Macau shares commonalities with Hong Kong, having been a European colony (Portuguese as opposed to British). However, it was leased instead of being seized by force, which results in a less complex political landscape that is evident while visiting.

Macau is also the gambling capital of the world, with its gambling volume amounting to about 5 times as much as Las Vegas’s. I visited Vegas last year for a work conference, and liked it much more than I thought I would. It was fascinating to see what people are capable of doing with disgusting levels of wealth and lack of taste, creating a hedonistic theme park for the rich. I wanted to see China’s twist on this, as I imagined it would be much more sensible.

Leaving Mainland China

I feel like a weight has lifted after leaving mainland China. I no longer needed to use a VPN all the time, which would randomly not work and slow everything down. I could use Google Maps again, allowing me to plan my days easily. And also, no more squatty potties and having to carry toilet paper around all the time. Delightful.

Before I got to Macau, I could also see why it’s not super popular, especially with backpackers - it’s a very expensive place. I ended up staying in one of the only hostels in Macau, which cost me £25 a night - about 5 times more than I was paying in the mainland for a frankly better standard. Most people go to Macau as a day trip from Hong Kong, and I think I’d have recommended that instead - buses go between the regions 24 hours a day for £6 each way, taking about an hour.

You can also get a helicopter from the mainland or Hong Kong if you want to cut your trip from one hour to 15 minutes. It comes in at an attractive £450, which should tell you enough about Macau’s clientele.

Macau Peninsula

I crammed everything mostly into a day in Macau. There are 3 somewhat distinct parts - the peninsula (fancy hotels and Portuguese squares), Taipa (casinos), and Coloane (a Portuguese village). I started in the Peninsula.

Right away, Macau felt somewhat disorienting. There were colourful buildings everywhere, the pavements were adorned with mosaics, and yet all the signs were in Chinese. With me lucking out on the weather too, it genuinely felt like being in Lisbon in the summer. I didn’t think this would feel so refreshing after being in Asia for 5 months.

I explored a bunch of ruins and old Portuguese buildings here, which was a great time. I also started a little self-guided pastel de nata tour from this point. While I don’t have much of a sweet tooth, egg tarts are hard to pass up, and I was curious how they compared to the ones in Portugal. Overall, I found them to be much greasier than I remember the ones in Portugal being, but the differences were minimal. I couldn’t complain.

An interesting quirk in Macau is its currency, the Pataca. It’s pegged to the Hong Kong dollar, and most places take Hong Kong dollars except for buses. If you get some change in Patacas, though, exchanging them for Hong Kong dollars incurs a 3% convenience fee. Strange.

Coloane

Completely drenched after exploring the peninsula in peak humidity, I went to Coloane. The old Portuguese village was small and full of gems of Portuguese architecture. Seemingly, everyone else was in the casinos, leaving the place entirely for me to explore. With the seafront right next to the village, it felt like being in a quiet European town.

Taipa

Finally, Taipa - the Las Vegas of Asia. This part felt like a completely different place from the rest of the region, more or less like Vegas. Many casinos were trying to look as opulent as possible, but I was more interested in the themed ones. There are two I’ve seen in Vegas already - the Parisian and Venetian. The Parisian is complete with its own Eiffel tower, and the inside of the Venetian looks more like Venice than Venice does.

They were as ridiculous as I remember the ones in Vegas being. You can grab a gondola ride inside the Venetian, and even go up the Eiffel Tower to an observation deck. The interiors looked like replicas of the ones in Vegas.

There was one casino and hotel that’s not present in Vegas, though - the Londoner. It’s a London-themed hotel and casino with a facade that replicates the Houses of Parliament, complete with a 1:1 copy of Big Ben. Actually insane.

The inside was made to look like Covent Garden, and they even hired a few white boys to imitate the King’s guards. As the cherry on top, there were swathes of young Asian girls having serious-looking photo shoots in front of Large Benjamin. Why you’d want a serious-looking photo here, I have no idea.

I popped into one of the casinos to see what they’re like. The casinos looked pretty much the same as Vegas, but were a lot busier, full of exclusively old Asians, and they actually checked my age on entry (booooring!). I also walked past a few slot machines loaded with tens of thousands of US dollars. If the one-child policy and gambling bans have left you with too much wealth in China, you can blow it all on the slotty here.

Food

Other than the egg tarts, I also tried Macanese curry. It tasted very similar to other curry noodle soups I’ve had before, except it was really spicy. I was reminded of it a few times the following day. Nothing remarkable.

A much nicer experience was going to a tiny vegetarian restaurant. I’ve been using Happy Cow to find vegetarian restaurants while travelling, and sometimes it has taken me to places that are only visited by locals and don’t have many Google Maps reviews. That’s exactly where I ended up this time - shortly after I walked in, other guests were asking me how I even found the place. There wasn’t really a menu, and the non-English-speaking staff kept bringing out and feeding me additional things.

The best part of this was that it felt like a community in the restaurant, and I spent most of my time talking to the other guests via an older Macanese lady who knew English. Even when people left, they’d say bye to everyone. Incredibly wholesome.

I spent my last night in Macau in some old Portuguese square, surrounded by pastel buildings, with a Coca-Cola Plus (a Coke Zero with extra fibre to help flush out the curry). It was very calm, a perfect contrast to the clash of worlds surrounding me. It was also an ideal environment to dream about how I’ll spend my millions when I win big next time.

My day started with eating lunch in a local spot outside the ancient area. I was stared at the entire time by the owner’s grandchildren, who I think were mocking me for only knowing how to say “thank you” and “good food, auntie” in Mandarin. The youngest would also drag a defeated dog around from time to time. All were signs that I’m about to have some great food.

I got some Chongqing noodles and a dish I’ve not seen before, “Liu Xiaoqing Rice Tofu” or something like that. I was lured in by the promise of tofu, but I didn’t quite get that. For context, Furong means “hibiscus” in Mandarin, with a Chinese film from 1986 being set in Furong town called “Hibiscus Town”. Due to the success of the film, the town was renamed from Wangcun to Furong. Apparently, the Chinese will do a lot for tourism. Liu Xiaoqing is an actor in the film, with a famous dish of hers being rice jelly blocks that look a bit like tofu. I’d have preferred normal tofu, but it was alright.

After getting complimented by auntie for my chopstick skills, I left and followed the traditional Chinese music to get to the ancient town. It sounded a bit like this Chinese singing mushroom video that I think my former housemates were fed up with me referencing:

The town was pretty, with traditional Chinese buildings all around. There was also a river flowing through, which added a nice ambience. Otherwise, there really wasn’t much to do in the daytime. There was barely anyone around in the 32-degree humid heat, and the shopkeepers were desperate for anyone to look at their wares (mass-produced folding fans bulk-bought from Taobao). The view from the main viewpoint was beautiful, though.

I came back to the town later in the day, and it looked like the town had transformed, with lit-up lanterns everywhere. Sadly, it also got ridiculously busy, and it felt like any other touristy district in the evening. I went back to the same viewpoint as before, which looked fantastic initially until the waterfall started glowing with RGB lights. This got me appreciating the view during the day much more.

The town also has a cultural show every evening, which I briefly checked out. It told a loose story with actors dancing in traditional clothing. The dancing was impressive, but I think I was a bit jaded by having seen similar productions in neighbouring countries. This time, also, there were garish screens all around the performers showing animations of landscapes. Lovely.

I think it’s pretty obvious I didn’t love this place. I was expecting a chill town where I could kick back in the evening and enjoy the views, but I got Oxford Street on a Saturday night. Saying this, I’m still glad I popped in. It’s an affirmation to trust my gut more in the future. And it looked pretty in the day.

The national park is huge, and English advice for visiting it is limited online. I initially wanted to hike much of it before finding that it’s not something people usually do. Rather, the national park is set up in somewhat distinct areas, and you take buses in between, with additional hiking routes you can take if you’re up for it.

I ended up following this guide, with this one as a backup, and it worked out great. Both of the guides describe the same route for tackling the national park. I also had an up-to-date map that my hostel gave me, which came in handy, as some signage around the park is out of date.

Wulingyuan

I stayed in Wulinyguan, which is the closest to the main entrance of the national park (despite the park being called “Zhangjiajie”, Zhangjiajie is actually a 30-minute drive away). It was a little intense here, as there weren’t many foreign tourists at all (especially in the cheap places I stay and eat at). I’d get stared at a good bit, and people would come up to me to ask where I’m from and whip out English phrases they know like “what country?” and “how do you do?”. I’ve not met anyone more enthusiastic on my travels than a Chinese person saying “hello” to the first foreigner they’ve seen this week.

There was a touristy bit of the town which abided by China’s “tourist area” template - buildings built in a traditional style completely massacred with RGB LEDs at night, with shops selling usual mass-produced bric-a-brac. I didn’t spend much time here.

Day 1

I got in early to beat the tour groups, and I’m glad I did - for half of the day, I had the park entirely to myself. I started by taking the Bailong elevator. It’s the tallest outdoor elevator in the world, which excites a lot of people. It wasn’t that thrilling a ride, but it provided a pretty ceremonious introduction to the park’s sights.

The scenery here was unreal. The sandstone pillars are unlike anything I’ve seen, and their scale is impressive in itself. The way they formed is pretty fascinating, too, but I won’t bore you with a GCSE Geography lesson.

I walked around here from viewpoint to viewpoint, with the scenery changing in minor ways. Some pillars were longer, some thinner, some larger. It didn’t get old.

I followed the route in the guides linked above, which took me to a few other viewpoints. A highlight was taking a hike up to a mountain adorned in red Chinese ribbons for good luck. It was much less busy here, as I imagine most visitors aren’t bothered to hike, and it was well worth it.

I finished my day at “Tianzi Mountain”, which was one of the less impressive parts. It had a bunch of restaurants and shops, with a lot of easily accessible viewpoints around them. I finished the day at this point, setting me up with ample time for an evening of locals trying to sell me “massa-gees” and sticking menus in my face as I walk by restaurants with a belly already full of Chongqing noodles.

Day 2

I went to another part of the national park on the second day. It was much quieter here, and the area itself was much lower down, with the pillars towering above. I also really lucked out on the weather, and the visibility was pristine. It sort of felt like being somewhere fake, like a CGI film set. This day involved a lot more walking instead of taking cable cars from viewpoint to viewpoint, which I much preferred.

First, I went up to a village in the mountains here and did a loop around. The scenery here was like the day before, just with barely anybody around. I loved it.

A hike along a stream followed, which was a highlight of this day for me. There was a fog above the lake, making everything look hazy, and with the sun beaming down, sometimes I could see sunbeams. It felt like being in a dream.

There was also a bunch of monkeys along the stream. Many seemed to be liking the attention, with a minority on high alert, screening for snack packets to snatch. There were a lot of baby monkeys with their mothers, with the mothers sometimes looking like they’re manhandling the babies around. I could watch them for hours.

Finally, I walked alongside a railway with animal-themed carriages. The walk was lovely, and the animal trains going past were pretty whimsical. The route was narrow, though, which was a bit of a test of my patience, as it seemed that nobody conceived of the possibility of someone coming up in front of or behind them.

Over the time I’ve been in China, one of the biggest culture shocks has been people’s general lack of spatial awareness and consideration for others. It’s not as bad as India, but much worse than anywhere else I’ve been. I didn’t know if I was just becoming a bad person, so I looked it up, and it seems that many people share the sentiment. This manifests itself with people not letting others get off the subway first, people not respecting queues, or people standing bang in the middle of narrow staircases or alleyways. It seems like a societal norm, though, so I can’t blame them.

That wrapped up my stay at the national park, and I braced myself for another evening of getting asked by locals if I prefer Ronaldo or Messi, with me barely knowing who those people are.

Food

I’ve eaten a lot of what was on offer in China so far, but during my stay in Zhangjiajie I tried a few other specialities.

The first was chicken feet. These take a lot of effort to eat, as they mostly contain cartilage. You mostly end up eating chicken skin, which I’ve never been a fan of.

I’ve also had a few fun drinks in the park, including various teas. The biggest surprise has been that they all seem to have some solid bits in them, in the form of shredded jelly or boba. I’ve even had a yoghurt drink with popping pearls in it. I’m starting to miss not having something to chew along with my fun drinks now.

Zhangjiajie was great, and I think it’s worth coming to China just to visit it. No idea how James Cameron was inspired by it and somehow produced the shambles that is Avatar.

The cave also shares its name with a cult whose members committed mass suicide in 1997. This can’t be fantastic PR, but I don’t know if that information can get through The Great Firewall.

Planning

Planning the visit was a little daunting as there isn’t one official English source of information for the mountain and there are multiple routes you can take. Instead, there are a bunch of articles by Western-facing Chinese travel websites trying to plug affiliate links where possible, making the whole thing seem a little illegitimate.

I ended up going with this blog post guide, which served me really well. A bunch of the park was closed for construction anyway, though, so I had to improvise a little with some of the maps in the park (which have North and South flipped, for whatever reason). It was fine in the end, and I got out alive.

