Really loved how all the info was on a single page and was easily scrollable for a click glance. Pagination can cause such a slow experience. The interspersed moving GIFs were a nice touch as well.
I'll add places I've been to that I haven't seen mentioned:
* Hangzhou, China - I spent about three days hanging around West Lake/Xi Hu (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Lake), a large, BEAUTIFUL lake adjacent to the city. Sprawling mountains in the background, an endless amount of Chinese gardens and beautiful greenery surrounding it. Cheap boat rides that you can drive yourself, and an extreme dearth of Western tourists - even by China standards. Though, I went during the summer and the place was swarming with Chinese tourists. Maybe my favorite meal in China was in a modern restaurant in a random mall there. I'd honestly consider Xi Hu one of the most beautiful places I've been.
* Malmo, Sweden - I didn't go to the countryside like the article recommends though did a day trip to the nearby University town of Lund, which is nice but nothing cooler than most small European cities. The city itself has nothing in particular worth seeing - it's still fairly expensive, though probably cheap by Scandanvian standards. I did stumble upon some good restaurants. I enjoyed Stockholm a lot more, and wouldn't return to Malmo if it weren't for a friend I have there. Gothenburg
seems a lot cooler but sadly I never made it out there. Definitely avoid in the late fall / winter due to cold weather.
* Kansai, Japan - I spent a little over a weekin Osaka and various small towns in the area (Nara, Ouji). I got the sense that besides Tokyo and its surrounding area, Kansai contained a good chunk of the interesting tourist things in Japan. Himeji castle is an hour or two bullet train ride away (and many of the towns nearby have similar castles), Mt Fuji is in the area, there are great onsen / hostsprings, Kyoto and the closeby area appears to contain the strongest density of old shrines and temples, and Nara is famous for the thousands of wild deer intermixed with old shrines and temples. Hiroshima is a few hour train ride away and has a lot to see: the A-Bomb museum, memorial, infamous bombed dome remains, and Miyajima - a beautiful island also with wild deer and shrines that I unfortunately missed due to rain. If you have enough time and railpass duration, take a (~3-6 hour) train to Fukouka and then the (~$100/each way) fast ferry to Busan, Korea. I LOVED Busan. Also: be sure to buy the Japan rail pass BEFORE you get to Japan. You can't get it in Japan.
* Malaga, Spain - this one has been mentioned, but I'll add it did seem much more touristy and built up than other parts of Andalusia. The pros of this are there are some nice restaurants and bars and still some good historical stuff - like a nice Moorish fort and Roman ampitheater in the center. I was there in the winter (still ~60 degrees F) but there are beaches. I'd recommend checking out nearby Granada for Alhambra and Sevilla was also cool. Cordoba is overrated and this is coming from a huge history nerd.
* Phnom, Penh - this one was also mentioned. I found this place incredibly depressing. Nearly everywhere you go there are often disfigured or limb-missing locals begging (I am guessing this the aftermath of the Khmer Rouge). They're not actually begging for money, but rather to give you a tuk-tuk ride, which was unusual to begging in other places I've been where people usually just ask for money. It's very dirty - like usually you rent a tuk tuk (think 1970s era chariot - motorcycle with wagon on the back), and I remember getting really dusty just from driving around. The Cambodians are incredibly nice and speak remarkably good English especially compared to the even more heavily tourist-exposed neighboring Thais. You can shoot an AK-47 for $50 at an army range and even a bazooka if you're willing to pay ~$300 (though I found out later in my trip it's a lot cheaper to shoot an AK and Russian weapons in the Baltics - mainly Estonia and Latvia). Angkor Wat in nearby Siem Reap is a MUST see.
Just want to shime in and recommend you to visit Chongqing. Incredibly interesting city to explore, great food and still has some rural China vibe that the other first tier cities start to lack.
Hey, I'm building something that aims to answer exactly these kinds of questions. It's still early in development, right now there is actually a site-breaking bug causing a ton of pages to timeout :( , but I'm hopeful that in a year from now you'll be able to find answers to all sorts of questions like that. It's called www.istorical.com, and it's a site dedicated to sharing information about what it's like to live in any city or country. It's got user-submitted q&a about what it's like to live there, user-submitted videos showing what a city or country is like, and very soon it will have user-submitted AMA's from travelers, expats, and just people who live in a city or country. I haven't quite taken off my dev hat and put on the marketing hat yet, but look forward to your wish being granted (hopefully).
Relevant (but unanswered, unfortunately) questions on the site I'm building:
I thought Hangzhou was pretty cool. I had heard of it before going because it is famous for its tea. There is a lovely lake and mountain trails for hiking. Cool monastery and other holy places. I took a bike ride out into the tea fields and went to a tea museum too. It's a very popular destination for Chinese tourists, it has a lot of historic significance.
I was there on vacation one month ago and I have no trouble believing this article. The number of tourists paying European level entry fees to museums, parks and attractions is just too big (incredibly long lines everywhere, very few people from outside China). By comparison food is about 3 times as cheap as in western Europe and goods are as cheap as one expects from China.
Still, and I know this is not the point of the article, they are too many to live well, no matter how rich they become. Life there is a sequence of long lines. Three weeks there have reset my baseline for many things. When I came back home (Milan, Italy) I was surprised by how silent and desert it is and by how much sky I could see. Hardly the feelings one usually has when getting here.
