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Less than a month to go! Lately, we have been busy packing our bags for the 1,000,000km trip without flying. While packing our bags, we thought of sharing the 2 Budget Travel Hacks with everyone. Don't look down on these small travel hacks! They not only save you money, but also save the environment! Travel Hack #1: BYOB (Bring Your Own Bottle) / Portable Water Purifier In our last trip which lasted for 440 days, we never purchased bottled water while we were traveling. We did as much as we could to #travelgreen. There are a few ways to get clean drinking water while you are traveling. 1) Use an Electric Kettle An electric kettle is not hard to find. If you are staying in a hostel, hotel or Airbnb, most places will be equipped with a kettle. We would boil the water when we arrived and let the water cool down overnight. Then, we could pour the cool water into our reusable bottles. We did this all the time when we were traveling. You have paid for the accommodation cost, it is best to utilise the equipment in the room :) 2) Bring a portable water purifier or filter We did camp a lot while we were traveling. Therefore, we bought a portable water purifier with us. As long as we could find a water source somewhere, we could hand pump and filter the water on the road. We have been using MSR Guardian™ Purifier (https://www.msrgear.com/ca/water-treatment/filters-and-purifiers/guardian-purifier/02370.html) and it worked the whole time of our trip. It is one of the highest end one in the market, but you will be saving at least USD1,500 a year from buying bottled water if you are traveling long term. Plus, you are not creating any wastes from buying the plastic bottles! Travel Hack #2: Credit Card Protector This is new to us! Our friend recently gave us a Credit Card Protector for our upcoming trip. The protector is to prevent others from tapping your credit card easily. It costs USD2. However, when we took a closer look at the materials used, we thought that any aluminum materials would do the job. Therefore, we tried to DIY ourselves with the aluminum products that we could find at home. Check out our YouTube Video to see how we do it!
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Personally, we do not like the idea of "Passports" as we believe that the world is one and people should be travel freely. Unfortunately, due to politics, the world is separated with borders. To cross the borders, we have no choice but to get a valid passport. An important part of long-term travel is to figure out our passports are not expired. For group traveling, it will make long-term travel easier if everybody holds the passport with the same nationality. It looks like it is a minor issue, but when something big happens (for example, COVID, global crisis etc.), you would want to be able to evacuate together. For short trips, we use our own travel documents normally. I am a resident from Hong Kong, so I hold my HKSAR passport. For Chris, he is a Canadian Citizen, so he holds the Canadian Passport. To prepare for this long journey, I have been pursuing actively to become a Canadian Citizen, so that I can have a Canadian Passport on hand before we head out. After so many years of waiting, I finally became a Canadian Citizen in August 2023. I was grateful to have the opportunity to attend the Canadian Citizenship Oath Taking Ceremony in person. I know that many people were invited to attend the virtual ceremony only. So, I am excited to be invited to the in person ceremony. The ceremony was held in IRCC Mississauga Office (3085 Glen Erin Dr, Mississauga, ON L5L 1J3). It lasted around 2 hours, below is the run-down of the ceremony: Canadian Citizenship Oath Taking Ceremony Run-down 8:00am Registration starts 9:15am Ceremony starts 9:15-9:30am Clerk's Speech and Welcome video 9:30-9:45am Judge's Speech 9:45-9:50am Oath-taking led by the Judge 9:50-10:15am Distribution of Canadian Citizenship Certificate (One-by-One) 10:15-10:30am National Anthem Signing and Welcome Home Video by Justin Trudeau 10:30-11:15am Photo-taking with the Judge (One-by-One) 11:30am Ceremony finishes Documents Checklist: - Letter of invitation (Digital copy also accepted) - Permanent Residence (PR) Card (they will collect your PR card as you will get the citizenship certificate) - Health Card or any identify proof (for example: passport) - Signed waiver form (attached in the invitation email), but if you forgot to bring a copy, you can also sign it at the venue. Dress Code: - Business Attire (Some people also wear casual wear. But, I guess dress like going to an office work will be appropriate) Feel free to watch the YouTube video for more information. It is in Cantonese but with English subtitles! Good Luck with everyone who is still waiting. Trust me, it is just a waiting game, you will finally get there! Time flies! We are officially 100 days prior to our 1,000,000 KM budget-travel journey without flying. Of course, we can't wait packing our bags and get out of the door real soon. Anyhow, we have been planning for this journey for a few years. It is exciting to see it going smoothly step by step finally. In the coming few months, we still have a lot to do. One of the important agendas is to catch up with our friends and family in Ontario before December comes. Other tasks include gathering our travel gears, packing our bags, figuring out our last-minute financial budget, visiting travel doctor etc. And of course, we will have to keep our YouTube Channel active by posting more of our preparation videos. We are the YouTube newbies, so "practice makes perfect" is definitely a line to motivate us to create more videos. In case you have missed what we are up to and what this 1,000,000 KM budget-travel journey without flying is about, let's catch up with this YouTube video :) A lot