Travel Diary ✈️
April 2026
Spent almost the ENTIRE month out on a big friendship tour! I started the month by heading down to LA to meet up with my friends from Seattle~ We ate lots of good food and cafes in Koreatown, checked out Venice Beach, and also (most importantly), saw the NMIXX concert! It was an amazing experience. Unlike most girl groups, they actually sang most of their songs live. Lily has a really enchanting voice, and Bae is soooo beautiful~
From LA, I flew into China next! Raymond and I met up in Shanghai, and we spent the next few days exploring the city. I haven't been since I was a little kid, this was so cool! The street food was amazing, the shopping cool too. I love Chinese food lol. We ate at Ren He Guan and Fu He Hui, both were fantastic. We then both took gaotie to our family areas. I did a fun san ba dao photoshoot, and saw the house my mom first lived in as a baby! Photoshoots are so much fun and I love picking out the outfit / douyin makeup. I want to do more of them!
After China, I flew to Tokyo to travel with my high school/middle school friends for a few days. We went to Ghibli Park as well as Ghibli Museum. We generally experienced a lot of Tokyo (and of course, did tons of shopping). At the end of the trip, I stayed in a capsule hotel for the first time, which was a very cool experience! And somehow the best night of sleep I got all Japan trip... My friends from college happened to be in Taipei at the same time, but I was too rushed to be able to meet up. I have friends in SF who recently moved to Taizhong, plus a friend currently in Taipei for the year, I hope to visit them next time!
I'm on my way home now, connecting through Taipei (TSA->TPE connection). I picked up lots of snacks, including my favorite Sunny Hills pineapple cake. What a tiring trip haha! It was pretty cool to experience all these places. I really want to go to China again and visit more provinces. I'm especially interested in Zhang Jia Jie hehe.
March 2026
This month was pretty busy! We went camping in Sugarloaf State Park, with a super cozy campsite (will post pics...) I also had a friend visiting the Bay Area, so we visited Pinnacles National Park! Aaaaand I'm going to Lake Tahoe and Salt Lake City to go skiing these last two weeks :)
Skiing at Kirkwood was really fun! I'd never been to any of the Epic Tahoe resorts, and never went skiing with my new Bay Area friends before. My friend J was really fun and instructive to ski with, he pushed us all to challenge ourselves on difficult terrain (I didn't realize that the Wall was a double black until later in the day!) and also shared a lot of helpful drills and tips. My other friend C was also so fun to ski with, she can both ski and snowboard and is so adventurous~ Overall the vibe of our group was pretty fun and friendly, I'm really glad I ended up going on the trip. Hopefully we'll get to ski together again next season, maybe in Japan or Whistler.
Even though the snow was super slushy and melting, it wasn't the worst. I found it kind of difficult to turn in moguls, but it was really soft. I started to try out ski jumping - there was a fun little jump onto the piste we found, and we also did a bunch of park runs where I got to try popping. Overall, I really like how there were bascially zero lines and that even though the snow wasn't amazing, I still had fun stuff to learn and occupy my ski day with.
Salt Lake City was also amazing. I'm bummed that the snow at Snowbird wasn't the best, but I really enjoyed how beautiful the city was. There were a lot of great coffee shops (third wave) that were ACTUALLY the perfect places to work. The vibe was so relaxed and peaceful. Also I'd been watching SLOMW, so it was great to try swig and all that!
Upcoming Trips~
- May 26: Channel Islands NP + Big Sur
- Jun 26: Seattle + Bali & Singapore
- Aug 26: Chicago + Toronto
- Sep 26: Point Reyes + Seoul
- Oct 26: Carmel-by-the-Sea
- Nov 26: Seattle
- Dec 26: NYC & DC
Past Trips~ (2025 onwards lol)
- Jan 25: NYC
- Feb 25: Vancouver/Whistler
- Mar 25: Utah (Snowbird) + Fuzhou & Taipei
- Apr 25: Yosemite NP
- May 25: Zion NP & Bryce Canyon NP
- Jun 25: Seattle!
- Jul 25: Redwoods NP
- Aug 25: Italy (Venice) & Greece & Croatia & Turkey (Istanbul)
- Sep 25: Sweden (Stockholm) & Norway & Denmark (Copenhagen)
- Oct 25: Lake Tahoe Chalet + Mt Diablo Camping!
- Nov 25: Death Valley NP & Vegas + Seattle
- Dec 25: NYC & DC + Dominican Republic & Colombia & Curacao
- Jan 26: Tahoe (Palisades) + Colorado (Steamboat) + Joshua Tree NP
- Feb 26: Vancouver/Whistler
- Mar 26: Tahoe (Kirkwood) + Sugarloaf Camping + Utah (Snowbird/Solitude/Brighton)
- Apr 26: Shanghai & Fuzhou & Tokyo & Taipei (layover)