Visiting the Mountain

To beat the day trippers, I got to the entrance at 7 AM. That allowed me to be on the first bus to the mountain. I’m glad I did this - for the first part of the day, I had the park entirely to myself.

The bus dropped me off right in front of the steps up to the mountain. It was pretty foggy and rainy, so there wasn’t much of a view. I didn’t mind that too much, though, as it added a sense of eeriness to everything, and it made the moments of good visibility extra special.

After the very anticlimactic walk up the stairs, I got to the cave. The view reminded me of the bit in Arrival where they talk to the aliens.

Next, I went up a bunch of escalators to the top of the mountain. I’m sure the views from here are great on a normal day.

The top of the mountain is circular with paths around and through the middle, so it’s possible to see everything in a day. Much of the less-travelled “East” route was under construction, so I walked around everywhere that was left. Most of it was in the forest, which I loved hiking through with nobody else around, only the sporadic rain accompanying me. The foggy forest reminded me a lot of the anime “Mushishi”, which I seem to value more as time passes.

There were some pagodas and temples up here too, which looked great in the fog. Finally, there was a stretch along a narrow path hugging the side of a cliff. The views here were incredible - super high drops, with greenery patching over the limestone mountains. There was also a viewing platform recessed from the wall at one point, which really got my adrenaline going. This was probably the highlight of the day for me; I forgot that the day started with the cave and the steps

I finished back where I started, where normally I’d be able to take the world’s second-longest cableway down. However, it was being renovated (you’ve got to get used to this in China), so I had to backtrack a little down the elevators and the stairs, and later get a bus for a shorter stretch of the cableway.

The constant construction is a bit of a common pattern in China. Infrastructure here gets built at a rapid pace and is widespread. There doesn’t seem to be a consultation period for many projects, unlike in the West, so the government can make huge decisions for new developments quickly. A guy I met in Shanghai recommended this interview with a Chinese technology analyst, about this that explains it in fascinating detail. As a side effect, there aren’t many historical buildings left in China. The buildings that look historical have likely been built in an old style and now feature horrendous RGB LED lighting that insults everyone’s eyes at night. No town I’ve gone through is seemingly safe from this treatment.

I got back to my homestay pretty early. That left me with enough time to research how to dry my passport and learn Mandarin phrases to sweet-talk the next border official to let me through. You use your passport as your ticket in many places in China, and evidently, my backpack leaked enough for water to get to my passport. I got a little excited about nearly finding a use for my British passport; I’ve still not gotten any return on it.

As to this post’s subtitle, 油 means “oil” and is pronounced like “you”. I’m feeling smug about it.

Chengdu is also famous for its research base for giant panda breeding. While I’m not a fan of seeing animals in captivity, this centre is a non-profit and seemed ethical. It’s mostly concerned with the research and breeding of pandas and other rare animals. I also paid it a visit.

Chengdu is nearly 2,000km away from Shanghai, and most people opt to fly that distance. I decided to take the sleeper bullet train instead and was really happy with my decision. There was no hassle with airport security; I didn’t have to travel out of town for the airport, and it was cheaper and better for the environment than a flight. Travelling by rail here is blissful.

Food

I started my stay in Chengdu with a food tour. There’s a company that only does them in Chengdu and has good reviews, so I went with them. I ended up in a tiny group with 3 other people, 2 of them being a Polish couple. My Polish has been tested a surprising amount in Asia compared to anywhere else I’ve been.

The tour was great, and we tried a bunch of Sichuan specialities. I was glad I came to Chengdu despite other places in China also offering Sichuan cuisine - they put the peppercorns in everything here. The spice was also much more prominent than I’ve ever had it before, often feeling tingly and almost like popping candy. Personally, I really liked it.

The highlight of the tour for me were dan dan noodles, easily the best ones I’ve ever had. We also had a century egg, which I was really happy to try. People have mixed opinions on those, but I really liked them. As a little encore, we also each ate a rabbit’s head. Rabbit is very popular in Sichuan Province, with 300 million rabbits consumed annually. Breaking the head up felt very primal and a bit of a stretch for my usually plant-based self, but I’m all for new cultural experiences (within some limits).

Qin Shan Zhai (Health Benefit Restaurant)

Qin Shan Zhai is a restaurant in which every dish on the menu is designed with the benefits of Chinese medicine in mind. I was curious about the mysticism of it all, so I popped in.

They presented me with the biggest menu I’ve ever seen in a restaurant. Asian restaurants often have long menus, but this one was going for a world record. It was hard-backed and about 2 centimetres thick.

At this point, I think, a lot of the allure of Chinese medicine has faded. Just about everything on the menu was backed up with claims about how it would improve my spirits and energy, including the triple-fried pork belly.

Overwhelmed, and with the waiters not speaking English, I went for two dishes that would grant me 3 wishes and let me levitate or something. I ended up with cucumbers in transparent warm goop and Chicken in Sichuan pepper oil.

The food was fine, but it’s hard to recommend for the price. I wish I had eaten dan dan noodles in an alleyway with Chinese uncles smoking and playing mahjong around me. Maybe I would have gotten more health benefits by going with what my soul really wanted - the panda swimming in ice jelly.

Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding

I went to the research base as it opened, and I’m really glad I did. There were barely any people around then, and the pandas were very active. They were having breakfast, and some seemed to be posing for the audience by sitting on their backs and getting their bellies out.

There were also some baby giant pandas and red pandas. The red pandas were running around a bit before retreating somewhere cooler to avoid the 30-degree summer heat. The animals seemed happy and well looked after, which was great to see.

By around 10 AM, the centre got really busy, and any visible pandas had a few rows of excited kids around them trying to get a glimpse. The park provided a WeChat program that tracked how busy the enclosures were, and at this time, they were pretty much all at max capacity. The park is gargantuan and mostly empty, maybe to split the massive crowds. Being a tourist in China requires some serious forethought; I’m glad I didn’t visit on the weekend.

Sightseeing

I didn’t do much sightseeing here, as I’ve just been to 2 other Chinese cities, and Chengdu offered much of the same. The city had a few small shrines and buildings that lit up at night. I also popped into the Sichuan History Museum only to find that most exhibits don’t have English translations, similar to other Chinese museums I’ve been to. I don’t understand why, if they’re giving every 10th exhibit an English translation, they can’t also do it for all of them. Maybe it’s to motivate a waiguoren like me to learn Mandarin. Or to eat more warm cucumber goop that grants me the gift of tongues.

Art Galleries

Shanghai is full of art galleries. I could spend weeks hopping between them, so instead, I only went to the ones that interested me the most.

Propaganda Poster Art Centre

This gallery was a little hard to find, located upstairs in a hotel. You wouldn’t come across it accidentally. It houses a fascinating collection of Chinese propaganda posters, dating back to the 60s. It was a great way to learn about Chinese history, and having spoken to my parents about them, they shared a lot of similarities to Polish propaganda posters during the Cold War.

In the gallery’s gift shop, you could buy some of the posters and even old children’s workbooks. One of the first sentences you’d learn in English class in China under Mao’s rule was apparently “I wish Chairman Mao a long life”.

Techno Worlds at the Power Station of Art

This was an exhibition on techno and the surrounding culture. It was set in The Power Station of Art, an art gallery set in an old power station. It’s one of the coolest gallery spaces I’ve been to.

I was excited for this, and a few of the exhibits were interesting. I particularly liked a collection of 90s German pop culture magazines. Sadly, much of the rest of the exhibition felt like duds, with the works feeling a little contrived.

Fotografiska

I visited Fotografiska in Stockholm before, and it’s remained one of my favourite galleries. It’s a photography gallery which felt really well curated, had a good variety, and was open until 11 PM daily. I think the opening times alone made it shine; I loved being able to go to an art gallery in the evening.

I was pleased to find that the same pros carried over to Shanghai. My favourite exhibition here was from the Beijing Silvermine archive. It’s an archive of photos from film found in a recycling plant in Beijing. It reminded me a bit of those rammed vintage shops that sell random people’s old photos, except it was curated a little a this time. Through the photos, I could be exposed to a dimension of Chinese culture that you’d only otherwise get if you looked at a Chinese friend’s family photo album.

Sightseeing

There’s a touristy place in Shanghai called Yu Garden, which gets lit up at night. Admittedly it looks cool when you’re there, but it does feel like something that’s made entirely for tourists, so I didn’t spend too long there.

I spent much more time looking at the ugly buildings in Shanghai. 1993 Old Millfun was a highlight. It’s an old brutalist building that used to be the biggest slaughterhouse in Shanghai. Now it’s home to edgy fashion brands, empty rooms, and a Starbucks.

I spent a while exploring the place, with a lot of it being largely abandoned. It was designed in such a manner that there were many alternate ways to navigate horizontally and vertically throughout the building. A design more reminiscent of a Berlin nightclub, not quite a slaughterhouse. If you like the Barbican in London, you’d love this place.

Other than that, I spent a good bit of time strolling around the river at night with a local, passing Chinese uncles fishing on the riverbank. It was peaceful and felt very safe.

Immersive Theatre - ‘Sleep No More’ by Punchdrunk

Punchdrunk is a company that puts on immersive theatre productions. I’ve been to 3 of their productions in London, and while they’ve varied in quality, they’ve always felt unique and left me with plenty to think about. I remembered that they put on things in Shanghai before, and as luck would have it, they had a production on right when I was visiting - “Sleep No More”.

The production was allegedly based on the story of Macbeth, but to be honest, it was really hard to follow. That’s due to the story being told with many plotlines on the go concurrently, so you only get to cover part of the story during your visit. Part of the fun is piecing the plot together with your friends afterwards, who have likely seen parts that you didn’t.

If you’ve seen The Burnt City by Punchdrunk, then the structure of the whole production was pretty much identical. If you haven’t, then I’ll describe it briefly. On the way in, you’re broken up into groups and given a plague doctor-esque mask. Throughout the production, you can follow the actors as they act out plot lines in front of you, but not communicate with them. Otherwise, you can explore the set and all the props however you like.

Overall, I enjoyed the production, especially the more choreographed parts. The set was also well-designed and worthy of admiration by itself. However, having seen The Burnt City and the story being difficult to follow, it fell a little short for me. For a first-time viewer, I think this would have been very impressive. They’ve really tightened a lot of the weak parts from The Burnt City, for example, the filler dialogue between side characters, and much less (or none that I witnessed) looping of plotlines. In fact, there was no dialogue at all, making it accessible to anyone who doesn’t speak Mandarin.

The production also maintained some of the magic from The Burnt City - the highlight of that for me was one of the actors taking me to a small room and enacting part of the story with only me present. The same thing happened to me in Sleep No More, exposing me to a pretty interesting part of the story that not many other people would have seen.

I don’t know if I’m chasing the dragon by continuing to see Punchdrunk’s productions. They always leave me feeling simultaneously impressed by the novelty, but also underwhelmed by the storytelling. ‘Viola’s Room’ is my favourite production of theirs, which had a much more linear story and better tapped into the immersive element through a carefully designed soundtrack. The groups were much smaller there, though, so maybe due to the logistics of a larger audience, it’s too difficult to tell a convincing story.

The theatre was also outside a curiously named agency; I had to snap a photo.

Clubbing - Kavari at Reactor

I stayed in Shanghai for a little while to catch Kavari playing at Reactor (RA link). Being left wanting more after my last two nights out in Asia, I was hoping that seeing a DJ and producer I adore would break that streak. Kavari blends various harder electronic music genres with the occasional tasteful edit and her own masterful productions (‘Attachment Style’ getting Aphex Twin’s co-sign).

Reactor is the coolest venue I’ve been to in Asia so far. It’s spacious and industrial-looking. At the same time, it’s got a good sound system, and the techs were very alert with the lights and smoke. The crowd looked cool to boot, everyone trying to dress more alternatively than the next person. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this many liberty spikes in person.

Kavari played a solid 2-hour set. It was very drop-heavy, though, making it feel more like a gig than a club night where you can really get in a sustained groove. In retrospect, though, I think maybe this was to keep the crowd interested. Despite the crowd looking cool, most only started swaying after about 40 minutes of collecting footage for their VPN-powered Instagram stories. There was a small group of people at the front dancing away around a really locked-in tall Chinese guy, so I stuck with them.

After Kavari’s set, the club nearly completely emptied despite there being about 3 hours until closing - similar to what I’ve experienced in Beijing. It’s a bit of a shame as the DJ after Kavari, Vibekiller, was playing some really good stuff. Another dragon I’ll be chasing for the rest of my travels is going to a club night here where the crowd feels entranced. Taipei and Tokyo have a low bar to meet.

Marriage Market

The Shanghai Marriage Market is a regular matchmaking event held on weekends in a park. Parents of unmarried adults gather to find partners for their children, with the children not present. The park gets filled with adverts of prospective partners, listing their attributes such as height, occupation, and salary.

I went through the market briefly, as I was aware that using this gathering of anxious parents as a tourist attraction might not be well perceived. I found the market fascinating; it’s so different from the dating customs I’m used to. It especially seemed that property ownership, rank in corporate hierarchy, and height were paramount to being desired - things that don’t matter to me and many people I know. Very few adverts also had photos on them or listed physical features other than height. If I wasn’t unemployed and owned property, I’d be a catch here.