of people always said we are rich as we could quit our job and go on the coming big journey. Yes, we are rich, but rich in our heart only. We are not millionaire, but we did save up when we are not traveling. It is a choice of life. If you don't dine out frequently or own a car, you may be able to save up more than a normal people. Another way to make a big journey possible is to control your travel spending. When people travel, they tend to stay in fancy hotels and try nice food in a fancy restaurant. But we are definitely not that type of travelers. We are leaning more towards budget traveling, where we spend most of money on experience. Plus, we save the money of buying flight tickets by using mass transit. So, when you account for all these, traveling won't cost so much as you imagine. Accommodation is the biggest expense when traveling. We usually tend to stay in hostel and Airbnb. But sometimes, with two people, a hotel room may cost similar to two bunk beds in a hostel, then we will go with a hotel. With the same price, a hotel room offers more privacy. The place that we choose to stay is nothing fancy, but it fulfills our basic needs. As long as it is clean and safe, we will go with it. Our last trip to Kaiping, China, we stayed in a 2-star hotel and we created a brief hotel review to show the world what you would get for a USD20 per night hotel room in China. Check out this YouTube Video to give you an idea before you go to China~ (English subtitles are available) While many people like to travel with an airplane, we are the exception. Instead of jumping from place to place, we like to see the ongoing changes between place to place. That's why this is the theme of our next big journey, traveling by mass transit without flying. We will be starting this big journey in December 2023. More details will be announced real soon. Please feel free to follow us on YouTube and Instagram for all the updates. We would like to share this journey with you all, anyhow, IT'S ALL ONE JOURNEY! 💙 For now, we have been busy preparing for the route of this trip and practicing our video-shooting skills. We are not the professionals, but we keep trying. We have been using our stock footage to make different videos, hoping that our skills will be improved so that we can produce better-quality video when we hit the road. As English is not my mother language and I don't want our audience have to bear with my so-so spoken English, I have been starting some videos with Cantonese audio but English closed caption. We hope that not only the Cantonese-speaking community, but the English-speaking community too, could follow along our journey. So, bear with us that there will be a mix of English and Cantonese-audio videos on our World Vagabonding Channel. Though the videos may be with different languages, we will try our best to include closed caption in Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese and English to cater everybody's needs. We really hope to invite you to join this journey. As the title of this blog indicates, we missed traveling by mass transit! On our last trip to Kaiping, China, 99% of the tourists will be arriving the diaolou spots by taxi. But we did it by completing the trip using local buses, which saved us some money and also skipped the awkward bargaining or cheating by some taxi drivers. Is it difficult to walk to tour around by local buses? I would say, if you are well-prepared, it won't be too difficult. Or, simply follow our itinerary, then that will make life easier! Take a look at our YouTube Video about taking local buses to tour around Kaiping, China to get some insights :) P.S. English closed caption is available in the video, remember to switch it on :)
Our journey to Macau and Kaiping was officially an end. On the last day, we tried a different route and took a coach from Kaiping to Lo Wu, Shenzhen. Then, eventually take the MTR back to Hong Kong. We did learn a lot in this trip by visiting the UNESCO World Heritage Sites in both places. If you would like to know more tips for our budget travel this time and what we liked most of this journey, check out our latest YouTube video! After the trip to Majianglong Village, we continued our journey to Jinjiangli. The main reason why we came here is to see the Kaiping's First Diaolou (開平第一樓), Ruishu lou, which is the the tallest diaolou in the area. We took the local bus No. 613 at the bus stop where we got dropped off earlier. From Majianglong Village to Jinjiangli Bus No. 613 Start Point: Majianglong Road Entrance End Point: Jiangjianli Road Entrance Bus Fare: ¥2 RMB Duration: 10 mins Walk around 1.5km to the Jiangjianli 錦江里 where the UNESCO diaolou cluster is located Jinjiangli was populated by the Wong’s family. There are 3 dialou there. They are Jinjiang lou, Shengfeng lou and Ruishi lou. The normal ticket allows access to Jinjiang lou and Shengfeng lou. Ruishi lou is privately owned, if you are lucky, you may be able to join a private tour for 20RMB/USD3 to check out the inside. The first diaolou of our visit in Jinjiangli is called Shengfeng lou 升峰樓. It was built in 1928 using reinforced concrete. It was built by a wealthy Chinese migrant to the US. It is a 7-storey building and it featured a fusion of Indian and South Asian architectural styles. The next diaolou that we visited was Ruishi lou 瑞石樓. It’s the tallest Diaolou in Kaiping. We were fortunate that someone from the owner’s family was there, who was willing to open the door for us with a fee (20RMB/USD3) . With 9 storeys at a height of 25m, Ruishi lou 瑞石樓 was built between 1923 to 1925. The owner was a Hong Kong businessman with a surname Wong. The private tour at Ruishi lou was very fruitful. The descendant of the owner, Mr. Wong, gave us an introduction of his family tree. Then, we were free to walk around the every floor of the tower. The best thing was you could stay as long as you want inside the tower. Mr. Wong also shared a lot of Feng Shui* stories about Ruishi lou to us. We thought this private tour was worth more than USD3, not only for having time to check out every detail of the tower, but also hearing all kind of history from a real descendant first-handed. *'Feng Shui': literal translation is 'wind & water' "Feng shui is an ancient Chinese art of arranging buildings, objects, and space in an environment to achieve harmony and balance." www.nationalgeographic.org
