My 2023 Travel Roundup
Introduction
In 2023 I went to 24 countries: 22 new ones and 2 repeats. The repeats were my home country (UK) and Indonesia, where I took my now-girlfriend to Bali, one of my all-time favourite travel spots.
This post will have a look at what I got up to each month and include a few highlights, lowlights and interesting stories along the way.
January
Countries visited: UK, Greece
The year got off to a slow start as I stayed at home for most of it, having previously travelled around Latam and the Middle East for ten months in 2022. At the end of January however I got back on the road, beginning a three-month trip around Europe.
I flew from London to Athens where the highlight should have been the Acropolis, which was a little disappointing in all honesty. The scaffolding and large hordes of crowds (despite being bang in the middle of the off-season) meant this popular attraction disappointed. Although there was one really cool spot which provided a silver lining: The Erechtherion. Didn’t love the Acropolis overall though.
Aside from this, I went to an Olympiacos game, and witnessed the weekly changing of the guard ceremony in Athens. Afterwards, I ended the month in unique Meteora, a series of rock formations with monasteries built high into the cliffs. This was definitely the highlight of Greece for me, and somewhere I would recommend to anyone. Read my post on visiting Greece for more on beautiful Meteora.
February
Countries visited: Greece, North Macedonia, Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova (+Transnistria), Serbia
I started February by leaving Meteora for Thessaloniki. Although I did little here. The main goal was to apply for jobs teaching English in South Korea.
How did that go? Well, skip to August to find out!
Leaving Thessaloniki was the beginning of a whistlestop 3.5 week tour of five countries. First up was North Macedonia. I only spent a couple of nights here, both in the capital Skopje, but I absolutely loved it! North Macedonia is one of my favourite countries in Europe, with lots to see and do in the capital. My post on visiting this wonderful country explains why.
At this point I didn’t know how long I would have to travel. I may have had to go home in a week or two, to sort some paperwork, should my South Korea teaching application progress. Therefore I was reluctant to stay in one or two places for a long time. I wanted to see it all!
After North Macedonia was Bulgaria, a country I didn’t particularly like. Sofia was cold, uninspiring and a little dull. Plovdiv was better, but I still didn’t warm to the country. After six days in Bulgaria I headed up to the next country, Romania.
Romania was a country I expected a lot from, but ultimately came away from feeling underwhelmed. I saw Bucharest, Brasov, Bran Castle, and to break the chain of places beginning with B, Timisoara.
Perhaps the Dracula stories and expectation of Romania being a great place to see wildlife (in particular, bears) and mountains inflated my expectation of the place.
It was okay, but I didn’t love it.
Between Bucharest and the other Romanian stops on my journey however, there was a place I did love: Moldova.
I only spent three nights in this wonderful little country, but will never forget the incredible sights here.
Chisiniau is cool for a daytrip, but the real charm of Moldova comes in the form of the autonomous pro-Russian region of Transnistria. Head out here and it feels like stepping back into the USSR. Lenin and the hammer and sickle are common sights in this quirky little territory. Transnistria was super safe and very interesting. I would recommend it to anyone.
The final stop for February was Serbia, another country I didn’t really like. Perhaps this is why you shouldn’t go in February. Serbia was bleak, cold and wet. I visited capital Belgrade, but found little of interest outside of the local food.
March
Countries visited: Serbia, Kosovo, Albania, Montenegro, Bosnia Herzegovina, Croatia, Slovenia
I ended my short stay in Serbia by visiting the smaller city of Nis. This is home to several dark tourism sites. Most notably, Crveni Krst concentration camp, where the Nazis carried out many atrocities during WWII. There was also the skull tower, made of real human skulls. The skulls belong to Serbs who died fighting the Ottoman Empire during a previous invasion. Nis is a city with a lot of interest for dark history enthusiasts. But there is not much there otherwise.