Food

I was eating well in Shanghai. Some of my highlights were:

• Incredible Sichuan noodles from a place under my hostel.

• Authentic steamed buns and wontons from a place seemingly frequented by old people. I would go here every morning for breakfast, with the buns running me 25p each (15 times less than what you can get in London’s Chinatown).

• A small plates vegetarian restaurant, which had very reasonable prices and amazing vegetarian versions of Chinese staples.

• This coconut-heavy dessert place. It wasn’t clear what they were selling from outside, so I popped in and ordered the most popular thing after seeing it was coconut-related. I ended up getting a coconut mousse inside a coconut, with two different types of coconut shavings on top, and a tool to scrape the coconut off the sides. I don’t have much of a sweet tooth, but I was honestly blown away. I returned twice, and sadly, they ran out of coconut both times. At this point there’s an army of dragons I’m chasing.

China’s Google Maps alternative, Amap, is pretty bad for restaurant recommendations, so I’ve mostly just been going to restaurants that look full of Chinese people. The Chinese use another app called ‘Dianping’ for restaurant recommendations, but sadly, the UI is unworkable after you translate it to English in WeChat, so I found using it is just not worth the effort. Saying this, a bit of a game-changer for me has been finding a WeChat program that shows vegetarian and vegan restaurants nearby, called ‘素食雷达’. There’s one restaurant it listed that I tried looking for, but I think it renamed:

The Chinese make up poetic names for many of their dishes, instead of just describing what’s in them. This results in some amazing English translations, which are part of the fun of going to a restaurant here:

One what a fucking goddam.🦐 please lao ban 🙏

As a little cherry on top, I’ve also gone to, I think, the coolest cocktail bar I’ve ever been to, called Bar Rock. It’s a Tibetan bar, with the cocktail menu being Tibetan-inspired and using ingredients local to the Himalayas. It reminded me a lot of my time in Nepal, which I hugely cherish. The design of the menu was incredible and I spent a long time admiring it.

The bar had the wanky listening bar-type setup you get in some cocktail bars, with Louie Parker providing the perfect backdrop for the night. You can take the boy out of East London, but you can’t take East London out of the boy.

Visiting China as a foreigner

Growing up in Europe, I’ve always had an impression of China as being a high-surveillance state, where my every move would be monitored. To an extent, it is that, but in some aspects, it’s more relaxed than I anticipated. Saying all this, I’m incredibly glad that I took my time when I came here and didn’t over-plan my itinerary. Most of my contingency plans needed to be enacted - my VPN barely worked (which turned out to be more of a necessity than I anticipated, as Gmail doesn’t work in China), and WeChat or Alipay would randomly not let me pay for some things or ask for extra verification when there’s a queue of 7 people behind me. I spent a lot of my first days in China just researching how to make some things work, and even then, some apps are just inaccessible to me if I don’t speak Mandarin (screenshotting and going to Google Translate constantly is exhausting) or don’t have a Chinese Bank card (luckily, that’s just for vending machines).

Needless to say, is the hardest place I’ve ever travelled to in terms of initial setup. It also slightly reminds me of India, in the sense that people are spitting, farting, coughing, and pissing in public. You get used to it.

I also feel like a bit of a beta tester for China opening up to wider Western tourism, with its visa-free entry program starting only earlier this year. Not many people speak English, even in hotels, and my only real gateway into booking anything is the Trip.com app and website. Trip feels like a bit of a monopoly, providing an English interface over Chinese systems for booking trains and accommodation. It also annoyingly requires me to pay around a 6-11% surcharge for the luxury of not getting mysterious errors in Chinese that apparently nobody online has ever encountered before.

Another big problem I found was locating places. Many English apps and websites will translate the pinyin address into English for you, losing some information, and then once you put it into your maps app, the reverse will happen. As a result, the app will tell you that the place doesn’t exist, it’s in another province, or it will nearly get you there but not quite. I spent an hour looking for my first hostel before finding its listing on Trip.com and tracking it down via its built-in map. Unhelpfully, the most popular maps app (Amap) is terribly slow and heavily prioritises looking for things close to you, so planning for things in other cities is borderline impossible. But at least I could change my navigation icon into an anime girl.

Beijing

Enough complaining. The first two days weren’t easy, with some embarrassing moments, but once everything is set up, China has actually been really rewarding to travel.

As for Beijing itself, to be honest, I was really looking forward to leaving. It’s a disgustingly large, sprawling city. Other than the touristy centre, nowhere really feels lively because the city is so wide with strict building height limits. For most of the time in the city, I found myself next to a 4-lane road next to industrial complexes, or taking really long tube rides to things that seemed close on a map. Pretty depressing.

Sightseeing

Beijing is full of historical sights. They’re very popular with Chinese tourists, with tickets to most places sold out at least a week in advance. I didn’t know I had to book that early, which initially frustrated me. Later, I found on Reddit (again, I feel like a beta tester with no other website mentioning this) that in most places there’s a foreigner ticket booth that allows me to get tickets on the day. I had to sign a weird waiver saying that I don’t have a smartphone and a Chinese number for some reason, but whatever.

Getting into Tiananmen Square looked like carnage, with a multi-hour queue, so I went to the Forbidden City instead.

That was fun to explore and learn a bit more about Chinese history. The complex is huge, and you can spend many hours in there (although it all starts looking the same). For the first time since India, the Chinese tourists were also asking me for photos.

After leaving the Forbidden City, I ended up in the hutongs - traditional low homes with tight alleyways. There, I could watch some live ear cleaning on the street. Lovely.

On subsequent days, I checked out some museums and galleries. I was hoping to learn a bit more about Chinese history at the Capital Museum, but sadly, most of the exhibitions were entirely in Mandarin and translating them all was tiring. The Chinese art museum was great, though, and showcased various pieces that felt uniquely Chinese, such as a strong focus on calligraphy. There was also some hardstone carving which I’ve not seen much of before.

I also checked out the 798 Art District. This area is home to most of Beijing’s contemporary art galleries, and also features some smaller boutique shops and coffee shops. The area is the biggest of this kind I’ve ever seen, and you could easily explore it for hours.

The gallery that interested me the most here was the Mansudae Art Museum. It’s a gallery owned by a North Korean art studio, with the intention to raise money for the DPRK (personally, not something I’d want to support). I read conflicting information online about it not being open to visitors or not being able to take photos, but I found the opposite of both to be true. The gallery was more or less what I expected, with it selling pretty standard paintings of landscapes and animals you'd see in other Asian shops. There was also an exhibition with some war photography, and some North Korean stationery and notebooks (such as a 2026 calendar commemorating Kim Jong Un on the front page).

The Great Wall of China

I booked onto a tour to visit the Great Wall, as that’s the easiest way to visit it if you don’t know Mandarin (it’s also not much more expensive than getting tickets separately). Interestingly, we didn’t have a guide during the tour, but rather, the guide just talked about the history on the way there and let us explore by ourselves. Either way, it was great to have someone sort the logistics and be available to message in case we needed help. I chose the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall as it’s more physically demanding than the most popular section, with the best sights. I felt like we made the right choice, and we didn’t even need to get there too early, as it wasn’t too busy.

I met two really chill guys on the tour and spent the day with them - Morgan and Friso. It was easy to navigate the Great Wall, with us first going to the highest point, and then going down to catch the toboggan. At one point, we also got some beers from a lady who was selling them out of her backpack. Bliss.

The sights were great, it’s a surreal feeling actually being in the place that you’ve seen in photos your whole life. It was a bit foggy on the day, but it added a sense of mystery to it all.

And finally, the toboggan went down. I didn’t know that this was an attraction on the Great Wall, which was a pleasant surprise because of how ridiculous it seemed. While you couldn’t pick up too much speed, sliding down the Great Wall of China is a pretty unique experience.

To finish the tour, we got a Subway because it only felt right to get a Subway on the Great Wall of China. The chicken in my sub was still defrosting when the lady was making my sandwich, so I made sure to take a photo so I’ve got something the coroner can look into. Luckily, I’m still here.

Food

I’ve loved every meal I’ve had in China. I think it’s the best food I’ve had on my big travels so far. Maybe all I need to be satisfied is noodles and MSG. I’ve also been thinking about this tweet a good amount while travelling here, which tickles me every time:

I’ve not had much food in China that I’ve not had before in London, but rather I’ve had variations that I’ve not encountered before. One example is Beijing-style hot pot, from a copper pot with a non-spicy broth. It also helps that the food here is easy to get and is fairly cheap.

My favourite dish I had here was these incredible biang biang noodles that were next to my hostel. I had them 4 days in a row, and the aunties there got excited every time I thanked them in Mandarin.

I couldn’t find a decent Chinese cooking class in Beijing, so I went for a dumpling-making class that someone on Hostelworld suggested. That was good fun, and even the chef of the hotel that the class was at got involved as he was walking past and taught us a few techniques.

One aspect I had to get used to when it comes to Chinese restaurants is that they rarely have toilets in them. Instead, people use public toilets. Sadly, they rarely have toilet paper and can be a bit intense. When I was doing a food tour, I went into one, which had a squatty potty between two urinals, with no dividers in between. There was a Chinese guy on the squatty potty pooping while playing a game on his phone, and I had to just go and pee next to him as he was ripping arse, getting a glimpse of him getting some high scores. I’ve not experienced this anywhere else.

Clubbing - DINA at Pillbox

I went to see DINA at Pillbox (RA link), with her usually playing a blend of trance and techno featuring heavy basslines. I’ve known of Pillbox getting decent bookings too, so I was curious to check out the venue.

The venue was in what felt like a ghost town, as most things in Beijing are. A nice touch was self-service lockers outside the club, completely omitting the need for a cloakroom. I wish more clubs had this.

As I got in, the warmup DJs were playing schranz mixed in with pretty terrible TikTok techno edits of pop tracks. I honestly felt really sorry for DINA having to perform after them, and got a bit dubious of the club’s curation. As for the club itself, it was a pretty standard space with a decent sound system. Nothing to complain about, but also nothing necessarily to praise.

I made the most of the lacklustre openers to explore the club. There were a few chillout areas, which were a nice touch, although the decor I thought was a bit crap - there was a huge anime-esque statue in a pit opposite the bar, and one of the chillout areas had a 032c magazine and some other pop culture magazine from years ago featuring Smokepurpp on the cover. It felt a bit like if you asked an AI about how to decorate a space for alternative teenagers.

There was also a second room, which I really enjoyed. A DJ called Blitz (they have no RA page) was playing there seemingly for the whole night, mostly playing Adrian Mills-esque bouncy techno. The crowd was much better here than on the main floor.

I found the cocktail menu to be pretty funny, naming drinks after electronic music subgenres. I don’t know about you, but I’m getting an electro.

DINA’s set was great, but it did feel like most of the crowd was barely holding on, especially after the ridiculous opener. With BPMs not increasing and DINA staying true to her usual selections, a lot of the student-heavy crowd started flagging pretty early, despite it still being relatively early in the night. The more I go to Asian clubs, the more I think that liberal-ish drug laws might be essential for the development of a sustainable electronic music scene.

At Pillbox is also the first time I’ve seen security on the dance floor in Asia. Interestingly, it didn’t seem like they were looking for drug use or rowdiness, as both aspects seem pretty non-existent in Asia, but rather, they would rush in through the crowd to pick up dropped glass bottles. Curious job to have.

I stayed for a little while after DINA’s set, but the dance floor started getting pretty empty at early hours by European standards. The next morning, I got woken up by my bunk-mate scraping the dead skin off his feet on the ladder going up to my bunk, and was later further tested by a girl trimming her toenails in the hostel dining area as I was having breakfast. I don’t get grossed out often, but damn. Manners are very different here.

I’ve been really glad to come off the Southeast Asia backpacking trail. In the end, meeting 20-something travellers who are mostly trying to stretch their money got exhausting, and seeing locals in tourism’s chokehold has started weighing on me. Instead, in South Korea, you barely meet backpackers - most people are here on holiday. I was also effectively invisible to the locals. Unless they were drunk, then they wanted to attempt a conversation about which English football teams they support and to show me photos of them in Leicester Square.

What people say about the beauty standards here also rings true. While some of it manifests in everyone dressing incredibly well (and mostly monochrome, so I fit right in), it can also go to toxic lengths. There are many billboards around the city advertising plastic surgery, and it feels like everyone and their uncle is constantly shopping. Either way, it was great to admire other people’s outfits and get inspiration for my own style. Even the elderly looked effortlessly cool.

Sightseeing

A lot of the old historical sights in Seoul are concentrated in one area, so we (I, Edon, and Isaac) went to those on one of the first days. They’re really well-maintained and easy to navigate. The main one is Gyeongbokgung Palace, where many visitors were dressed up in hanbok (traditional Korean dress). It’s even encouraged, with people in traditional dress getting free admission into the palace. I thought it would have been funny for us to hire these, but Edon and Isaac weren’t very keen, so we scrapped the idea.