You could immerse yourself with the private tour at Ruishi lou by watching the latest YouTube video. Enjoy! There are different types of traveling style. Some people like going to resorts while others enjoy going to fancy dining place or exploring different cuisines from around the world. For us, we like to keep our travel budget low and spend only on the experience. That's why we like traveling by mass transit, it usually won't cost much but you capture the most memorable and valuable experience. When we were planning the trip to Kaiping, China, we were a little bit confused as there is not much information online about taking local buses to the UNESCO Diaolou areas. Luckily, one of us can read Chinese. It makes planning a trip in China a little bit easier. Even so, the information on the internet in Chinese regarding the local buses in Kaiping is scarce. Anyhow we figured out eventually and once you are at the spot, it is actually not very difficult to tour around Kaiping, China with local buses. We spent 3 days 2 nights in Kaiping, China by using public transport and here is the part 1 of how we did that. Where did we start our journey? We started our journey in Zhuhai (after touring around Macau). We stayed in the a hotel which was very close to the Zhuhai Gongbeu Bus Terminal. At 8am in the morning, we took a charter bus from Zhuhai to KaiPing. Start Point: Zhuhai Gongbeu Bus Terminal 珠海拱北汽車客運站 End Point: Kaiping Bus Terminal No.28 Xijiao Road 開平汽車總站 （西郊路28號） Coach Duration： 2.5-3 hours Coach Fare: ¥70 RMB, requires identity/travel document to purchase ticket Where did we stay in Kaiping? We stayed in a 2-star hotel called Milan Hotel 米蘭酒店 (No.16 Xijiao Road 西郊路16號). It is opposite to the Kaiping Bus Terminal. Please stay tuned in later blogs for the hotel review. Our first touring spot in Kaiping, China - Chikan Ancient Town 赤坎古鎮 When we settled down in Kai Ping, it was almost noon. While we still had the whole afternoon to ourselves, we decided to start exploring. Our first spot is called Chikan Ancient Town 赤坎古鎮. We took the local bus No.606 to Chikan Ancient Town (¥5 RMB for a 30 min bus ride). It was the last stop of local bus No. 6060, so you won't get lost easily. Starting Point: Milan Hotel (closest local bus #606 station, Sanjiang bridge 三江橋頭） End Point: Chikan Ancient Town Entrance Bus Fare: ¥5 RMB Duration: 30 mins  Full access to town sites requires a ticket, however we only toured the non-ticket zones (town under refurbishment and quite touristy). We spoke to a very helpful gate attendant when exiting, who gave advice on where to find sites less-travelled. He provided us a landmark of the local Municipal Government Building to help us find another spot with interesting brickwork and where the UNESCO Research Centre is situated. (Note: This building cannot be located on Google maps, but you may find it on a Chinese map app - type in 開平市赤坎鎮人民政府). Following the instruction from the gate attendant, we walked to his recommendation. The nearly 1.2km walk was totally worth it. On the way, we got to see some hidden diaolous and talk to the local to understand more about Chikan Ancient Town.  After visiting his recommendation, we walked back to where we got off the local bus No.606 and took the same bus back to Milan Hotel, getting off at the bus station Sanjiang bridge 三江橋頭. For details of our part 1 journey, check out our #worldvagabonding Youtube channel! The one thing that worries me about Chris visiting Hong Kong for the first time was the rushing and busy life that makes a lot of newcomers unbreathable. It is very difficult for a visitor who is not used to city life to adapt to the lifestyle here. After staying in Hong Kong for a few months, we learnt the trick to plan a trip to avoid the crowd. First, schedule the visit of any tourist spots on weekdays. For us, we like to go hiking. So we do all of our hikes on weekdays. Most of the time, we had the trails to ourselves and you will probably meet only locals on the trail. Bonus is that you can talk to the locals to learn about any side trails or the history of the place. Second, schedule all the city shopping on weekends. The city will be busy 24x7 anyway, so it doesn't really matter if it is a bit crowded on weekends. During our stay, we kept this pattern all the time and got a chance to enjoy the quietness of Hong Kong. It also gave us an opportunity to test our YouTube video shooting skills. We were less shy while shooting and not surrounded by many people. What did I mean by having a trail to ourselves? Take a look at this YouTube video about our hike at the Little Great Wall in Cheung Chau! Every time when I watched the video about Chris going into Cheung Po Tsai caves alone, I could not help but laugh. He was alone in the caves with all the locals and had no idea that the entrance and exit are not the same! People kept entering the caves without stopping and Chris was wondering if the caves would be full and how to exit. You can see from his face in the video, he was a bit panic and confused...haha It was so crowded that I decided not to enter the caves but I also forgot to tell Chris about the separate entrance and exit. At the end, he followed the crowd in the caves and survived. Check out his Cheung Po Tsai cave journey here! |
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