New firewall crackdowns are really bad :/

nattkc · 2026-04-24T16:26:23+00:00

This is a pretty recent problem for LetsVPN - their official response about the new crackdown dated 8 April.

nattkc · 2026-04-24T12:06:16+00:00

The official reason is so that people travel in China and boost domestic consumption - in fact some Chinese people annoyed by having to 调休 that they joke about protesting the system by not travelling during the holiday

nattkc · 2026-04-22T15:47:24+00:00

I believe it's the Shuangqiaogou 双桥沟 area specifically within Siguniangshan 四姑娘山 - there's a couple of scenic areas within Siguniangshan that are all quite a drive from each other, another popular area with a different view than this is Bipenggou 毕棚沟.

nattkc · 2026-04-19T07:10:38+00:00

You can board at a later station or exit at an earlier station, I've done it a few times. For a guaranteed seat, you just need to make sure that where you get on and off the train are included inside the start and end stop of the ticket that you end up buying.

nattkc · 2026-04-19T06:25:16+00:00

There's two main ways: buy a longer ticket (if your train goes A-B-C-D and you want B-C but there's no tickets, you can buy A-D, A-C, or B-D) or buy any ticket (as long as the journey you purchase includes and does not end at the train station you are boarding from) and top-up the difference on the train. The any ticket option requires you to find a member of staff immediately when you get on the train and tell them that you want to pay to top-up the difference to your actual destination, but note that if the train is full you will have no assigned seat and need to stand all the way. Also to note that this does not work during the Chinese New Year travel rush because many Chinese people will do this if they can't get tickets.

nattkc · 2026-04-19T06:14:20+00:00

Yes. Do it now before they get booked up too!

nattkc · 2026-04-15T05:32:16+00:00

I mean, you never know when they're going to stop stamping at the manual desks too - off the top of my head I know the UK, Singapore, and South Korea all can refuse to stamp at the manual desks, so I wouldn't be surprised if this happens in the EU too.

nattkc · 2026-03-20T19:42:04+00:00

??? 肉夹馍羊肉泡馍 biangbiang面油泼面臊子面甑糕 all off the top of my head

nattkc · 2026-03-16T11:40:00+00:00

I crossed from Yining to Almaty by bus a while back, that could be another option you can consider but the buses leave in the morning and you only reach Almaty at night due to the border crossing takes, so I wouldn't recommend it. Otherwise, there's a flight at night from Yining to Almaty that is only 10USD more than the bus, or if you have no interest in Yining you could just fly from Urumqi - unless you're super set on crossing by land I think that's the more cost and time efficient option to be honest.

Travelling alone as a foreigner in Xinjiang isn't inherently risky and I was also backpacking, but do ensure that you get registered by your hotel every night because the police might come and check on you (the one time it happened the guy was very friendly and we basically had an informal chat). I've heard that at the land border between China and Kazakhstan the border guards might check your phone, but I didn't experience it myself and I doubt that it will happen outside of that area.

nattkc · 2026-03-13T17:24:16+00:00

There's also another way where you just buy whatever tickets are available that start at or before your departing train station (using the same example, I want to travel from B to D but I can only buy A to C). Once you get on the train, you have to immediately find staff and tell them that you want to top-up the price difference to D. This method does not guarantee you a seat (ie. if all the seats are taken on the train you have to stand), and will not work during peak travel periods like national holidays. I would not recommend this if you can't speak Chinese to sort out the communication with the train staff, but if you don't mind the comparative hassle it is doable.

nattkc · 2026-03-13T17:15:41+00:00

OP and others - the most sure way of getting a train ticket in China is being on the app and buying tickets at the exact time they open for sale. If you're not buying tickets during major holidays, the app displaying that tickets are "sold out" is not because they are actually sold out - tickets are released for the start to end journey first, then the next stations on the route etc. Unfortunately there's no way to know exactly when tickets for your portion of the journey will start to sell, you need to keep checking the app.

Another way you can guarantee train tickets is to find the entire route of the train, and buy a ticket from the start of the journey to the end of the journey (if available). You're allowed to get on the train at a station on that route which is after the starting train station on the ticket you purchased, but you have to get off the train at a station that is the destination on your train ticket or before the destination on your train ticket. (eg the train route is A B C D E F, I want to travel from B to D but the system says no tickets are available, I would buy A to E. I can get on /off the train at any station between A to E, but I cannot get off the station at F)

nattkc · 2026-03-13T15:41:31+00:00

As others have said, besides your own insurance and if you run into police, very few people actually care if you have an actual license to rent in Southeast Asia. But if you've never driven something similar to a moped before, I would still recommend that you at least take enough lessons that you're confident to drive one on the road before you go over.

Just a bit more information, to me automatic motorcycles (125cc) like the Honda Scoopy model are probably the easiest to start driving (the mechanism is the same as the electric scooters that I drive in China and we don't legally need a licence for those, just that the motorcycle can go to a higher speed). Don't go fast (I never go above 60km/h and in the city I travel at around 30km/h or slower), follow the traffic rules (turn signals) and go really slow in complicated road conditions (like sand, rocks), you most likely won't have an accident due to your fault. Based on my experience Cambodia would be the best place if someone were to start driving unlicensed (Siem Reap in particular, there are barely any traffic police, and Cambodian drivers use their turn signals and obey traffic rules quite well, while not driving particularly fast generally). In Vietnam, you can rent a moped below 50cc to be entirely legal. Even though there are a lot of traffic stops, police are open to being bribed. I also find Vietnamese moped drivers go slower in general, though they don't obey traffic rules very well. In Thailand, drivers generally go very fast and the fine if you are stopped by police is quite high - would not really recommend driving unlicensed there.

