Travel on xie

China for Nomads

Mon, 19 Jan 2026 00:15:00 +0800

I was exploring China with Tzeyu during winter holidays, visited Sichuan. And you know, I think if not firewall China could be easily competing with other Asian hubs of digital nomads!

I’ll write from a perspective of living in Chengdu but some details will be the same for other New Tier 1 cities.

Big problems

Internet: it’s very bad and VPN doesn’t help much.
Language barrier: not worse than Vietnamese one if you consider non-touristic cities, online translator helps to talk in-person, in restaurants you order with an app which has a built-in translator.
Authoritarianism and world’s heaviest restrictions against freedoms: same as in Vietnam—another popular digital nomad hub,—okay, this topic is controversial but what can’t be controversial is that it doesn’t affect a nomad.
No bidet shower: ah god, previous century problems.

But

Low prices on food: local dish can cost $2, we’ve been to a temple’s vegetarian buffet restaurant with a price of $4.5 per entry, a European dish can cost $10.
Low prices on accommodation: we were renting a room 5 minutes away from the subway for $15 per night but that could be an anomaly.
Developed public transport: not like Bangkok, even more developed! Subway and buses are cheaper than half of the dollar, taxi costs like the one in Bangkok, bicycle rental is $0.5 per hour at every corner, speed trains to other cities are convenient, well, speedy, and affordable.
Developed logistics: food delivery arrives in 10 minutes, they delivered a cable from another part of the country in 2 days (I paid $0.5 for everything including the cable), in grocery stores there’s food from the whole country, and you can find Russian seafood and South East Asian fruit.
Developed EVERYTHING: maps apps show a traffic light timer and compare prices of different taxi providers, payment can be done by QR, NFC or hand palm. Everything is from the 22nd century except the bidet shower, ah god.
Much entertainment, many gyms, easy to build new hobbies: but need to overcome the language barrier.

Internet spoils everything. If not the Internet, we’d be in China right now probably :-)

Airbnb Drama

Sun, 14 May 2023 19:35:59 +0700

I came into 7-Eleven store in Thailand and purchased a SIM card five months ago. Some time later, I received an SMS from Airbnb.

Your Airbnb reservation request for May 13-14 in Yerevan was accepted

Initially, I was momentarily afraid of being hacked, but I soon discovered that SMS was sent to Thai phone number, even though I hadn’t registered Airbnb account to it. Probably, that was because of number recycling. A traveler used that SIM before, then left Thailand and the mobile operator assigned the same number to me.

Curious about the situation, I attempted to log into that strange account, filled a new code from SMS, and…

Enter the code we emailed to ti***@gm***.com

That’s a positive sign, that means Airbnb thought about number recycling issue. Although, there’s “Need help?” button. I pressed there and explained the situation to a support team.

Do you think they connected to me? Well, they did, to some extent. I received a new SMS.

You have a new Airbnb support message in your inbox. Go to your inbox: https://air.tl/XJbsUVeD to view the conversation and reply

Four times, four different links. And if I try to click any I get redirected to “Log in” page which I can’t bypass.

At this point, the story could be ended, but then I decided to write this blog post. While copying the email address I briefly wondered whether I should publish someone’s address, even with asterisks. I paused typing and had a sudden realization. I opened a chat with my friend to confirm… Ops. Uh. Ah. That wasn’t very smart.

Welcome, Timur. I know you’re reading this blog post. You were in Thailand with me five months ago, and recently you visited friends who moved to Armenia. I knew it! But it take a while to solve the riddle!

AND WHY DID YOU REGISTER AIRBNB ON MY NUMBER?

A Very Wide Range

Sat, 13 May 2023 12:48:50 +0700

Can you remember yourself at 10 years old when a parent said, “That’s money for an ice-cream, choose one”? And you should have been happy, but the problem was the phrase"CHOOSE ONE". There were plenty of different flavors available—berries, chocolate chips, nuts, and so much on. And you yet, you had to choose just one. It felt unfair. Nah, mum, take the money back. I’m going to grow up and buy every ice cream.

These days, I’m visiting Bangkok. Just an hour ago, I was thinking of staying for a night, and then I started browsing through the suggestions on Hostelworld. It showed me over than 200 available dorms, some of which included breakfast, some with swimming pools, some with evening BBQs, and even some with huge coworking spaces. I want to try everything.

Note Others About Your Trip Plans

Thu, 11 May 2023 00:15:09 +0700

Last days I’m helping in searching of a missing Russian girl. I don’t want to describe that story a lot as it’s midnight already, I wrote more messages and letters than I wrote in a month. and I’m very tired. So TS;RTI (too short; read that instead) is here: reddit, notion with well-structured but Russian info.

The main reason I’m writing that post is that the girl didn’t share with her plans. We still can’t understand if that was a kidnapping or if she wanted to be lost herself but let’s assume that current situation is unexpected even for her. Volunteers found all her friends, we work with her mother, we work with her international friends, we work with strangers from other countries… And no one, including close friends and relatives, knows where she planned to stay.

I travel much. I change accommodation more often than I update a toothpaste. And I got used to it. I don’t share my locations with relatives, I get new SIM cards and don’t tell anyone about my new phone numbers.

And this is wrong. One day I could be seized and my close people will spend many days just to confirm where I was and where I wanted to go. I’ll try to fix that point soon.

Btw, I have https://nomadlist.com/@oskars where everyone can track me. I try to update it frequently and it’s almost always valid.