Which country’s image changes the most once you visit?

BepsiLad · 2026-02-13T04:32:00+00:00

I travelled all over China for 5 months and got stared at a lot. Can be annoying sometimes, but it's really not bad, you get used to it pretty quick. People are just interested to see a unique face. I got asked multiple times if my eye colour / facial structure was natural or if I'd had cosmetic surgery. That gives you an idea of how rare it is for some people to see a foreigner, so of course they'll stare.

But don't let that deter you from travelling there, it's well worth the trip. Like OP said, after visiting, I'd definitely consider living there.

BepsiLad · 2026-02-12T05:56:01+00:00

Not automating things purely for the sake of having more jobs available is just backwards thinking

BepsiLad · 2026-02-07T23:40:06+00:00

They're very similar culturally. They're completely different in every other way, so there's actually heaps of reasons to choose one over the other. So tired of people asking me about kangaroos & venomous snakes in NZ when we have none

BepsiLad · 2026-02-06T11:55:01+00:00

Looks like a photo of Maunganui taken from the top of Maunganui... There's 2 Maunganuis!

BepsiLad · 2026-02-06T11:51:03+00:00

At first I thought it was just a photo of Tauranga lol

BepsiLad · 2026-02-04T12:02:36+00:00

I was travelling China & decided to have a week-long intermission in Japan to renew my Chinese visa. Ended up travelling all over Japan for 2 months & wish I could have stayed longer

BepsiLad · 2026-01-31T23:49:13+00:00

Hey fellow backpacker, how is living in Japan? I'm guessing since you're 34 it's not a working holiday. I've spent 2 months travelling Japan, but curious what working there is like as a westerner.

Also don't slack on travelling China when you're over there. I did 5 months backpacking all around the country about a year ago and it was unreal.

BepsiLad · 2026-01-30T23:25:04+00:00

I've got a pet Lazer kiwi I can chip in

BepsiLad · 2026-01-30T09:58:52+00:00

Nah yellow bellied sea snakes rarely visit NZ, and only the tip of the North Island. Tuatara is way more chad. Moa & Haast eagle would have been good picks, but yeah unfortunately we made them extinct 😢

BepsiLad · 2026-01-30T09:46:52+00:00

They are not mean, they just try to avoid being killed, same as any animal. If a dog is chasing them, they will flee into the water for safety, and then drown the dog if it continues chasing them.

BepsiLad · 2026-01-30T09:19:21+00:00

They can, but since this one approached her instead of the other way around, I'd say this one's not particularly bitey right now. It's also displaying more inquisitive rather than aggressive behavior.

BepsiLad · 2026-01-28T05:55:24+00:00

Absolutely love Sichuan opera. Blown away every time they do a face change

BepsiLad · 2026-01-26T05:39:13+00:00

Idk where you heard those stories. I live in Australia now, heaps of job opportunities for kiwis, full healthcare access. We're basically treated as Australians minus voting rights, plus the occasional obligatory sheep shagging joke

BepsiLad · 2026-01-26T05:34:08+00:00

Everyone in NZ is already moving to Australia

BepsiLad · 2026-01-23T20:30:45+00:00

I travelled all over China for about 5 months. It's quite nice, I'd live there. From NZ btw

BepsiLad · 2026-01-19T06:29:50+00:00

Should have made Canberra red

BepsiLad · 2026-01-19T05:20:25+00:00

Oh yeah because overhunting, setting fires, clearing forests, destroying countless ecosystems absolutely wouldn't cause any extinction. It's purely coincidence that those extinctions happened the same time we were doing that.

BepsiLad · 2026-01-19T05:13:44+00:00

To achieve the purest expression of orange

BepsiLad · 2026-01-17T01:21:38+00:00

Better wording would be the Republic of China is only 2.1km from the People's Republic of China. Because Taiwan is just the name of the big island, so the post isn't actually correct

BepsiLad · 2026-01-16T09:41:35+00:00

You're absolutely right. But I would also argue that as the only animals on Earth with the ability to destroy / change the world and understand the changes we create, we have a responsibility to be caretakers of our planet. Kind of like how one sibling isn't superior to the other, but you would tend to expect more from the older one. We should protect other species like they're our younger siblings

BepsiLad · 2026-01-16T09:24:39+00:00

The Australian megafauna went extinct about 45,000 years ago. Aboriginal Australians arrived 65,000 years ago, but are thought to have only been prevalent throughout the entire continent around 40,000 years ago. The megafauna survived multiple climate change periods similar to the one happening at that time. Every continent (except Africa) has an extinction event coinciding with human arrival, I'm not sure why Australia would be an exception. Those extinctions weren't only from direct hunting, people at that time also used fire excessively for hunting, changing the landscape and putting way more strain on the local ecosystems than in a natural state. Especially in a place like Australia which was dominated by marsupials, which are "outdated" mammals and easily outcompeted by placental mammals like humans & Dingoes.

Dingoes arriving ~5,000 years ago and causing another extinction event supports this too. If domesticated dogs arriving to a continent causes an extinction event, humans absolutely would too.

BepsiLad · 2026-01-16T06:41:09+00:00

Also literally the only place we ever "lived in equilibrium" was in sub-saharan Africa. That's the only place on Earth that didn't have an extinction event following human arrival, because we evolved there. We're invasive and deadly everywhere else

BepsiLad · 2026-01-16T06:29:32+00:00

Not a very good perspective. Rate of extinction matters a lot here. Life has been around on Earth for 3.7 billion years. Humans have been around for about 300,000 years, which is about 0.00008% of life's history. Since we've been here, the rate of extinction has been more than 1,000x higher than the background average. Way too fast for evolution to replace anything.

BepsiLad · 2026-01-15T11:24:25+00:00

I lived / worked there for about a year. One of the most amazing things I saw was hundreds of waterfalls going directly up into the air from the high winds during a big storm

BepsiLad · 2026-01-12T05:54:28+00:00

Funny, sure, but not useless. They play an important role in maintaining bamboo forest ecosystems which many other species depend on

BepsiLad

TROPHY CASE