mainland Korea... the adventure continues

    Jeju

    14–18 juli, Sydkorea ⋅ 🌬 28 °C

    Our journey to Jeju was a real test of our commitment to slow travel: a taxi, a train, another taxi, a local bus, intercity coach, a taxi, a ferry, two local buses, and a hire car. We started at 7.40am and arrived in Seogwipo at 8pm.

    Jeju is advertised as the ‘Hawaii of Korea’, a volcanic island full of waterfalls and beaches, which is the favourite holiday spot for most Koreans. The flight path between Seoul and Jeju has been the busiest flight corridor in the world for many years, with hundreds of flights every single day leaving at 10-minute intervals. We spent our first day at Jungmun Saekdal beach, the best beach in South Korea according to the government. Conclusion: it’s… fine. But a little disappointing, considering the hype. Maybe we're spoiled, but it’s nothing on even the mid-tier beaches in Sydney. Nevertheless, we had a nap in the sun and a swim, and Dan ate a ‘tornado potato’ which is a MUCH better description than ‘chips on a stick’.

    We also tried to visit three separate 'must-see' waterfalls, but all of them were completely dry since it hasn't rained yet this year 🫠

    Jeju does boast the highest mountain in South Korea, Halla-san, at just under 2,000m. Dan took the hire car (nicknamed Bill Murray) and completed the supposedly 7hr trek in 4.5hrs. Chelsea’s injured knee was not happy after our previous hike in Sacheon, so in the meantime she stayed in town and tested her not-inconsiderable administrative skills against the recently-launched Chinese visa application website. Annoyingly, almost all European tourists are welcome in China, 30-days visa free. Not Brits though. The French and Poles we met in Seogwipo were very smug about this. We will discover whether her admin has worked on Wednesday.

    With Dan’s legs pretty sore from the 19km hike we spent our last day having a long lie-in and a visit to the local Seogwipo Olle Market. This is a traditional covered market specialising in two things: black pork and tangerines. We have been very hungry in Korea: everything has pork in it, even the vegetable croquettes. Even the three cheese burrito in the 7/11. Honestly, even the doughnuts. Chelsea is down to a croissant, a coffee and a tray of gimbap a day, with Dan stocking up on convenience store tuna onigiri. This has been the toughest country so far to find vegetarian or pescatarian food. Korean restaurants are basically out for us, and street food is either sickly sweet or meaty (or both, as in the case of white sugar sprinkled on a hot dog 🤮). We did enjoy the thankfully meat-free tangerine offerings, sufficiently for Dan to acquire some themed sunnies.

    Jeju feels like a tired little island, and we're not sure it bears up to a comparison with Hawaii. But we knew this was going to be a rest break on our way to the north of the country, so we're not too heartbroken that it hasn't been a vintage stop. You can't win them all!

    Next up, the diagonally opposite corner of South Korea for more hiking (Dan), and reading (Chelsea) before we catch up with friends in Seoul next week.    Läs mer

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