There are really easily accessible hikes in the city, including some smaller national parks. We went up a hill to see the Namsan tower and got an amazing view of Seoul at night.

DMZ

The Korean Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) is a wide strip dividing North and South Korea. When visiting Seoul, it’s a popular tourist destination, giving the opportunity to get a glimpse into North Korea and to learn more about Korean history.

You need to book onto a tour to visit the DMZ, which makes planning the visit really easy. During the visit, we went to a few museums, went into the 3rd tunnel that North Koreans built to attempt to infiltrate South Korea, and got onto an observatory that let us look into North Korea. Some people felt weird about that latter part. I didn’t feel like any harm was getting done by just having a look, and it’s not like by doing that anyone is supporting the regime (happy to have a conversation about this, though). Either way, we didn’t see much - mostly cities that look like they’re stuck in the Soviet era.

There were some slightly tense parts with visiting the DMZ, and it felt pretty exciting to get that close to the border. I usually struggle on tours as the guides tend to talk too much (I’ve never done well during lectures at university), but on this one, they shared some cool nuggets of information. My favourite was the story of the founder of Hyundai. He stole his dad’s cow to buy a train ticket to Seoul, and later sent 1001 cows to his hometown in North Korea from South Korea as repayment for it 1000 times over, softening some tensions between the countries.

Shopping

I never really understood why people shop abroad, especially if they live in a big city already. Having gone to Korea, I think I get it. While there are a few Korean clothing brands that I like, even more basic clothing shops here offer a higher standard and cooler cuts than in Europe.

I made sure to go to the flagship stores of the Korean brands I like. Being able to just go into a shop and try pieces from them on felt surreal. Usually, that first takes having to set Grailed alerts for a few months, only to then pester the seller for a few weeks to get measurements, and then having to pay a small mortgage to have it shipped to me. And then finding that it doesn’t quite fit right. In fact, it’s been years since I’ve gone clothes shopping in person, and not having 7 parcels to return felt good. And to top it off, everything was much cheaper than in Europe.

The main brands I was excited about were XLIM and San San Gear. During my stay, I found a lot more brands that I like - Nomanual, Hyein Seo, Cost Per Kilo, and Ignota. There were also very well-stocked multi-brand retailers - 8DIVISION, ALAND, PEER, and Beaker were my favourites, even just to get inspiration.

The one thing I was a little disappointed by was the lack of good jewellery designers and brands. In fact, an employee at the San San Gear shop complimented my jewellery and asked where I could find good jewellery in Seoul. They said that’d also like to know.

Many of the clothes here also had some funky English translations. I quite liked those.

Food

The food in Korea was an interesting one. While I’m not a picky eater, it was hard to get good food here, as a lot of it was just so sweet or excessively fried. And that’s excluding the fact that it’s also very meat-heavy. Saying this, there were a few highlights, but there wasn’t much that I tried that I hadn’t had a version of before. My favourite dish was probably doenjang jigae, which is fermented soybean stew. As to the food I’ve had before, including Korean BBQ, it tasted just like what I’ve had in London. By all means, not bad, but nothing you have to travel to Korea for.

I think the best food we had was food from a cooking class we did, where we could control how sweet we made things. The one we booked was really fun, being hosted in the teacher’s apartment.

North Korean Restaurant

Having visited the DMZ, I had a look for North Korean restaurants in Seoul. There were a few, with Neungra Bapsang being the most popular. It’s owned by a North Korean defector with an impressive CV. I met her in the restaurant, and she was lovely!

I wasn’t expecting very much from the restaurant, and the food aligned with exactly what I’ve been told about it. Namely, it was pretty bland and lacked any vegetables, described through euphemisms such as that it’s “hearty” and has “subtle flavours”. I can’t even be mad at the restaurant - they plated it well and made the food authentically boring.

The restaurant menus weren’t spared from poor translations either. I’ll need to be back to savour the local specialities.

Galleries and Museums

Seoul is rife with galleries exhibiting great art. I went to a bunch, with the Leeum Museum of Art being my favourite. It had a few permanent collections, mostly exhibiting pottery (I made a lot of notes), and the building itself was really cool architecture-wise. It had an exhibition on environments created by women artists, which I also really liked, recreating old works made by women after the Korean War.

I also went to the kimchi museum, which documents the history of kimchi and its different varieties. I could also try different types of kimchi here, which I thought was a cool aspect of the museum - persimmon kimchi was my favourite.

LoL Park

I traded a lot of my teenage years for playing League of Legends. When we found that we’re near LoL Park, I felt obliged to go. It’s an esports facility that hosts Korea’s LCK games (the highest league of League of Legends games in Korea, and therefore also the world).

My only frame of comparison for something like this was going to Insomnia, a gaming festival in Birmingham, when I was 16. It was exactly like you’d imagine. People stank, nobody slept, and there were barely any women around. It was the opposite here. It was well looked after, everyone was dressed really well, and somehow, there were more women and men around. They had an LCK game on in a viewing area with a few people watching, but I could barely figure out what was going on, having not played the game in about 11 years. If I were a Korean teenager and gaming were regarded like this, my life would have taken a very different turn.

Baseball

Baseball is pretty big in South Korea, and while I know nothing about it (other than I’d be terrible after having tried some batting cages in Seoul), I wanted to experience a baseball game. We tried to see a game on a Saturday night, which was futile - weekend games sell out. I still wanted to see the game, so I tried to make an account and get tickets in advance. This was an arduous process. As a foreigner without a resident number, booking things meant for locals is very hard or impossible. In the end, I managed to get a ticket in the cheering section, which was apparently the most exciting section.

The baseball game was good fun. Each team’s cheering section got super lively when their team was batting, with cheerleaders dancing to K-pop and the crowd reciting various chants. They also had some entertainment during breaks, including American-style kiss cams and the like. Definitely a step up from rounders.

Clubbing - Faust

We had a free night on one of the weekends, so I checked RA. There weren’t too many events that interested us, so I went with Isaac to nacht at Faust, nacht seemingly being a regular series of nights that Faust runs (borrowing the name from Berghain’s Klubnacht?). I heard of Faust before, as they get some decent bookings, so I was hoping for a night of good local selectors.

The club is located in Itaewon, which is one of Seoul’s main nightlife districts. And I mean nightlife in the most general sense - every kind of club is here. Walking around, there are bars blaring music, bright-red, drunk Koreans stumbling around, and people predrinking in 7-Eleven. I was very surprised by this - in Europe, when you turn up to any underground venue, you’re second-guessing if you’re in the right place. This might as well have been Bangkok Khaosan Road or Hanoi’s Beer Street.

Anyway, we went in and got a free drink with our entry, something I’ve not seen since university. The club was split into the main dancefloor, Faust, and a bar called “Tanz bar” (the similarities to Berghain with its Panorama bar persist here). The bar had a tiny dancefloor, to the extent that about 4 people dancing filled it up.

As to the club space itself, it was pretty similar to what I’ve experienced in other Asian clubs. It had a well-tuned sound system that’s a tad too quiet, AC, tasteful lighting, and DJs mixing meticulously. A scrolling “NO TECHNO NO LIFE” LED screen in the corner had me grimace every time I caught sight of it, so I made sure to obscure it in my vision.

The night was fun for a bit, but the music didn’t vary much - it was just repetitive techno. It just wasn’t the flavour of electronic music I like. With a crowd that was just drinking, too, it felt like the energy was lacking. As to the crowd, it was similar to what I experienced in other Asian cities - mostly students, with a few tourists. Nobody seemed too into it. I did like this track that NUSNOOM played, though:

If I were to come back to Seoul, I’d check out Ring. They don’t post their listings on RA, and the line-up is announced a day in advance. I quite like this concept, which almost reminds me of Unfold. Hopefully, it would attract a more dedicated crowd.

Leaving Seoul

Seoul was a fun city. I was a little sad leaving it, honestly, as I got to know someone here and we got along really well. It felt a bit like I’m leaving something unfinished, wishing I had more time, but I can’t exactly mooch around Seoul forever.

I’ll leave things vague as I already feel like I’m saying too much. If you catch me getting random flights to Seoul, don’t ask questions.

I went to the national park with Alice, a girl from London whom I met the day prior. It was easy enough to get buses to the national park, although it required us to book the outward bus ticket via Klook, an intermediary, as the official bus website doesn’t work well for foreigners (which at this point I was used to).

We did the most popular trail first - Ulsanbawi. Similar to what I experienced in Jeju, the trail was really well-maintained, and most of the route entailed going up steps. I thought that I was a quick hiker, but Alice ran ahead. I pride myself on being able to push past physical discomfort, but keeping up with her was a challenge, so I was happy to stay back and enjoy the hike at my own pace. She was fine with it, and it all worked out fine.

At the end of the trail, you get an amazing view of the granite ridge running across the national park. I can see why people regard this hike so highly.

With the hike taking much less time than anticipated, we did another one to an observatory overlooking a waterfall. A lot of the scenery was similar, with us passing a few traditional Korean buildings on the way.

The views from the observatory were incredible, despite the waterfall having dried up as it hadn’t rained.

At the top, we also had a Korean melon that an older Korean gave us on the trail (I imagine he must’ve felt bad for me wheezing behind Alice) and fed a chipmunk some nuts. The little guy must have rations for the next few months now.

Nature

The nature in Jeju is unique, boasting blue water that contrasts with black volcanic rocks on the beaches. It’s also home to South Korea’s highest mountain - Hallasan, at 1950 metres.

We spent a lot of our time on the island walking along the beaches, hiking up dormant volcanoes, and exploring waterfalls. It’s very easy to do this in Jeju - trails are well-marked, and many of them offer stamps you can collect to commemorate your efforts, such as the Olle trail.

Hiking Mount Hallasan

We dedicated a day to hiking up Mount Hallasan. There was an interesting system in place, requiring us to reserve a free spot and to start the hike at a certain time. The hike was pretty long, effectively entailing constant walking up steps. Most of the hike was in a forest, which was later replaced by vistas of the entire island.

The peak had a pretty lake at the top, but otherwise, the hike was fairly unspectacular. I was impressed by how well the trail was maintained, though, with frequent toilets and even compressed air guns at the end to get mud off your shoes.

Udo Island

Udo is a tiny island in the East of Jeju. We managed to figure out how to get the ferry there (despite there not being a single sign in English), and rented e-bikes to cycle around the island.

Looping around the island is popular to do by bike or on foot. Although cycling around here felt a bit like being in an island-sized driving school, with everyone riding however they felt like - think of Mario Kart without power-ups. We’d stop from time to time to grab a coffee or food, and the day sort of vanished.

The coast on Udo is lush, and cycling around there was definitely a highlight of Jeju for me.

Jimjilbang (Korean Baths)

Jimjilbangs are Korean 24-hour bathhouses providing saunas, lounges, and snack bars. I’ve been missing European sauna culture (most saunas in Asia are wet), so I was looking forward to trying one out in Korea. We checked online before coming what the etiquette is, and were able to navigate the place fine. Entry was also a little less than £5 - being able to turn up to a sauna without pre-booking in London for that money would be a blessing.

We went to the gender-segregated nude saunas first, which were all very well maintained, and luckily, ran hot. The Koreans in there were very comfortable. When we walked in, there was a guy in one of the saunas doing push-ups, another guy moaning as he was getting massaged by one of the staff in the corner, and another guy on all fours massaging his buttocks with water jets coming from the ceiling. It doesn’t get more liberating than this.

After getting the most familiar I ever have with Isaac’s and Edon’s bodies in the last 5 years of our friendship, we put on the provided gowns and went to the jimjilbang. There we could rest on mattresses, go to salt rooms, and, in true Korean style, play on gacha machines.

Museums

There are a few quirky museums on the island that we checked out. Edon and Isaac weren’t as interested as I was in admiring what would have caused someone to erect statues of cock and balls in Love Land, so we opted for something more palatable.

First, we went to the O’Sulloc tea museum. O’Sulloc is a popular tea brand in South Korea, but after having gone to the museum, a lot of its popularity might come from a large marketing budget. I wouldn’t recommend it - there wasn’t much of a museum to see, but there were plenty of opportunities to spend money. I’ll have to learn more about tea elsewhere.

The much more interesting place was Snoopy Garden. This is a museum and garden dedicated to the Peanuts comics. I’ve not really been exposed much to Snoopy growing up, but the museum gave me a new appreciation for it.

The gardens themselves were really well landscaped and maintained, and it was a great way to spend a rainy afternoon.

Local Food

Jeju seems to be nationally valued for a few variants of produce that are native to it. We tried a few:

• Udo peanut - tiny peanuts grown on Udo Island. Their flavour is richer than normal peanuts, and as a KP Dry Roasted peanut addict, I liked them.

• Black pork - pork from black-coloured pigs native to Jeju. Honestly, nothing crazy - it just tasted like pork.

• Hallabong (Jeju orange) - this one’s the most popular by far, with merchandise associated with it sold all over South Korea. It looks like an orange with a protruding bump on top of it, but it’s as easy to peel as a tangerine, and a little sweeter. I’d happily buy it over orange varieties.

