Hi there! Thank you for visiting my site. This section explains what this site is about. If you would like to read about my personal background and support my fundraiser, please click here.
I am a pragmatic person and a trained scientist, and I love to travel. My mission with this website is to create a reliable resource of travel information that gives travellers practical, realistic, and interesting information they’ll truly find useful.
Why you can trust me and why my articles are reliable
I am not just another travel blogger. I provide real, helpful and practical information about travel destinations, rather than writing wishy washy travel blogger stories.
The information I write on my website are all based on real, in-person visits and experiences to places I have personally set foot in, not what other bloggers, guides, or official tourism boards sell. For example, a 10 minute walk is not the same thing as a 100m distance, so I write objective distances so you can judge for yourself how long it might take you to walk that distance.
As a trained scientist and a naturally pragmatic person, my articles my articles are written on an “information first” basis. My articles are detailed, informative, and factual. This means I can actually tell you what a destination is truly like.
My realistic approach combined with photos I personally take (where possible) gives a non-nonsense overview of destinations so you know what to expect, and not be disappointed by the big discrepancies that occur due to expectations from artificial postcard photos seen in marketing, and what it is like in real life.
My sources of information:
Apart from first hand experience, my sources include original and official sources like receipts, tickets, first hand information, documentaries, archives, scientific journals, and contacting the official bodies in charge of the information I need to obtain, such as border control of a country, or the local public transportation body.
My travel experiences
I have experience travelling mostly solo but also with friends, to over 50 cities across 13 countries, arranging all the logistics myself, booking flights, trains, buses, accommodation, local telecommunications, and activities. Countries I have been to include New Zealand, China, Singapore, Germany, Italy, and Spain, to name a few. You can see the other places in the Destinations section of this website. I have a large number of places I have been to but not yet written anything about. You may subscribe to stay tuned.
I approach itineraries systematically, and take care to care about the details when making them. For example, location of accommodations respective to the surrounding streets, local shop types, and proximity to public transport.
I like authentic travel where you get to meet locals, or experience the destination in a less superficial way. This means tours that are not simply packed buses that drop people off at touristy places and then take them back to their hotel.
Being Chinese born and raised in the USA and Australia, I speak fluent Mandarin and English and am familiar with cultures and history of all three countries.
I am also a keen photographer, and most photos featured on my site were taken by me, not stock photography, so you know what they actually look like, not the artificially perfected and heavily edited version you may see elsewhere. You can purchase prints of my naturally beautiful photos on my photography site here.
Affiliate services
You may have noticed I have Aviasales flight search widgets on my site. Aviasales used to be called Jetradar, and I used to use Jetradar and their widgets on my site to find flights because after comparing flight aggregators, they seemed to find the cheapest options. Try it out for yourself and compare it to other flight aggregates. If you do end up booking through the widgets on my site, you’ll help contribute to my site – I earn up to 1% of every completed sale, at no extra cost to you.
Are you a business? Contact me for advertising, sponsorship and co-operation opportunities.
Check out my other websites:
Fun quizzes about your favourite movies and TV series: https://popcornquizzes.com
Buy prints of my photography: https://theintrepidphotographer.com/