Next up was Kosovo. A pleasant little country with friendly people, and it’s probably the cheapest country in Europe. There’s little to do there however, so this is certainly the sort of place that’s more for a “traveller not a tourist”. The Bear Sanctuary near Pristina was cool though.
After this I spent a week in Albania. It’s hard to judge a country famous for its beaches when you visit in the cooler months. I only went to the capital Tirana, and the small town of Shkoder on the northern border. Albania was okay, feel I’d appreciate it more in good weather though.
The next stop was Montenegro. Podgorica is boring, but Kotor made up for it. Kotor is a stunning small town on the coast with a lovely medieval old town, and great views of the bay. It’s easy to see why Kotor is a popular tourist spot.
Following Montenegro was my highlight of Europe so far, Bosnia Herzegovina. This country is simply amazing. The people, the food, the sights, everything scores 10/10 in beautiful Bosnia. Mostar is an absolutely stunning little city. You can see it all in a day, but you can equally chill there for a week and watch the world go by. Then there’s the capital Sarajevo. Not as scenic as Mostar, but still very interesting and a city with a lot of history. Did you know Sarajevo was also the starting point for WWI?
Croatia was next. And this was perhaps another victim of visiting in the wrong season. I liked Croatia, but didn’t love it. Split was nice, and the place where it first started to feel like Spring. The sun came out and it was finally warm. However I missed out on the Plitvice Lakes by a day. This is because the buses don’t run from certain parts of the country in the off-season. Bit of a shame really as this would surely have been a highlight. Zadar was cool, but not really worth going all the way to Croatia for alone (unlike Split), and Zagreb was meh.
March’s rapid leg of this European tour finished in Slovenia. I only spent four days here. Lake Bled was absolutely stunning and most certainly lives up to the hype. Ljubljana was a hard city to enjoy with cold weather and non-stop rain when I was there.
April
Countries visited: Hungary, Slovakia, Poland, UK
April was the month my travels were halted. I spent the first few days in Budapest, but combined sightseeing with a couple of interviews for teaching jobs in South Korea. I got one of the jobs and had to cut my time in Budapest short, knowing I only had a few days left, and still wanted to visit Auschwitz in Poland.
I went to the Slovakian capital Bratislava as it was the next logical stop between Hungary and Poland. Loved it a lot more than expected and tried to stay longer. Only for the Easter weekend to lead to a shortage of affordable accommodation. This cut my stay here to just two days, before I headed to stop 15/15 on this trip.
In Poland I visited Krakow. The city is a nice one with very pleasant people. It felt very safe in Poland. The main thing I saw here was Auschwitz, the infamous concentration camp at the very centre of the Holocaust. To make the most of your trip here you should come twice. Firstly with a guide who can explain the history to you, then alone where you can explore at your own pace without the guide and see everything you missed the first time around. Auschwitz was eye-opening for sure.
After Krakow, it was home time. I headed back to the UK to sort some paperwork for South Korea, a process which would take weeks, if not months to sort.
I got a job within a day of coming back, whilst also returning to my old bar job. I worked around the clock pretty much all week for the next six weeks to build up my travel war chest and enjoy a few more adventures before South Korea.
May
Countries visited: UK
May was a month of hard work and no adventures. I got my documents notarised after a few weeks. This allowed me to move onto the next stage of the South Korea application process.
In the final few days, I sent off these documents, before jetting off to Jakarta for stage two of my 2023 adventures: Southeast Asia.
June
Countries visited: Indonesia, Philippines
I arrived in Jakarta on the first day of the month, absolutely exhausted. I spent a night alone in a hostel, before heading to the airport the next day to meet a friend. I had been talking to a girl for a long time, and we were to spend a month together in Southeast Asia.
She arrived and we had a quiet night. The next day we headed to our main destination, Bali, as Jakarta was pretty boring.
We went out for drinks that night and confirmed what had seemed to be on the cards for a while. My friend was now my girlfriend.