• Raw mackerel - we had this in a raw fish selection, and found the raw mackerel to taste the best after tuna and salmon. The seafood in Jeju has been the freshest I’ve had in a while.

Before we got the flight back to Seoul, we stopped by the coast and listened to a local guitar club for the elderly. It was the perfect way to wrap up our stay in Jeju. While the island doesn’t have any major highlights or things you must do, there’s a tranquil energy about it that I’ve simply not felt elsewhere. I’m glad we came here.

We started our travels in Seoul, which I’ll write a post about later, as I ended up spending some more time there after Isaac’s and Edon’s departure. Our second destination was Gyeongju. It’s a quiet city known for its rich Korean heritage, often dubbed the “museum without walls”. In the same spirit, we opted for staying in a hanok - a traditional Korean house.

The amenities were basic, and we slept on the floor. It felt like a sleepover, except we’d all wake up checking in with each other as to how messed up our backs are feeling. I’d recommend staying in one; they also happen to be very economical.

Exploring Gyeongju

Most of the attractions in Gyeongju are in a large park in the centre of the City. This includes palaces, traditional bridges, parks, and ponds. In that regard, it didn’t take us very long to see most of the things that the city had to offer.

A highlight for us all was the Gyeongju Solgeo Art Gallery, located in this strange expo-park-turned-tourist-attraction. It showcased many well-curated exhibitions by Korean artists. We preferred it to many of the galleries that we went to in Seoul. I particularly liked a few pieces that were made painted using calligraphy techniques.

The park otherwise had a whole lot of nothing. We left our mark, though, after an octopus stew we had for lunch decided to clear out all of our digestive systems. It was the first time as an adult that I involuntarily went beyond touching cloth, resulting in me completely blocking one of the toilets and causing it to overflow. That, combined with another faux pas I don’t want to own up to publicly, left us with a desire to leave Gyeongju. What happens in Gyeongju stays in Gyeongju.

PC Bang

PC Bangs are internet cafes where people go to play video games. I was curious about PC Bangs for a long time, having traded a lot of my teenage years for getting my arse whooped by Koreans playing against me in League of Legends out of them.

We initially went to one in Seoul, and managed to set ourselves up to launch Overwatch in English in an embarrassing hour and a half. We all used to play video games, and spending some time in a PC Bang brought out a lot of these dormant feelings in me that not much else could get out (positive and negative). After having completed Gyeongju and seeking retreat from our sins, the shiny PC Bang signs lured us in with their promises of RTX 5070s and 600Hz screens.

After a little over two hours in, we all got bored and haven’t wanted to go back to a PC Bang since. Saying this, I could see PC Bangs being perfect for when that yearly desire to have a two-week Minecraft phase kicks in. Otherwise, I’m glad to have remembered why I traded playing video games for going outside.

Food

Gyeongju had a few local desserts we tried too:

• Gyeongju bread - pastry filled with red bean paste. Tastes exactly like it sounds. We weren’t convinced initially as the taste was sort of bland, but it got moreish.

• 10 won bread - pancake pastry filled with mozzarella. This sounds gross, but the difference in textures worked well.

Gyeongju was a fun time, it really offers about a day’s worth of attractions. We’ve definitely gained something here.

1. Seeing some of the most interesting temples in the world.

2. Going to Laos by slow boat.

3. Entering the golden triangle.

I was there for the first reason, with the “White Temple” that’s there being probably the only temple I’ve ever had a serious interest in going to. I find the golden triangle fascinating, but I also like having two kidneys. If you don’t know about the golden triangle, going down a bit of a YouTube and Wikipedia rabbit hole about it will provide some entertainment.

Chiang Rai is a 4-hour drive from Chiang Mai, and while I could have sorted my own transport, an organised tour actually ended up being cheaper and easier, so I went for that.

Tour Extras

The tour started with a few extras that I wasn’t particularly excited for. First, we stopped at a tiny hot spring which had more touristy shops than I could count. Then, we visited a village belonging to the Kayan people - more colloquially known as the “Long Neck” tribe, as the women wear rings around their necks. The entire village was set up for people to walk around it, with a load of bric-a-brac for sale and the tribespeople set up for photos with tourists. I really didn’t like this, so I sped through the village - it must’ve felt really degrading for the Kayan people to have had their village turned into a human zoo.

The White Temple

The White Temple is a contemporary temple that was designed and built out of an older temple by Chalermchai Kositpipat, a famous Thai artist. According to the temple’s Wikipedia page, technically, it’s an art exhibit and not a temple. After having visited, I can sort of see why. The temple is privately owned and was entirely built at the artist’s expense.

The temple looks incredible. The intricate details really make it, including moulded human arms at its entrance. An immense amount of work must have gone into building it.

The temple was surrounded by some buildings in a similar style, and galleries showcasing solely the artist’s work. The artist seems to have found a style early on and stuck to it, not deviating from it much until recent years. As to his recent works, they seemed a bit like what a middle-aged person would share on Facebook. There was also this one with blocks of social media icons above the Buddha, because computer bad? It also had the Google Plus logo, which was crazy for a piece made in 2019.

My favourite part was the back wall inside the temple, opposite the Buddha. You couldn’t take photos inside, so I managed to find a photo of it online:

The artist, for some reason, decorated the wall with 9/11, Angry Birds, Minions, and Hellraiser, interspersed by Buddhist imagery. There were also other Western and pop culture references on the wall. Personally, I found this absolutely hilarious.

I tried to look for an explanation for why the wall was decorated like this, but found conflicting explanations. One source is saying that 9/11 is supposed to show the cost of war on innocent people, and that aliens flying into Kung-Fu Panda are supposed to show greater forces beyond us in this world. Another source says that it’s supposed to show the good and bad using Western imagery. I’m at a loss.

Blue Temple

Next, the aptly named Blue Temple. This was designed and built by one of the apprentices of the artist who built the White Temple and shares many similarities with it.

This is more of a Buddhist temple in a traditional sense, with the inside opting for intricate decorations over paintings of Michael Jackson stuck in a cycle of rebirth.

Red Temple

At this point, the temple naming started following a pattern, likely riding on the White Temple’s popularity. The Red Temple was our last stop, which was next to a huge Lady Buddha statue and a pagoda. They were cool, but honestly, they were trumped by the other temples in the area.

To finish the day, I tried a Chiang Rai speciality - Phulae Pineapple. These are tiny pineapples, but they’re very sweet. I could have had about 20.

At the end of the day, I made it back to Chiang Mai. I have some newfound inspiration for renovating a temple and decorating it with Drain Gang visuals and vintage Gregg Araki film posters.

Hiking the Monk’s Trail

This is probably the most popular hiking route in Chiang Mai. It takes you through the jungle past various Buddhist temples and shrines, and ends in Doi Suthep - a sacred mountain with a temple on it. It’s not a tough route, but the 30-degree Thai heat makes it challenging.

I went on a hike with Matthew, the cousin of a friend from London (Jakob). I met Matthew once briefly at a party, and now I bumped into him in a jazz bar in Chiang Mai. I’ve had a few other chance encounters like this while travelling, and it’s always strange. The world is too small.

The hike was really fun. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever done a hike that was so culture-rich and that had so many places to explore. The views were also the clearest I’ve seen in Asia so far, with the monsoon season just starting and clearing a lot of the pollution. At the peak, there were a bunch of older and younger monks on a pilgrimage.

We also encountered this cool frog:

Muay Thai

After having watched some Muay Thai in Bangkok, I wanted to try it myself. I went for a group session at Dang Muay Thai Gym, where people get split up into smaller groups according to their experience level.

The training was intense. Straight from the warmup, my heart was beating fast, and everyone was glistening with sweat. We then learned a few common moves with the other beginners, before graduating to practising on punching bags. There were a few breaks, but before and after each one, we did crunches. It was tough work. Finally, we did some pad work, which required a surprising amount of focus.

I had a good time, but realised that Muay Thai takes a lot of mental and physical dedication. It makes sense to really get into it and not casually do it. Either way, it was a great workout.

Mountain Biking

I gave mountain biking a go in Chiang Mai, organised by Trailhead. I ended up riding with a 68-year-old Kiwi guy, John, who’s pretty adept at mountain biking. It was a welcome break to hang out with someone so much older.

I’ve been cycling in London for the last 3 years, so I felt pretty ready to hit the trail. However, the mountain biking humbled me. I really needed to focus so that I don’t fly over the handlebars, and the loose terrain didn’t help. I ended up having a good time, but there were some dicey moments. If I were to do this again, I’d need to spend more time practising easier routes. It felt a bit like I was thrown in the deep end.

Grandad and I ended up being a pretty good duo, with him struggling on the uphills, and later making it up to me on the downhills, where I was strangling the brakes. We also stopped by a lychee farm, where the guide picked up the juiciest lychees I’ve ever had. I’ll really miss the fruit in Thailand.

We finished the trail with some amazing Thai food. I felt pretty mentally and physically spent - mountain biking is a lot more intense than I thought, and my body really caught up to me once the adrenaline wore off. Witnessing John look for a water source and promptly deciding to wash his face in a toilet bowl with the door open provided some comedic relief, though. I’m sorry, John, if you’re reading this, but it was hilarious.

Whitewater Kayaking

A close friend from home, Luka, loves whitewater kayaking. I’ve been curious about it, but it feels like the sort of sport that most people get into from a young age, or if they’re living very close to a water source. I found that a company, Siam Rivers, does 2-day whitewater kayaking tours suitable for beginners in Chiang Mai, so I signed up.

I was picked up by the company and greeted by a familiar face in the Jeep - John. He’s also organised a tour with these guys, except doing two days of whitewater rafting. I don’t know what ending up doing activities that a 68-year-old guy is into says about me, but I hope it’s a good thing.

We got driven to a homestay in the jungle and dropped off our stuff. We then split up, with John going rafting and me learning to roll a kayak. Rolling is necessary if I were to capsize, allowing me to flip my kayak over and continue to paddle, instead of having to take the kayak spray skirt off and fully resetting my kayak.

Learning to roll was tough. I had to capsize my kayak and practise getting back up, mostly using my hips and my paddle. It was a lot to remember, and I managed to get it enough times to then try it in a rapid, which was tougher. While the teacher had a good attitude, it didn’t seem like there was much structure to the tuition I was getting.

I spent the evening talking to John and my guide. I found that most of the people at the company have been with it from its inception 26 years ago, and that the company was struggling since COVID. I have no idea how the economies of such a business work, since there seemed to be about ten staff members for just the two of us. It also made sense as to why the tuition I got wasn’t great - the company mostly runs rafting and visits to elephant sanctuaries, with most kayakers coming here being experienced.

After going to my room, I read about whitewater kayaking tuition. Rolling in a rapid on day 1 is actually really not normal. Most people start in a pool, then graduate to a calm river, and then try a rapid after many days of tuition. I was rolling in a rapid in about 2 hours. I really can’t attribute this to any natural abilities; I think it was more intense mental and physical perseverance.

Day 2

I’ve not felt as mentally and physically exhausted as I did on this day in a long time. I was tempted to call off the kayaking and just join John on the raft, but I decided to persevere. We did a bit more rolling practise and covered some general techniques for paddling upstream and catching eddies (calm spots of water). Doing anything but rolling was pretty fun, and even kayaking down small drops stopped being so scary.

Crossing the entire river on my second day on a kayak would have been mental, so I joined John on the raft for that. In comparison to kayaking, rafting felt like child’s play.

Rafting the Taeng River was brilliant, allowing me to really take in North Thailand’s lush scenery and nature. The river is also home to many elephant sanctuaries (all operating on varying ends of the ethics scale), which was an extraordinary sight.

I did nothing the day after the kayaking and found it to be probably the most intense workout I’ve ever done. Luka, I take my hat off to you.

I had a blast trying all these things in Chiang Mai. I’m unsure how many of them I’ll continue, as the gym and climbing appeal to me more, but maybe I’ll have a change of heart when I’m pushing 60.

NOTE: In case you’re wondering about the new email title, I’ve renamed the blog! I was never really fond of “dom abroad”, and the new name sounds better to me. Other than that, rest assured it’s still me on the other side.

Chiang Mai, North Thailand. When initially planning my travels, I was very excited to come here. The nature here is lush, there are great hiking routes, and the place itself has a relaxed vibe. In many ways, it’s lived up to the hype. I’ve been able to meet the most like-minded backpackers in all of Thailand here, and it still feels authentically Thai here. It’s still not at the levels of people I met in India and Nepal, but it’s the best I’ll get in Thailand.

I reflected a bit on why the backpackers here are like they are. I think most of the travellers here seem to be attracted by the fact that Thailand is easy to travel in and is relatively cheap. Through that, many tourists seem mostly concerned with making their money last, and don’t seem that interested in Thailand as a country. I’ve ended up in too many gatherings with travellers in their early 20s running away from something, mourning insignificant amounts of money (e.g. paying £2 more on a day tour than anticipated), and who just want to get drunk. Whenever I met someone with a purpose and interest in Thailand, I clung on.