> Shanghai and Beijing are the most foreigner friendly cities in China; huge expat population, many western restaurants, signage in English, etc. Other cities not so much, but nothing a slight sense of adventure can't conquer.
Beijing, Shanghai, and a few their Chinese cities were decent enough, as were the few Indian cities I went to and Bangkok. Many smaller SE Asian cities were horrible though, with western tourists seen as prime targets for the local taxi mafia.
I was there 2008, stayed on DongZhuAnBang Road. Somewhat near the Bund, if I remember correctly. I got the instruction from a Swedish expat who had lived there for three years or so.
China is a huge country with lots to see. Not just old stuff, but natural scenery as well. It is also quite affordable.
Japan, Korea, Indonesia, Thailand, Nepal...all have their own appeal, but even together don’t cover completely what you can do in China. (They all have better internet, however)
Been to a few of these cities a couple of times. The development and culture is amazing to see. The Shanghai museum is well curated, dongzhimen st. in Beijing is great for food. Vegetarian food isn't too hard to come by if you're ok with eggs. Monks are vegetarian, and if you can find a Buddhist temple, ask them about food.
Need to make it to Shenzhen, and Chengdu sometime!
Yangshuo has more westerners than other places. If you find yourself in gunagxi again, definitely check out liuzhou, it's Guilin's grittier twin.
I'd like to visit Kashgar someday. Northern xinjiang was really nice to tour around also, except they didn't let me out of the van when we reached the khazakistan border (no foreigners allowed).
Lived in China. World class cities. Amazing public transportation locally and continentally. Low inflation. Extremely low crime. No random gun violence. Amazing natural and historic wonders.
Not OP, but I've visited several cities in China including Changsha and it's definitely one of my top 3 cities. The food and club scene there stood out to me in particular.
Just curious: shanghai or shenzhen? and did you make the conscious decision for the city or just follow the flow? (I'm still deciding between a year in China or Estonia)
I'll add places I've been to that I haven't seen mentioned:
* Hangzhou, China - I spent about three days hanging around West Lake/Xi Hu (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Lake), a large, BEAUTIFUL lake adjacent to the city. Sprawling mountains in the background, an endless amount of Chinese gardens and beautiful greenery surrounding it. Cheap boat rides that you can drive yourself, and an extreme dearth of Western tourists - even by China standards. Though, I went during the summer and the place was swarming with Chinese tourists. Maybe my favorite meal in China was in a modern restaurant in a random mall there. I'd honestly consider Xi Hu one of the most beautiful places I've been.
* Malmo, Sweden - I didn't go to the countryside like the article recommends though did a day trip to the nearby University town of Lund, which is nice but nothing cooler than most small European cities. The city itself has nothing in particular worth seeing - it's still fairly expensive, though probably cheap by Scandanvian standards. I did stumble upon some good restaurants. I enjoyed Stockholm a lot more, and wouldn't return to Malmo if it weren't for a friend I have there. Gothenburg seems a lot cooler but sadly I never made it out there. Definitely avoid in the late fall / winter due to cold weather.
* Kansai, Japan - I spent a little over a weekin Osaka and various small towns in the area (Nara, Ouji). I got the sense that besides Tokyo and its surrounding area, Kansai contained a good chunk of the interesting tourist things in Japan. Himeji castle is an hour or two bullet train ride away (and many of the towns nearby have similar castles), Mt Fuji is in the area, there are great onsen / hostsprings, Kyoto and the closeby area appears to contain the strongest density of old shrines and temples, and Nara is famous for the thousands of wild deer intermixed with old shrines and temples. Hiroshima is a few hour train ride away and has a lot to see: the A-Bomb museum, memorial, infamous bombed dome remains, and Miyajima - a beautiful island also with wild deer and shrines that I unfortunately missed due to rain. If you have enough time and railpass duration, take a (~3-6 hour) train to Fukouka and then the (~$100/each way) fast ferry to Busan, Korea. I LOVED Busan. Also: be sure to buy the Japan rail pass BEFORE you get to Japan. You can't get it in Japan.
* Malaga, Spain - this one has been mentioned, but I'll add it did seem much more touristy and built up than other parts of Andalusia. The pros of this are there are some nice restaurants and bars and still some good historical stuff - like a nice Moorish fort and Roman ampitheater in the center. I was there in the winter (still ~60 degrees F) but there are beaches. I'd recommend checking out nearby Granada for Alhambra and Sevilla was also cool. Cordoba is overrated and this is coming from a huge history nerd.
* Phnom, Penh - this one was also mentioned. I found this place incredibly depressing. Nearly everywhere you go there are often disfigured or limb-missing locals begging (I am guessing this the aftermath of the Khmer Rouge). They're not actually begging for money, but rather to give you a tuk-tuk ride, which was unusual to begging in other places I've been where people usually just ask for money. It's very dirty - like usually you rent a tuk tuk (think 1970s era chariot - motorcycle with wagon on the back), and I remember getting really dusty just from driving around. The Cambodians are incredibly nice and speak remarkably good English especially compared to the even more heavily tourist-exposed neighboring Thais. You can shoot an AK-47 for $50 at an army range and even a bazooka if you're willing to pay ~$300 (though I found out later in my trip it's a lot cheaper to shoot an AK and Russian weapons in the Baltics - mainly Estonia and Latvia). Angkor Wat in nearby Siem Reap is a MUST see.
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