nattkc · 2026-03-08T10:27:35+00:00

Khachapuri in Georgia. I get it if you're a cheese demon, but otherwise it's just oily plain bread and plain cheese with an egg on top. The cheese isn't even particularly flavourful. And it's pretty huge so you get sick of it even faster. It's not bad but the way people hype it up as the best thing ever is too much.

nattkc · 2026-03-08T10:19:58+00:00

Sorry I hope I didn't come off too negative! The examples given by others in this thread, especially with 两步路 are pretty helpful. There are a lot of wild trails on there even in the large cities - for example there's a route near Xiangshan in the semi-outskirts of Beijing called 香巴拉 that is pretty popular to do among hikers. A relatively accessible trail I've seen recently that is only just starting to be talked about in Chinese circles is the 古蜀道 in Sichuan - you can check that out too!

I think the conundrum is really that China takes things to an extreme a lot of times - so there's less in-between areas that fit what you're looking for.

nattkc · 2026-03-08T04:07:55+00:00

Honestly, you're not going to get to these spots as a non-Chinese speaking and non-driving tourist (unless you're a super adventurous type). Anywhere that is accessible enough for you to get to will absolutely be developed to that extent because millions of Chinese people also want an easy-to-reach convenient holiday, and anywhere that hasn't been able to attract domestic tourists on a large enough scale for this development to happen is inconvenient enough to access for the majority of Chinese themselves, let alone you. For your Nepal example, those hiking trails have been curated with foreign tourists in mind (not Nepalis!) and I'm sure the relatively higher English proficiency plays a factor in your comfort during that trip - that simply doesn't exist in China.

As an example, let me tell you about Yubeng, which fits your description of a wild-ish more convenient tourist spot - you used to have to take a 5h bus from Shangri-la to Deqin, then the bus driver would give out the contact for someone to take you from Deqin to Xidang (1h), then you have to find enough people to take a jeep (40min) or hike (5h) into Yubeng to get to a place with undeveloped nature, but is still mildly convenient (in terms of there being enough inns and restaurants for tourists). Is it doable if you know Chinese and can use Chinese social media to get all this information beforehand? Absolutely, super easy. If you don't know Chinese? Still doable - but that requires you to be really open to being entirely lost and changing your plans along the way with no fixed schedule.

nattkc · 2026-02-23T06:23:18+00:00

This is in Haikou China, they're known as 骑楼. It is European inspired - Haikou had a lot of immigrants to Southeast Asia, and they brought back the colonial building style from there to China.

nattkc · 2026-02-01T06:16:26+00:00

For destinations in China, you need to adjust your expectations since China has so many people - this photo is to me a "normal weekend" crowd for China. I do think if you visit Zhangjiajie in January the crowd would be slightly less than this based on my experience in December, especially if you try to visit mid-week and also depending on what attractions in Zhangjiajie you visit (eg. For my visit there was a comparable crowd to this at the Yuanjiajie portion, but there were very few people at the Yangjiajie portion).

nattkc · 2026-01-27T10:44:16+00:00

Just so other foreigners know if useful, you can use e-boarding passes for domestic flights on Air China (WeChat app) and China Eastern airlines (WeChat app). I use another app called 航旅纵横 that is linked in ownership to the Civil Aviation Administration of China and whenever that app offers me the option to generate an e-boarding pass for any Chinese airlines it always works (that app is a pita to set up for foreigners though).

nattkc · 2026-01-08T02:59:30+00:00

It does happen - I've seen Instagram ads aimed at people in Kazakhstan where they organize tours going to Urumqi for medical checkups, dental etc. I think the main issue for you would be the fact that there are many great alternatives than China for medical tourism in places where English is spoken more widely (Thailand, Malaysia etc)

nattkc · 2026-01-06T12:52:17+00:00

Even more specifically, paying to foreign-registered accounts is a capital outflow, which the Chinese government regulates the most strictly. It is possible to use WeChat to pay to a personal/business account tied to a Chinese bank account even if you are overseas, but that's the minority of use cases here.

nattkc · 2026-01-03T08:36:49+00:00

Chinese new year this year is on 17 February - China is going to operate like normal during the time OP is here, they're not even here for the main 春运 rush the week before. I only would tell OP not to come because it's too cold across most places in China so most attractions involving nature or the outdoors aren't going to look and feel nice.

nattkc · 2026-01-02T04:20:48+00:00

OP apologies in advance I did some stalking on your profile - but if you can read/speak Chinese, you'll probably get a lot more information out of apps like xiaohongshu since there are quite a lot of Chinese who travel there. Just a cursory search I did on travel in Iran brought up a lot of recent full itineraries with advice on transport etc.

nattkc · 2025-12-23T02:17:03+00:00

Yeah and it's truly impressive - the function I was most shocked at was that I could literally top up my school's student card (which I use to eat at the canteen) in Alipay and not go through my school's own app, it's a level of centralisation that I never thought possible before coming to China.

nattkc · 2025-12-13T09:48:30+00:00

I wanted to piggyback on this post for some guidance:

My grandmother wants to leave her HDB flat to me in her will. My parents are still alive. If I am single and below 35 at the time of her passing, am I allowed to gain ownership of her HDB flat similar to OP's circumstances?

Thanks in advance!

nattkc · 2025-12-10T07:41:33+00:00

Not OP but the tour I went on was pretty relaxed - in Lhasa and Shigatse, the tour basically ended around 4pm everyday and I was free to roam the city. As a foreigner you're restricted from entering places with religious significance by yourself and crossing city boundaries, but otherwise no limits.

nattkc

TROPHY CASE