Xavier's Gap Year

Day 193 (19th of September, 2016) – Beijing, China Dan and I woke up in our Beijing Hutong to the sound of a trickling waterfall and of chickens in nearby homes, presumably for cooking at the local restaurants. It was 6:30am and we were planning to head off early in our bid to do a day […]

Day 186 (12th of September, 2016) – Shanghai, China The fallout from the mugging continues… I often find that when I’m faced with a challenge, I overcome it best when I have a clear set of goals from which I can work on ticking off one at a time. The checklist so far is as follows: […]

Day 177 (3rd of September, 2016) – Shanghai, China I tried to pack as many organisational activities into today as possible. With my stay in Shanghai only being two and a half months, I don’t want to delay the completion of all the administrative things which need to be done (a process which took many […]

Day 172 (29th of August, 2016) – Kraków, Poland Just a few more days where I have to copy and paste every “s” and “w” key before I can get to a repair shop in Shanghai… I woke up after a brief sleep-in and instantly realised that today had to be a lazy day. There comes […]

Day 165 (22nd of August, 2016) – Moscow, Russia Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Moscow. I’m becoming addicted to this place. Russia is absolutely stunning. My usual answer to the question “what’s the best place you’ve ever travelled to?” is Japan, but Russia is quickly becoming a genuine challenger to that title. Let’s begin with the […]

Day 158 (15th of August, 2016) – Tel Aviv, Israel In the morning, we met bright and early to head directly to where I had left off in the Old Town of Jerusalem. We were visiting the ‘Dome of the Rock’, the most significant mosque in the city. This structure was built on the Temple […]

Day 151 (8th of August, 2016) – Petra, Jordan (continued from 7th of August) In the evening, I met my travel companions for the next week and a half. The group is sixteen strong until Israel, at which point it drops to just five people. In the group, ten are Australian. The others are from […]

Day 144 (1st of August, 2016) – Isfahan, Iran I awoke from my twenty hour hibernation to a familiar feeling of a swollen throat and chesty cough. There wasn’t much I could do outside of taking some medicine, so I settled in for the morning of blog writing. Today was a free day for me in […]

Day 138 (26th of July, 2016) – Bangkok, Thailand Hello, hello! Welcome back to the travel blog. For the past two weeks, I’ve been having the most superb visit back home. Whilst seeing everyone felt brief, and sometimes a bit rushed, it was the perfect amount of time to charge my batteries for the next six […]

Day 131 (4th of July, 2016) – Lhasa, Tibet, China Todd and I woke up at 8am in our Chengdu hostel to set out for Wenshu Monastery. The Monastery was in walking distance, so we navigated our way through the tree-lined alleys and across a river to find it. Chengdu continued to cement its impression on […]