The rest of the month was great. We spent time in Kuta, Ubud, Nusa Ceningan, Nusa Lembongan, Canggu, Seminyak, Uluwatu and Nusa Dua. Bali was definitely a place to wind down and do the unthinkable… be a tourist not a traveller…
Eventually it was time to head to our second country on this trip: The Philippines. Now this was a country we didn’t love. Cebu City, Bohol, (h)El Nido, Puerto Princesa and Manila were on the agenda here. Cebu City was cool but perhaps not worth coming all this way for. Bohol was absolutely wonderful and the one real positive we took from the Philippines. The Tarsier Sanctuary and Chocolate Hills made this little island special.
Puerto Princesa and Manila were just transit stops really. They didn’t disappoint as we had no expectations to begin with.
The biggest letdown of all was El Nido, or as we call it, Hell Nido. The main reason behind why we disliked El Nido was a nightmare tour which resulted in being stranded in the middle of the sea for a while whilst dagger-like hailstones crashed against our bare backs. But even if we try to forget that, it wasn’t a great place. Probably the lowlight of 2023.
July
Countries visited: Philippines, Malaysia, Myanmar
July saw us fly to Kuala Lumpur for our final few days together. We saw many highlights in this time including the famous Batu Caves, the Petronas Towers and Jalan Alor food market. All three places are real gems which helped make Kuala Lumpur one of my favourite cities in the world.
After a few days my girlfriend had to go home. Things weren’t easy however. We were screwed over by a dreadful airline who refused to let her board due to apparent visa issues. There were no visa issues, we’d checked this thoroughly before booking the flight, but the thuggish manager of this low-cost Indonesian airline wouldn’t budge. It cost an additional £350 to change her flight so she could get home. A little reminder that travel is a game of many great highs, and a few horrible lows.
Solo again, I took a flight to Kuching, a city in Malaysian Borneo. During a week here I focused on seeing wildlife. Bako National Park was undoubtably the highlight. A remote jungle spot on the northern coast of the island. And certainly the best place near Kuching for an authentic wildlife experience.
Less authentic was the Semenggoh Orangutan Sanctuary. Sure, you can see orangutans here, but you’ll have to stand a fair distance away whilst battling through large crowds of tourists to see them. In all honesty, this isn’t much different from a zoo. There’s no guarantee you’ll see an orangutan either. In some ways that makes it worse than a zoo. I wish I’d done an authentic jungle trek instead.
After heading back to Kuala Lumpur and enjoying some downtime, it was time for an 11-day trip to Myanmar. A country many warn against visiting due to war.
If you stick to the big four touristy spots: Yangon, Bagan, Mandalay and Inle Lake, then you won’t need to worry about getting caught up in the conflict. I wrote an in-depth guide explaining everything you should know on how to visit Myanmar safely and easily.
This magical country has some spectacular sights, and very few tourists. Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon is one of the most magical religious places I’ve ever seen. The mystical plains of Bagan are also seriously cool. Myanmar is a truly special country, safe if you follow the tips in my logistics guide above, and easily one of the most memorable places I’ve ever been.
That said, it’s more of a place for the intermediate traveller rather than a newbie. Stick to Thailand or Vietnam if you’ve never been to this part of the world before. Then progress to Myanmar when you have more of a feel for the region.
August
Countries visited: Malaysia, Kuwait, UK, South Korea
August was a month of transition. I secured the visa needed to work in South Korea, and started heading home to prepare for the next chapter. But there was one more short stop on the way home.
I spent a couple of days in the ultra hot Gulf country of Kuwait. Going to be honest, Kuwait has very little to do. But the people are the reason I remember this country fondly. In particular, an elderly Omani woman who had survived being shot in the head by her ex-husband when she asked for a divorce. Remarkably, she had a more positive outlook on life than almost everyone I’ve ever met, and told me that every day she wakes up is a good day.
This lady reminded me of why I love to travel. There are so many incredible people out there with so many great stories.
