Recently, I just came back from a trip across half of Asia and whilst I am in the midst of returning back to the workload that is school 🫠, I thought it will be good practice to document my journey down.

Google Map summary of the places that I went.

Where on earth did I go?

So for starters, I mentioned half of Asia but which countries exactly? Well, my journey started off from the cozy comfort of home which is Singapore, to Malaysia where I hopped on a flight in Kuala Lumpur that is bound for Tokyo, Japan with a short layover at Guangzhou, China. After spending about 10 days in Japan, I got onto a flight to Korea where I stayed for a week. I then went to China visiting the likes of Beijing, Shanghai, Suzhou, Hangzhou and Shenzhen. Ending off my journey, I crossed the border into Hong Kong where I also made a day trip to Macau. Before I took a flight from Hong Kong back to Singapore.

So TLDR; the countries were

• Malaysia 🇲🇾
• Japan 🇯🇵
• Korea 🇰🇷
• China 🇨🇳

Along with the special administrative regions of

• Hong Kong 🇭🇰
• Macau 🇲🇴

Why did you do this?

It started off mainly because my friends and I decided to go to Japan. However, I thought it was not worth the plane ticket just visiting Japan itself. In fact, it was getting pretty expensive since we were traveling during December. Instead, I found that it was more worth it to country hop my way back and I would definitely say the journey was one that is out of the ordinary.

The beginning

Kuala Lumpur

I thought that I should include a very quick introduction to the trip and since my stay in Kuala Lumpur wasn’t a long one, that I might as well add it into this blog post. As the weeks go, I will continue writing more blogs on the remainder of the journey.

Bus ride 🚌

My journey started off in Singapore, crossing the custom into Johor where I took a coach from Larkin Sentral to Terminal Bersepadu Selatan in Kuala Lumpur. The bus ride was about 6 hrs which is about average but I was rushing to catch a flight that day. Given that I left Singapore around 6am and I needed to be at the airport by 5pm, it meant that I had only about an hour to spare, just enough time to catch a taxi from TBS to the airport. This also meant that I had to skip lunch that day which wasn’t that much of a problem since I wasn’t feeling too hungry. I managed to catch my flight with China Southern and I was soon heading to Guangzhou, China for a quick layover.

Guangzhou

I reached Guangzhou around 10pm. My original plan was to visit the Guangzhou tower and hopefully experience the nightlife in Guangzhou.

What really happened

Upon reaching Guangzhou, I knew that things would not go as planned. Firstly, I needed to figure out how I could get a taxi to Guangzhou tower. I quickly set up the DiDi 🚕 app on WeChat and with a bit of verification, got it to work in the end. But at this time, it was around 11pm already

On the way there, I chatted with my taxi driver and quickly found out that there might be nothing for me to do there. Nonetheless, having booked the taxi and with a bit of hope in me, I decided that it is worth a visit to the tower. As I neared my destination, my hope quickly died off as the roads looked almost deserted. Certainly not the night life that I was looking forward to seeing. As we turned a corner, my heart sank as I saw the entire place cast in darkness.

Guangzhou Tower in the dark.

Disappointment 😩

The Guangzhou tower while looming high above me did not have the bright shades of color that I was hoping to see. Instead, it remained pitch black and a quick Baidu told me that the tower would turn off its lights at 10pm. My taxi driver dropped me off and I stood there devastated and thinking of where else I could go.

In the end, I took a few photos of the tower and headed to a 7-11 which I saw on my way there. After buying some drinks and snacks, I sat down at 7-11, taking a bit of refuge for the night that I have ahead of me. After a while, I decided that it was time to head back to the airport. I got a look at the Guangzhou skyline but it was eerily quiet for some reasons and after some last photos of the tower, I booked a DiDi back to where I came from.

A park overseeing the skyline of Guangzhou.

On the ride back, I learned from the taxi driver that the place is not as crowded as it used to be before Covid. However, he did also tell me that just a few streets down, there are some bars around which I will be sure to still find crowds of people at this time.

My flight to Japan.

Next stop, Japan!

After staying the night at Baiyun International Airport, I was finally ready for my next flight ✈️ to Tokyo, which will be another journey that I shall continue in another blog post. 😄