25/09/2026
Goodbye China… for now 🇨🇳❤️🐼
What a trip this has been.
From the futuristic craziness of Chongqing, to Chengdu, the pandas, the mountains of Zhangjiajie, magical Furong and Fenghuang — China has been beautiful, chaotic, fascinating, exhausting, surprising and occasionally completely bonkers. And I loved it.
If I had to sum up these weeks, perhaps these five words would do it:
✈️ EXPLORE — probably the most obvious one. I have never been very good at simply going somewhere and looking around. I want to wander, photograph, understand, try things, take the road I hadn’t planned to take and find out what is around the next corner.
And China gave me plenty of corners.
❤️ HEALTH — definitely not the part of the itinerary I had planned. After suddenly developing numbness in my leg — perhaps not entirely unrelated to the extraordinary number of stairs and steps China kept putting in front of me 😂 — I ended up needing medical care.
For someone whose normal daily step count is nothing remarkable, suddenly breaking through 20,000 steps a day, including what sometimes felt like several million vertical ones, may have been a little ambitious. 😂
Since I was already there, I decided I might as well investigate a few other things too, which led to scans, tests and consultations at West China Hospital, one of China’s major medical centres, known for dealing with highly complex cases. So an unexpected health problem turned into an opportunity to get some answers as well.
📚 LEARN — this one is absolutely me. If I don’t understand something, I investigate it. And then investigate the investigation. 😂 Whether it’s medicine, dentistry, technology, business, history, culture or why something works the way it does, there is always another question.
💡 CREATE — ideas, projects, plans, possibilities. My brain has an unfortunate habit of producing the next idea before I have finished the previous five. Business ideas, things I want to build, improve, photograph, write or completely redesign… apparently there is no OFF button.
And although many of those ideas never make it past the inside of my head, somehow my subconscious has a rather mysterious habit of resolving things and attracting new opportunities and good sources of income when I need them. I’m hoping it intends to continue. 😂
🕊️ FREEDOM — perhaps the one that matters most to me. The freedom to choose where I go next. To change direction. To start again. To keep discovering things. And to know that, whatever my age, there can still be completely new chapters ahead.
Travel. Good Food. Healthy Me. Business Ideas. Beautiful Places.
Well… yes. 😂 That is basically my brain organised into five volumes.
The camera had to be there 📷 because I don’t just want to visit beautiful places — I want to capture them. I want to remember what they felt like, not just where I went.
And “Good Food, Big Plans” is possibly the most accurate description of me on any given day. ☕😂
China gave me extraordinary places, wonderful food, kind people, unexpected conversations, spectacular landscapes and more stairs than I ever wish to see again.
I learned a lot. I dealt with a few unexpected twists. I asked approximately 7,462 questions. 😂 I changed plans more than once. And I’m going home with wonderful memories — and some unfinished business.
So this isn’t really goodbye China.
It’s goodbye China… for now. 🇨🇳❤️
Because I already know I’ll be back.
There are still places to explore, things to learn, things to create — and, inevitably, Big Plans. ✈️☕🐼