Sightseeing

Chiang Mai is full of temples. I’m well and truly jaded by them now, only picking the ones that look unique. The silver temple was just that, and it was nice to spend a bit of time exploring it.

There’s also an artist village a little bit out of the town that’s popular with tourists, where local artists sell various handmade crafts. You can take a lot of classes here, such as jewellery making and book-binding. All the crafts felt a little homogenous to me, and none of the stuff was to my taste, but it was worth visiting for an afternoon.

Unexpectedly, my favourite thing to do in the town was visiting the Museum of World Insects and Natural Wonders. I found it through Atlas Obscura. It’s a private collection belonging to renowned mosquito researchers, which I believe is in their home. The museum was full of personal anecdotes from the owners’ lives, including quirky details like poems about insects and pro-house spider propaganda posters.

I could really tell that the owners were passionate about their work, and the way they described their exhibits was incredibly wholesome.

Food

The North of Thailand is famous for Khao Soi - egg noodle soup in a curry broth, topped with crispy fried noodles. I had it many times here, being careful not to get one that was too spicy (it’s very easy for the Thai people to serve you one like that). There are some famous khao soi places, but honestly, all the khao soi I had was great. It’s definitely worth ordering it if you’re in the area.

Massage Course

I met a guy on a hike months ago in Jack’s hiking group who mentioned that he did a massage course when he was travelling. I was curious and did some research to find that Northern Thailand is heaving with massage schools. Many are attended by physical therapists from all over the world, mostly to fulfil their requirements for ongoing education.

I like learning new things when I travel, so I signed up for a 3-day Thai massage course with Sabai De Ka massage school. While there are cheaper schools, this one had very good reviews, and the teachers seemed to know good English.

A Chinese girl, Shikin, started the course on the same day as me. I didn’t know her before and was a little afraid of seeming like a creep, being a single guy signing up for a massage course. Luckily, she was chill about it, and it was nice to hang out with her outside class.

The 3 days had a very simple schedule - the teacher would show us some new massage movements, and then we’d practise them under her supervision. There was a lot to learn, and we kept up a fast pace. I was very glad that I went to this massage school - the teacher knew great English and had a great attitude.

The most important thing about learning to massage, I found, was practice. If I were to learn again in the future, I’d opt for a school structured like a camp, so you can practise with other students after lessons. I think I’ve retained a good bit from the lessons, but without practice, I can see the knowledge dwindling.

I have a newfound respect for masseuses. There’s a lot that goes into massage in terms of the areas to target, checking in with the person being massaged, and making adjustments for different body sizes. A surprising element was also that there is some spirituality to Thai massage. At the start of the day, we’d start with a chant honouring the originator of Thai Massage, and we’d pray for protection from negative energy.

I went into the course wanting to learn more about the body and how to prevent some ailments, mostly motivated by having a bad knot under my shoulder for many years. In some ways, I got that. Specifically, I learned that I should start cooling down after exercise to let my muscles calmly recover to their resting positions.

In true Asian style, we also had a photo shoot at the end of the course.

I’m taking bookings for massages when I’m back in London. No happy endings unless you ask nicely, though.

Sticky Waterfall

The sticky waterfall is probably the most popular day trip to do in Chiang Mai. It’s a pretty long waterfall you can climb up, due to the rock being made of limestone and providing enough friction to be able to walk up. It’s not sticky in a sense, but rather, grippy. I went there with a few people I met on nomadtable, and it ended up being a really fun group.

There were a few small lakes to explore next to the waterfall, and a cave that a local in our group showed us. The cave felt eerie with nobody else there, and with it being decorated with various Buddhist shrines and artefacts. It was also steeped in folklore - the cave is dedicated to two princesses who prayed during a drought, conjuring a spring at the sticky waterfall.

Getting More Massages

To make the most of still being in Thailand, I went to a few massage parlours that had something special about them.

Women’s Massage by Ex-Prisoners

A massage parlour only employing female ex-prisoners. They have elaborate reintegration programmes for ex-prisoners, and it was great to support that cause.

Tok Sen massage

A Northern Thai massage technique that involves tapping a wooden mallet and a peg on the body. Some people swear by it as a way to ease knots. While the sensation of having a small Thai lady beat me with a wooden hammer was novel, I didn’t find it to help my knots at all.

The massage also involves a lot of Thai massage techniques, which I found I’m not a massive fan of - I’m not convinced that getting my body clicked and stretched does much for its wellbeing.

After having gotten a new body from all the massage, I was ready to get humbled by the Thai outdoors. I’ll cover the outdoor activities I did in Chiang Mai in the next post.

I timed my stay in Thailand to be able to make the retreat, as it was closed over the burning season. The burning season runs from January to April, and during it, farmers employ slash-and-burn methods to clear land for a new crop. The air pollution in Chiang Mai becomes the worst in the world during this time, which I didn’t fancy experiencing any more of after being in the North of Vietnam.

Retreat Structure

The centre runs structured retreats in the winter, which usually sell out. In the summer, you can come to the centre when you like and stay for at least 3 nights. That means that people arrive and leave every day, which has some pros and cons. You get to meet a lot of cool people, but also every morning you’ve got to say some goodbyes.

The retreat followed a loose structure - every day we had 3 Vegan meals, a total of 3 hours and 30 minutes of yoga, and a workshop that differed daily. Otherwise, there was a lot of free time to do whatever you liked. The retreat was also pretty loose rule-wise, with there being a silent period until the end of Breakfast every morning, and no alcohol or drugs allowed.

I stayed in a dorm, but there were some private rooms available, too. The dorm was clean and comfy, and the centre was masterfully thought out - there were lots of hammocks dotted around, comfy huts to chill in, various Thai drinks in the fridge, and even a net above the rice paddies to stargaze in. It sort of felt like an all-inclusive resort for hippies.

The Yoga

In the mornings, we practised vinyasa yoga, which was a bit intense and great to wake up to. In the afternoons, we did yin yoga, which targets the connective tissue between muscles and tendons. I particularly liked the latter and holding poses for a few minutes; I could get some deep stretches, and it felt almost meditative.

The retreat had a hut (“shala”) set up perfectly for yoga. During the sessions, we had all we needed to do yoga well available. That included bricks, bolsters, and knee pads for my decrepit 26-year-old knees. While practising, we also had a fantastic view of the Thai countryside, which beats looking at the pipe-work of sweaty London gyms.

I did the most yoga I’ve ever done during my time here, and now my body feels different. It’s still riddled with knots and parts of my body click when they shouldn’t, but I get less tight in places, especially in my back.

I usually opt for the gym or climbing if I want to exercise, but after this retreat, I think I’ll be going for yoga more often. Doing it frequently seems to pay off, too, with many of the flows becoming intuitive and poses becoming easier.

The Workshops

We had a different workshop every day. One night, we had the sauna on (sadly, a wet one, which are popular in Southeast Asia) and a fireplace going, and a gong bath on another night. These felt pretty standard for a wellness establishment like this, and provided some variety in the programme.

The most interesting workshop was Satsang. I was made aware of it in India, and it can take on different forms. Usually, it entails spiritual or philosophical conversation, meditation, or singing devotional songs in a group. Here, we had a circle of everyone sharing their life stories and saying what brought them to Suan Sati, if they felt comfortable doing so.

People shared some very personal and vulnerable stories from their lives. I’ve never experienced people opening up so much after having just met them, and I massively commended their ability to be able to do so. Being at the retreat felt different afterwards, feeling like people knew each other on a deeper level.

Saying all this, I wish I opened up a bit more to see what that would have been like. I decided to skip my turn, because saying that I might have an avoidant attachment style felt a bit demeaning next to people saying how they nearly died from health issues or how they cancelled their wedding.

Everything Else

The food here was amazing. It was all fresh vegan Thai food, which I’ve been hunting for daily while in Thailand - except now I didn’t have to click through 5 restaurants on Google Maps checking if the menus cater to tourists or locals.

Everyone else attending the retreat was great, too. Most people were on holiday, but there were a few backpackers and locals too. Compared to meditation retreats I’ve done in the UK, the people felt a lot more down-to-earth as well. I ended up meeting up with a lot of people in the city after the retreat, and it felt good to get to know people a little better. I’ve not been able to do much of that in Thailand, with most travellers being younger backpackers who don’t have much desire to engage in local culture.

I was also pleasantly surprised by the lack of forced “hippiness”. I felt some initial aversion to holding hands before dinner, and Americanisms from the teachers like “give yourself permission to be here” or greetings like “happy 4 PM”, but I got over that. We’d also all publicly share one thing we felt grateful for before dinner, but that ended up creating a nice atmosphere in the evenings.

The centre was also very close to nature. We had to chase a huge frog out of the dorm one evening, lizards would often join me while I was reading in the huts, and I had to get used to the cicadas making a racket in the evening. It felt grounding to co-exist with the animals like that.

I’ll seek more retreats like this out in the future, although it might be difficult to do in Europe. I remember the yoga teacher at my gym advertising a weekend yoga retreat in a manor house for like £1000, catering to the West London yummy mummies. Maybe I have to get in with the cougars.

Hua Hin is a small beach town, apparently pretty popular with older Westerners. There really wasn’t much to do there other than doing watersports and spending time at the beach. It’s also got a surprisingly strong culture of horse riding, so often I’d see horses on the roads and on the beach. It sometimes felt like being in a fever dream.

Wingfoiling

After trying windsurfing a few years ago, I’ve been curious about wingfoiling. The sport only really started in 2019 or so, and has a few advantages over its siblings - the equipment is easier to transport, and you can practice it in weaker wind. Seeing people glide above the water on the hydrofoil also looks surreal, and I wanted to try it.

I’m aware that not many people know of the sport, and to be fair, it seems that watersports like these are mostly popular with older European men. This is what it looks like:

I learned with Surfspot, mostly as they’re Thai-owned. Other schools seemed to be run by Westerners and were charging European prices, which I didn’t want to support over Thai places. Surfspot is an all-encompassing centre for watersports, mostly offering equipment hire and storage for members. Lessons didn’t seem like their forte, judging by the lack of online reviews mentioning them. I felt like I was taking a bit of a risk by booking with them, but at half the price of the places run by Europeans, I thought I’d give it a punt.

I got a Thai guy as my teacher, who goes by “Jack”. He was an adept wingfoiler, but sadly, I don’t think he had much practise teaching others, especially in English. The lessons felt improvised and unstructured, and I felt a language barrier. He also didn’t have a way to get to me when I was out in the sea, and would sometimes run off to the terrace for extended periods of time, meaning that I couldn't ask for advice. I spent a lot of my lessons deliberating whether to switch schools. Towards the end of each lesson, though, I felt like I had progressed enough just by spending time on the board, so I stuck with it.

As to the experience of wingfoiling itself, I found it more fun, but also more difficult than windsurfing. This is mostly due to the wing not being attached to anything, unlike a windsurfing sail. I had to think a lot more about the angles of the wing, as well as the positioning of it relative to the board and me. It felt like I had to learn to concurrently control the wing and the board. When I caught the wind and sped up a bit, though, the experience of gliding through the waves was incredible, making it all worth it.

After the first day, I got a bit sunburned (UX index 13 is no joke), so I took a page out of the Asians’ book and bought a bucket hat and some strong zinc sun cream. I didn’t realise, but the sun cream was red-tinted and took days to wash off. It protected me, but it was the most evil sun cream I’ve ever used.

The wind blessed me on most days, and we only had to cancel the lesson one time. I had a good time, but honestly, I can see why mostly old people are into sports like these - you really need to allocate a lot of time for practise and have a contingency plan for when the wind is not good.

Everything else

Hua Hin didn’t have much going for it. In the evenings, I spent time in my room above a launderette watching videos on winfoiling as a supplement to the teaching, and otherwise just planning future travels. It felt like a holiday from a holiday, which, after 3 months of travelling, I found was much needed.

I also got my first-ever Thai massage here, which wasn’t difficult to find, with most streets full of overstaffed massage parlours. The experience reminded me a bit of being in a hammam in Uzbekistan, with a lot of the massage involving my body being stretched and cracked in a way that had me worrying if I’ll still be able to walk after.

To make the most of the downtime, I also went to the dentist to receive the most efficient scaling & polishing of my life - the Asian work ethic really can’t be understated. There was also a Polish restaurant here, which served really good food. Polish potato pancakes taste surprisingly good with sriracha.

I had a hard time connecting with the other travellers here, aside from the ones I met while hiking and scuba diving. Most of my evenings were spent watching the sunset or reading on the beach alone, usually soundtracked by United in Flames. I just about managed to make it work, and the sunsets were gorgeous.

Scuba diving

Koh Tao is famous for being the world’s diving capital, and also for being one of the cheapest places to dive globally. That might ring some alarm bells, but they mostly get away with the lower prices due to the sheer volumes of diving that happens on the island - every diving boat tends to be full, and the dive sites are easily accessible. The diving is also really good, offering clear, highly biodiverse waters. Saying this, the standard of the diving centres varies a lot.

