We're Heading to Asia for the Rest of the Year!
Plus, we have some questions for you.
You'll find a short reader survey at the end of today’s article. We’d love your opinion.
We have officially left Mexico for … Asia! Specifically, Seoul, South Korea.
The original plan was to spend a week here before heading to the port city of Busan, where we would stay for most of July, August, and September.
But we couldn’t find decent lodging in Busan.
Look, we don’t mind sometimes shelling out big bucks for decent lodging in expensive but fantastic countries. Hello, Switzerland!
But no matter where we are, we hate spending lots of money on a crappy place.
And that’s what we faced in Busan: our choices were all tiny apartments with awkward layouts and missing amenities, often in bad locations.
And these places were still outrageously expensive!
It turns out that Busan is quite popular in the summer.
So, after our brief stay in Seoul, we’re leaving for another country we’ve long wanted to see: Taiwan.
Yes, we know that this whole area of the world will be very hot in summer. But hey, we have to go somewhere. Maybe we can use Gatorade as an IV drip.
Plus, for environmental reasons, we try to stay in one area of the world for as long as possible — and we’ve committed to Asia for at least the next eight months.
We’ll be in Taipei until the end of September — assuming China doesn’t invade. Then we’re heading to Hong Kong for a couple of weeks.
From there, it’s over to mainland China for a ten-day tour — from Guangzhou to Guilin. Alas, Americans can’t easily get a tourist visa any longer than that.
Again, this assumes the world order stays the same — that the U.S. and China haven’t gone from a trade war to an open war.
After China, we’re headed to Tokyo to meet with some nomad friends, Howard and Whitney, to embark on an October leaf-peeping tour through the Japanese Alps on Honshu.
And after that, we plan to settle somewhere in Japan. We’ve heard that Christmas and New Year’s in Tokyo are incredible.
And after that, well, maybe Thailand for a few months.
Yes, this is a bit faster than our usual “slomad” pace, but we’ve got some longer periods of “rest” in there too.
I am crazy-excited about everything that’s coming. I love the idea of exploring Asian “megacities” like Seoul, Taipei, and Tokyo. And our tours of China and Japan look especially intriguing.
And — ahem — this should all lead to some pretty awesome articles.
Speaking of which, here’s the aforementioned reader survey. We would truly appreciate your feedback.
Thank you very much for your time. If you have any thoughts, comments, or suggestions you’d like to share, feel free to leave them in the comments or message us directly.
Michael Jensen is a novelist and editor. For a newsletter with more of my photos, visit me at www.MichaelJensen.com.
Could not answer "all" on some. I enjoy all of your posts, not just travel related but could not indicate that. You have addressed so many of the thoughts we have had while being out and about (especially liked your post about going to countries that are hard to tolerate politically (oh, yes and now that includes the US) as we have avoided them so far. And while I have specific areas that we wander through, I could not select where I would like to read about it because I don't have to be going there to read about a place. You all do a great job.
I enjoyed answering and seeing the results. I usually expected the percentage, but I was surprised by how many read in email vs the app! “What is your favourite type of travel experience to read about,” was hard to answer. I like the variety.