Next up was a few days at home to pack and prepare, then it was time to jet off to South Korea.
After a long and exhausting journey which included a luxury night sleeping on an airport bench, I made it to Seoul, then took a bus down to my new homebase where the director of my school met me. I went to look around the school in the afternoon, before retreating to my new apartment. It was time to start a new life teaching English in South Korea.
There was still time for another new beginning in August. On August 28th, Adventure to Every Country was born!
This is my first ever attempt at building a blog. The idea initially was to share authentic stories from every country in the world. Whilst this is still a goal, I’ve focused a lot recently on more useful information that a reader would want to know before visiting a country. I also wish to share posts on the world’s coolest places, logistics reports for difficult countries, true stories on things that go wrong on the road, and miscellaneous posts that may be fun, helpful, or just something I wanted to write about.
If one word defines this blog however, it is “authenticity”. In a world where it’s easy to churn out thousands of ChatGPT-inspired rubbish, this blog will always be written from first hand experience in each and every country I have visited.
September
Countries visited: South Korea, Taiwan
September was mostly a month of settling into my new apartment and work routine.
On the blog front I spent every spare minute learning about Bluehost, WordPress, plugins, categories, tags, Google Analytics, Google Search Console, keywords, SEO… and the list goes on and on! I got my first few posts out and set up my Twitter account. September was a learning curve, and long may that continue.
At the end of the month came Chuseok, the Korean equivalent to Thanksgiving. This is one of the biggest holidays in the Korean calendar, and meant we had a few days off. Being a travel enthusiast this could only mean one thing, and off I went to Taiwan.
This was an experimental trip in some ways. I ran out of time to plan, so used ChatGPT to draw up an instant itinerary. I’ll never use AI to generate blog posts, but travel planning is a different story!
The suggestions it came up with were actually quite good. Read my Taiwan trip report for a full analysis of the pros, cons and takes from following an AI-generated itinerary.
I spent around two thirds of my time here in the wonderful capital Taipei, a quirky city with a lot of street food markets, Chinese temples and gaming arcades.
October
Countries visited: Taiwan, South Korea
The holiday straddled both late September and early October. I got out of Taipei by doing a day tour of Shifen Waterfall, Shifen Village, Jiufen and Yehliu Geopark. This allowed me to see more of what turned out to be a country I truly love. Taiwan is great, be sure to check it out one day!
I also received my first blogging opportunity, thanks to Trevor Warman of Nomadic Backpacker who featured me in his series sharing travellers’ top 3 countries in the world.
Then another opportunity came along. This one is still ongoing, but more should be revealed early in 2024!
October also saw my first visit to South Korea’s capital Seoul. I had underappreciated just how big this city was. To date I’ve been to Seoul twice and barely scratched the surface. Head to the area around Gyeongbokgung Palace to see this historical royal complex, and many similar places nearby.
November
Countries visited: South Korea
November was a quiet month. Work, work and more work was the order of the day. I began to post more regular blog posts during this month. Although I’m still a very long way from building organic traffic to this site. My DA climbed to 5 in this month. Still tiny numbers, but Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither was Adventure to Every Country!
There were no trips in November, to other countries or elsewhere within South Korea.
December
Countries visited: South Korea, Japan
The final month of the year saw more hard work and another trip to Seoul. On this occasion I tried checking out Seoul’s Christmas activities. In all honesty, Seoul isn’t the best city I’ve been to for festive vibes, but the displays outside Shinsegae and Lotte department stores were cool.
On the blogging front I worked extra hard and finished posting about every country I’ve visited since December 2022.
I write this post with under a week until the turn of the year. However there is still time to squeeze in one final country. My first trip to Japan will be a few days from now. If you want to read about what I get up to in and around Tokyo, then watch this space over the next few weeks! Edit in January 2024: I went to Japan and it was one of the best countries I have ever been to! Read about what you can do in Tokyo, as well as some general Japan info, and check out the tour we did to Mount Fuji.