I wanted to try diving and decided to learn with Roctopus, based on a friend’s recommendation (thanks, Jack!) and glowing online reviews. I couldn’t be happier with my choice - all the staff were super friendly, and my instructor, Katie, was a fantastic teacher and really easy to get along with. I later found that Roctopus teaches courses as prescribed by RAID. This is a less popular diving agency than the likes of PADI or SSI, but they have higher standards. I feel like I got a higher standard of tuition than most divers

I decided to get stuck straight in and get certified to dive up to 20 metres deep (i.e., to do an open water course), with no prior experience of diving. In retrospect, having never dived before, this was a pretty big commitment for 3.5 days. Luckily, I ended up loving it.

Open water

Before we got in the water, there was a good bit of theory to learn. Once we did that, we practised diving in the pool before graduating to the sea. There was a lot to cover in the first few days, and I was thinking a lot, but eventually a lot of it became muscle memory.

Diving in the sea felt a little scary at first, but having practised the response to various emergency situations, I got very comfortable in the water. I could have had my gas run out, mask flood, or breathing equipment fail, and be able to recover.

I’ve not thought about scuba diving much before trying it, and as silly as it sounds, I wasn’t ready for there being this whole new world underwater. It feels great to see all these animals you’ve only ever seen in photos up close, staring at you.

Saying all this, my knowledge of marine life sucks. I think I’ve at least quadrupled the number of fish I can name after diving in Koh Tao. My favourite ones I’ve spotted were barracudas, groupers, and box fish. I also had a trevalley use me as camouflage one time, which I only found out about after the dive. A girl from the group got a recording, though (I’m the second person on the screen):

After my open water certification, I wanted to keep diving. I decided to take on another course (called Explorer 30 in RAID, and Advanced Open Water in PADI), which certifies me to dive up to 30 metres. This wasn’t initially in my plans, but I really enjoyed diving, the teacher was great, and I met some really nice people while diving. I also really liked having a daily routine imposed on me, having not really had one for 3 months now. Having to plan your everyday gets tiring, even when you’re having fun.

Explorer 30

The Explorer 30 course mostly involved diving in new situations, which was really cool. We dived down to 30 metres, did a night dive, navigated underwater, and had some sessions just focusing on form and moving underwater. In many ways, this is exactly what I needed and made me feel much more competent in the water.

The night dive was a highlight. We could see different animals (including stingrays!), and exploring with a flashlight gave diving a different dimension. You never quite knew what would come out of the dark waters.

After many days of diving, I could have easily stayed and dived more. Becoming a little tired of the island, though, I wanted to try freediving a go before leaving (diving without scuba gear).

Freediving

I’ve been curious about freediving for a while, having met a few people who are fanatical about it. While the idea of holding my breath for a long time didn’t excite me too much, I was curious about the commonalities between freediving and meditation. I signed up for a short course (AIDA 1, I believe) at a well-reviewed freediving centre on Koh Tao.

We did an equalisation workshop, followed by some sessions in the pool on the next day, covering the basics. Then, we got on the boat and dived down into the sea while following a rope. Equalisation felt different from scuba diving, and you get to get a bit more efficient with it. One guy in my group really struggled with it beyond a few metres, so it feels like natural aptitude might determine how easy you’d find freediving.

Honestly, I didn’t like freediving. Holding your breath for as long as possible underwater didn’t appeal to me at all. This also wasn’t helped by the fact that I didn’t find my instructor to be the friendliest. I also got a sense that there’s constant competition with the more experienced freedivers, with them constantly pushing themselves to beat PBs. As someone who’s really not competitive, it didn’t feel like this was for me.

Anyway, I’m glad I gave it a go. It’s good to figure out what you don’t like.

Hiking

There are a few viewpoints you can hike up to in Koh Tao. I usually summited them in the evenings to catch the sunset, and to beat the daytime heat.

First, I went up Fraggle Rock with an American guy, Nick, who suggested it on Nomadtable. We were the only people there, and it felt great to have some quiet on an otherwise pretty busy island. The viewpoint also had a bar further down, where we spent the evening overlooking the island. Nick is a clown who’s worked for a travelling circus in Japan for the last year, and I loved talking to someone who’s lived such a different life to me.

I met up with Nick again on another day to hike up to the John-Suwan viewpoint. This is the most popular viewpoint on the island, and the peak was rammed full of people when we got there. Lovely view, though.

I’m not sure how to close this post off, other than that I’m aware of it kinda reading like the babblings of a partypooper. I still had a good time on Koh Tao, but I’m not massively motivated to explore other Thai islands after having been here. I need to get back to where there is no English on the restaurant menus and where the locals record TikToks with me.

Like Vietnam, I had to work a little harder than in India or Nepal to meet like-minded travellers. Thailand’s very tourist-friendly, so you get all sorts of people visiting. Connecting with locals has so far been much easier than in Vietnam, though, with many young Thai people speaking good English in Bangkok.

I ended up doing a lot over the week I was there, so this post ended up being quite long, even after I tried to limit it to the highlights. I hope you enjoy the read!

Songkran Festival

I timed my stay so that I could make it to Thailand for Songkran - the Thai New Year festival. The festival lasts 3 days, and entails splashing others with water and smearing them with clay as a symbol of blessing and protection.

There were a few main streets for celebrating the festival, and many bars and clubs held their own special events for it. You won’t be safe from the celebrations outside these places, though. I’ve gotten splashed by locals and their kids many times when just trying to go about my business.

I met up with Rain to celebrate (a friend from home who’s travelling while remote working, we also met in Hanoi) and her friend, Kar. We got some waterproof phone pouches and bought some water guns to join the madness.

Silom Road was pedestrianised for the duration of the festival and had various music stages set up. Most were playing American-flavoured EDM, which seems to be the genre of choice amongst young people.

The festival was, essentially, a massive water fight. I also couldn’t underestimate the kids - some of them had incredibly good aim. It was good fun, with laughs all around. Some roads were more packed than others, with me only braving Khao San Road (the backpacker and party street) once, only to be stuck in a tired one-way convoy.

Songkran was a fun time, but after a day, I had had enough (similarly to how I felt after celebrating Holi in Kathmandu). It also got a little treacherous biking getting Grab bikes around the city, too, with the drivers having to dodge puddles and water gun shots.

Food

The food in Bangkok is outstanding. Not only is Thai food incredible in itself, but the standard of it and the establishments that it’s served in are also high. For example, there are many boards and organisations rating food spots. The most popular ones are Shell’s Shuan Shim and the Bangkok government’s “Clean Food Good Taste” scheme. Food stalls can also only open at certain times and can only operate in certain areas, giving everything some order.

Shuan Shim is an initiative by Shell, which recognises places that serve good food (akin to Michelin’s Bib Gourmand - it was made to promote cooking with gas). These places can display a green bowl symbol as an accolade.

“Clean Food Good Taste” is awarded to places that serve tasty food, use high-quality ingredients, and meet certain hygiene standards. It’s awarded by the Bangkok local government, and its logo is a chef.

Note that I mentioned food “spots” or “establishments”, as a lot of the food I ate in Bangkok came from street food stands. With the standards being so high, I don’t need to wonder which street food stand will serve my last meal. India could take some notes.

Food tour

After enjoying the food tour I did in Hanoi so much, I found a similar one in Bangkok. I’ve been finding this to be a great way to see how the locals eat, try a bunch of dishes, and find out how to eat them. The tour ended up being fantastic, with the guide being very knowledgeable.

Bangkok is a much busier city than Hanoi, so a lot of the value from the tour came from having a runner save our spot in lines and ordering for us. I was impressed with the food we ate and how many places we ended up going to. My favourite dishes were:

• Stewed pork leg from Kha Moo Tee Sam - despite being someone who avoids meat, this was some of the best pork I’ve ever had. Super tender and flavourful.

• Thai green curry from Jek Pui - the best Thai green curry I’ve had. It had a lot of nuance to its flavour and a great texture. Also, while this place was featured in a street food documentary by Netflix, mainly locals were eating there.

• Soy sauce ice cream - a bit of a gimmick by Deksomboon (Thailand’s most popular soy sauce brand), but the sweet and savoury worked surprisingly well.

Some oddities

With such a large variety of street food on offer, there were also some rogue options. I tried scorpion and durian for the first time.

The scorpion didn’t have much meat to it, and you had to work to get the meat out from under the hard shell. It tasted a bit like crab and was pleasant, but it was hard work.

I’ve been curious about trying durian for a while, so I decided to finally buy some and try it. Honestly, I wasn’t a massive fan, with it tasting similarly to how it smells. The taste also lingered in my mouth for the rest of the night. I can’t really see how its smell and lacklustre taste make it so popular - maybe you had to grow up eating it to like it.

50-Year-Old Perpetual Stew

There’s a place in Bangkok that’s been serving the same batch of soup since 1976. It’s called Wattana Panich. I’ve been really curious to try it, reminding me of this guy on Instagram who’s cultivating his own perpetual stew.

In contrast to the perpetual stew guy, the chef of this place balances the flavour of the stew daily, maintaining the stew that was started by his father. I got a bowl of the stew, which contained a few floating bits of beef and miscellaneous vegetables.

The stew was rich, thick, and fatty. If you didn’t tell me that the soup was 50 years old, I probably wouldn’t notice, but there was depth to the flavour if you paid attention to it. It’s still soup in the end, but it was a fun experience to visit.

Cooking class

After doing a cooking class in Hanoi, which included meat, I thought I’d go for a vegan one instead in Bangkok, as I never cook with meat. There was one that was particularly well-rated - May Kaidee. I’m glad I chose it, as it ended up being so much more than just a cooking class.

The cooking itself was great. The teacher, Jenny, was really fun and taught well. The food we ended up making was also incredible. I’ve never had massaman curry before, and I made it here for the first time, and it’s now my favourite Thai dish. I’ve been ordering it everywhere.

Throughout the class, we sang this Thai song that we had been given the lyrics of about Thai food.

Later on, the owner, May, joined us. She’s a character. She lives in New York, where she owns another restaurant, and this was her first time back in Thailand in 8 years. She would spontaneously break out into song and dance, and is probably the most unintentionally funny person I’ve ever met due to how she speaks English.

May also had some traditional Thai clothes on for Songkran, and got us to dress up too. That eventually escalated to her teaching us traditional Thai dances out on the street, and one of the chefs livestreaming the whole thing on Instagram. Locals also joined in, and a policeman on a bike recorded a fair bit of us dancing. I expect to be granted prolonged visa-free entry when I come back.

Fish and chips crisps

To close off the food section, I got some limited edition “English-style fish & chips” flavour Lays crisps in 7-Eleven. I’m unsure how they managed to mess up so badly, but the crisps tasted like sour cream and neither fish nor chips. I’d buy them again.

Unhinged activities

Other than the 50-year-old soup, Bangkok was home to a bunch of other strange things I had to do.

Cum coffee

I’ve had the coffee shop called “cum” pop up on my Instagram explore page a few times over the last few years. Since then, it’s become my mission to check it out when I’m in Bangkok. I was particularly intrigued as the name sounded ridiculous, and yet the coffee shop itself seemed pretty fancy.

The coffee shop ended up being one of the boujeeeiest places I’ve gone to for a long time, with prices to match. The drinks were pretty fun - I got a matcha that had the whole inside of a coconut popped on top.

As to the name, it’s supposed to mean “with” in Latin, as in the context of “cafe-cum-office”, as they offer a coworking space. With Thai pronunciation, the name is pronounced more like “coom”, sounding like “funny” in Thai. The owners kinda messed up, but are leaning into it now.

Staneemeehoi

Staneemeehoi is a seafood restaurant where all the male staff wear women’s night gowns. Every 30 minutes or so, they’d put on a show, going around the tables and dancing with and around the patrons.

This was great fun. The food was good, too, even though it really didn’t have to be, as I’m sure they’d get enough people visiting for the show.

Sightseeing

There are a lot of temples in Bangkok. Wat Arun was my favourite, which is a Khmer-style Buddhist temple with lots of intricate details.

The most interesting landmark I found was the Mae Nak Shrine. I found out about it through Atlas Obscura, and it really intrigued me. To paraphrase, it’s a shrine dedicated to a ghost bride, Mae, and her unborn child. Her husband was sent to war, and in the meantime, the bride died. When her husband returned, Mae and their child were ghosts, and only later did her husband realise. The story then goes a bit crazy with Mae terrorising the town, and being repeatedly captured in a jar and escaping.

The locals were offering various offerings to the shrine and whispering things in Mae’s ear. There were also jars with numbered ping pong balls on the side, which you could take out to suggest numbers to play in the national lottery (note that most forms of gambling are illegal in Thailand, with this being one of the only legal forms).

There was also a nearby lake, which was teeming with fish. You can release fish and turtles into it as offerings. Interestingly, there were many people on the side selling fish and turtles that you could buy and release into the river yourself. I guess there’s some business in people buying the animals, releasing them into the river, and someone fishing them back out to resell.

The whole shrine had a very eerie feeling to it, with the walls being plastered with paintings of Mae and her unborn child. There were also no other foreigners when I went there, apart from Rain and me. I loved it.

Live Muay Thai

The Rajadamnern Muay Thai Stadium is the world’s first Muay Thai stadium, and it hosts fights every night. I was curious, so I got some people together from Hostelworld and went with them. The tickets were well-priced if you got the cheapest seats, and honestly, the cheapest ones were really good.

I didn’t expect to enjoy the fights as much as I did. Everything in the stadium was really well designed, and it felt like being in an IMAX cinema, with incredible sound and lights. My whole group ended up rooting for their favourites towards the end, and I’m very curious to try Muay Thai now (although I’ll likely be terrible at it).

They also had American-style karaoke breaks and dance cams, which I thought were a fun touch. I’d highly recommend coming here if you’re in Bangkok; your entire evening will be sorted.

Art

I went to the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA BANGKOK). It’s my favourite gallery that I’ve been to while travelling so far. It has a huge variety of art over many floors, focusing on Thai artists. The space itself was also well designed and looked great in itself.

Bangkok itself has many areas with prominent brutalist architecture. I loved getting lost amongst the concrete.

Nightlife

When I was in Hanoi, I wrote a post specifically dedicated to the nightlife there. I went out twice while in Bangkok, and with the scene being so much more developed than in Hanoi, I didn’t find it to be too dissimilar from going out in Europe. Given this, I’ll talk about nightlife here and not in a separate post.

Clarisa Kimskii at Bar Temp

Clarisa Kimskii was playing in a bar/club around the corner from where I was staying in Chinatown (RA event link). I’ve listened to her sets before, and she plays a flavour of techno that I’m fond of, with a good bit of variety and groove. Chinatown itself has proved to be a fantastic location to stay - it’s central, offers great food options at all times, and is near to cool bars and nightlife.

The night was set in a venue that reminded me a little of The Glove That Fits in London. It was small and intimate, featuring a bar with a limited menu and a small outdoor smoking area. The crowd was in their late 20s to 30s and felt dedicated. It also seemed to mostly consist of locals, which I missed in Hanoi.

I had a great night, with the residents playing a sound that closely matched Clarissa’s. The club was low-lit, and the sound system was tuned for the space perfectly, perhaps lacking a little in the low end. For such an easily accessible night, I couldn’t complain.

Many of the same aspects of Asian clubs that I experienced in Hanoi also persisted - there was AC, and drinking water was expensive.

DJ Sweed and bunnyman.dogs at Trinity Mall

I stayed in Bangkok to make this night. I found out about these DJs just by researching nights from RA, and both of these DJs aligned closely with my taste and were Bangkok-based (RA link). Both have a bass-heavy sound, edging into the experimental, blending techno with some electro. I particularly enjoyed listening to this bunnyman.dogs set, and was eager to see him live as a result.

I’m unsure what the venue was called. It’s under a mall called “Trinity Mall”, and its name is just the street address. It was obvious that I was in the right place after seeing the neon sign.

The club was nowhere near full and had a lot of space to dance. It also had many areas to sit down and relax in, providing comfy sofas, which were much appreciated. The lighting was nice and subdued, complemented by artificial smoke. The sound system, like in Bar Temp, was a little light on the lows, but otherwise provided a precise sound. I slightly missed the feeling of bass reverberating through my body, though, especially given that the music was bass-heavy.

Both of the DJs I was interested in delivered, and time flew. The residents were also nothing to scoff at. The selections stayed somewhat slow and dark, but I think that may be due to the night not being too busy.

This was the first venue I’ve been to on my travels that had security, and I was surprised at just how nice the security guards were. In Europe, it always feels like security is on a repressed power trip and will try to find any reason to kick you out or otherwise cause drama. Here, the security guards were eager to help and were smiling while looking towards the music.

There was also a spinning stuffed sculpture next to the bar, which I thought was a nice touch.

I loved Bangkok. I will be back.

Update 16 May 2026

I came back. Only for a few days, to meet my sister who was coming back from her own travels. When I was there again, I went to a few places that I’d recommend:

• Adhere The 13th Blues Bar - very chill blues bar, with artists playing jazz and blues. It’s easy to chat with people there and the music is nice. When I was there, a guy from the crowd also freestyled over the jazz for a bit which worked really well.

• Culture Cafe - tiny bar with a dancefloor and DJ booth that seems to be open most nights. Most of the crowd were tourists and creative-looking Thai people, as most other people were in bed at 2 AM on a Tuesday night. I was very impressed with the Thai DJ playing a really good all-vinyl set mixing techno with trance.

• Bangkok Art & Culture Centre - multi-floor contemporary art space with restaurants and small craft shops. The exhibitions were hit or miss, but it was worth spending an afternoon here.

The city is huge, but also, it’s really a city in the plainest way possible. It doesn’t really offer many cultural attractions, with the main things to do being the beach (the view from which isn’t the prettiest due to the pollution), a theme park in the mountains, and various other new man-made monuments, which feel like deliberate investments to attract tourists (all have been built from the early 2000s onwards).

The city is also oddly popular with digital nomads and expats, which I wasn’t massively fond of. Strolling around in the mornings, you could see a lot of westerners with headphones on in fancy cafes, giving subtle Bali vibes. I got this reel the other day, which feels like a microcorm for what’s happening in Da Nang:

I may be interested in some hippie stuff, but this is not my vibe.

Saying all this, it was a good place to just surf in the morning and get into a bit of a routine without any distractions. I also enjoyed going to the same places often, in particular this vegan restaurant serving vegan versions of Vietnamese dishes, with ingredients from their own garden. The place was also owned by locals, locally priced, and had locals eat there - it’s been hard to find places like this outside India and Nepal.

Sightseeing

I had a day before surfing, where I explored the local attractions that are easy to get to. I say this, as many of the more popular are 1.5h+ out of the city. There’s a small park that houses the Lady Buddha statue that’s supposed to protect the fishermen, and a newly built pagoda. Honestly, nothing to write home about.

Da Nang also had some surprises for me.

The worst hostel so far

I had the pleasure of staying in the worst hostel I’ve been to so far. The rooms and the bathrooms were infested with mould, and the smell of it was everywhere. Someone also pissed on the floor in the bathroom on the first night I was there, which I discovered by stepping in said golden puddle.

What seems to have happened is that the hostel got a really high rating 2 years ago on Hostelworld (dropping from a 9.0 to 7.1 over 2 years) and must’ve been riding that success while seriously reducing its standards. The price and the location were hard to beat, though, so I braved it through a few nights. Apart from the floorpisser, the people in the hostel were very nice, which made the stay bearable.

I feel like I’ve got my hotel and hostel booking checklist down to a tee after this experience.

Donating to the local community

The first Bad Thing on my travels also happened in Da Nang - I lost my wallet. The circumstances were silly, as I had some swim shorts on after leaving the gym, and the wallet must’ve slid out without me noticing. Luckily, I carry two wallets specifically to mitigate the effects of situations like this - one with my cards, and one with cash. I lost the one with cash. It sucks, but it wasn’t too much money in the grand scheme of things (~£170), and I managed to get it all back through travel insurance (and as an aside, would gladly recommend Big Cat insurance).

When I realised I had lost my wallet, the locals were really kind and eager to help me. They all checked various security cameras around their houses, trying to see if they could see where I dropped it. I got really uneasy having this much attention on me quite quickly, though, so I bailed on the search after an hour. I’m treating this as a donation to the local community.

As a prerequisite for the insurance claim, I had to report the matter to the police. That ended up feeling like a humiliation ritual, with the police being very reluctant to give me any sort of case number that I could use in the insurance claim. I got a photo of my report back in the end, but similar to the palaver on the street when I lost my wallet, I just wanted to get out of there.

Anyway, losing the wallet sucked in the moment, it felt like a small price to pay for a few lessons. I’ve bought a few extra Airtags, started taking a photo of every receipt to help with future claims, started leaving excess money in my accommodation, and started using the locally-preferred payment method - bank transfer via QR code. The latter is usually difficult to access for foreigners, but a startup called Moreta Pay is making it easy across Southeast Asia. I really should have used this more on my travels so far - I’m writing this post from Thailand, and paying by QR code has made travelling here incredibly easy.

I’ll leave you with this awful AI decor that adorned the gym I was in before I lost my wallet. As an aside, I’ve been progressively seeing more AI slop make its way into everyday settings while on my travels in Asia - from billboards with AI-generated images, to cafes and taxis playing livestreams of AI-generated music nobody has to be paid royalties for. I’ve not noticed this to be so bad in Europe, but it’s pretty rife here.

Surfing

I made Da Nang sound pretty bad so far, so I’ll cut to the reason I was there - the surfing. And the surfing there was great.

I learned with Holiday Surf, based on their overwhelmingly positive reviews on Google Maps. I can concur with the reviews - the lessons were very well priced, the teachers were good, and they knew good English. After the lesson, you could also stay on the beach with any hired gear for as long as you liked to practise.

I had lessons over 3 days. Over these, I made a surprising amount of progress, being able to stand up after the first lesson, and working on independently catching and riding the waves on subsequent days. The surf school also had a photographer, so I got a few shots of myself surfing.

The teacher helped spot waves initially and was giving me a small push on the board, but progressively, I ended up doing more myself, with the teacher just giving feedback. When you manage to catch a wave, the feeling is incredible; I can see why people get addicted.

On subsequent days, my body ended up taking a bit of a beating, mostly the bottom of my ribs from perking up on the board, and a lot of sore spots on my hands and legs from rubbing against the board. Taking a day in between some of the lessons to rest would have been a good idea.

Every day provided a different challenge, with the waves changing daily. I’ve still got a lot to learn, and I’m hoping to get surf more later in my travels. Ideally, in a place with a bit more soul.

Knife making

I met some Kiwis in a cooking class in Hanoi who recommended a knife-making class in Hoi An to me. What made it special is that the metal used is from American bombshells - a cool story to have for your kitchen knife. I’ve also wanted to try blacksmithing for a long time, so this was right up my street.

It was just me and a Polish girl taking the class that afternoon (as a side effect, really pushing the limits of my rusty Polish), which was set in a quiet village outside Hoi An. There were two blacksmiths at the workshop who helped us and didn’t speak English, and a girl who ran the workshop and acted as a translator.

The knives, indeed, were made from old bombshells:

I asked whether bombshells are used because they’re made of a good material or for the story. The organiser said that it’s for both reasons. The material is good for knives, but they’re fairly high-maintenance, requiring drying right after use.

We chose the shape of our knife blades, which were pre-cut with a machine, and made the knife in a few stages:

• Flattening the blade by heating it up and bashing it with a hammer.

• Shaping the wooden handle with a sander.

• Sanding the blade manually.

• Polishing the blade with a machine.

• Polishing the blade manually with a scraper.

• Sharpening the blade with a whetstone.

It was a fun process that reminded me a lot of silver jewellery making, except now at a larger scale. It was tough work, too, and I ended up with a few blisters. It’d be wrong to say that I fully made the knife, though - it was only a 3-hour workshop, and after most stages, the blacksmiths needed to make a lot of corrections to our knives. The amount they could teach us was also limited because of the language barrier, so we often had to communicate through gestures. Still, it was a fun process and taught me a lot about blacksmithing.

The final result ended up looking great:

After the workshop, I wanted to ship the knife home because I didn’t want to have it in my luggage for the next few months, and I didn’t want to be tied to always checking my luggage in. This proved to be a serious mission, and I wasn’t successful. I tried 3 different couriers and spent a lot of time researching, but the couriers either didn’t want to accept the knife outright or wanted proper paperwork.

Maybe I could’ve been successful with more effort, but I wasn’t too motivated, as the experience of the class was already really fun, and I didn’t fancy having such a high-maintenance knife. There was a “discarded items” box in my hostel, so I left it there. Hopefully, they’ll make some use of it in the kitchen.

Hoi An old town

Hoi An was a really charming city, and I’m glad I got to visit it at night. It was quite busy and touristy, but also I’ve not been anywhere in Vietnam with so much preserved ancient heritage.

I tried cao lầu a few times here (meat and vegan versions), which is a noodle dish from this region. It’s characterised by containing rice noodles soaked in lye water, giving them a coarse, yet soft texture. I ordered seconds every time; it’s a great dish.

The town came alive at night, with the river getting rammed with boats, and live music playing from every corner. It’s an amazing place to just relax by the canal with a drink.

Hoi An Memories

Hoi An is home to a popular cultural show called Hoi An Memories. It’s a huge theatre production that’s set outside, which I’ve never seen before. The scale of it is so large that there’s a whole island pretty much dedicated to a theme park around the production.

The show was split into a few acts telling the story of Hoi An, featuring dancing and various light effects. It was very well done and impressive at such a large scale, but with the music not being live, had a slightly weird feeling to it.

I got back to Da Nang after. Hoi An is a great place, but would probably be best enjoyed in a group for a few days. At the same time, it’s worth getting things tailored here - I’ve spoken to a few travellers who got custom-made suits for around £200, which is a great price. Multiple fittings and measurements require you to be around Hoi An for a few days, though. This is another place for my list of places in Vietnam to come back to.