88 days. Every backpacker who ever came to Australia on a Working Holiday Visa knows what this figure means: it is the minimum number of working days on a farm to be eligible for a second visa. I went through it too, twice, during my first stay in the country between 2016 and 2017. I still have very mixed feelings today about this period of my life, but one thing is certain, it marked me deeply and I'll never forget it. Here's the story of my first experience of farmwork in Australia: picking strawberries at Caboolture in Queensland.
Sacred place for the Aboriginal people, UIuru, huge ocher monolith in the middle of the arid desert of Australia's Red Centre, is truly a magical place. I went there in June 2017, at the very end of my first trip around the country, and I really loved my brief stay... Come feel the magic of Uluru with me!
When I arrived in Australia at the end of June 2016, I stayed for two days with an extremely welcoming couple: Viv and Craig, my first Australian friends. Unfortunately, I never had the opportunity to see them again, and it was on Facebook that I learned of Craig's passing on May 9 2022. A year later, I decided to publish the story of these two days, in tribute to Craig and in memory of this wonderful encounter.
From mid-March to mid-April, Japan lives to the rythm of the Sakura season, the period during which the cherry blossoms are blooming. It's an extraordinary sight, worth a trip just for itself! Here are 5 suggestions of places around Tokyo to enjoy it as much as possible.
Tokyo is a city of contrasts. Quiet and narrow lanes and constantly busy wide boulevards, huge parks and forests of skyscrapers, ancient temples and ultramodern buildings... Nothing illustrates it better than the neighbour suburbs of Harajuku and Shibuya. From the peaceful atmosphere of a shinto shrine to the biggest pedestrian crossing in the world, from an alternative art gallery to the fanciest street of the city, you will go from surprise to surprise as you walk there. So if you're visiting Tokyo, don't forget to spend one day in Harajuku and Shibuya!
At first glance, Shinjuku the biggest district of Tokyo matched perfectly with the image I had from this city where more than 13 millions of people live: a forest of skyscrapers, wide boulevards with bright billboards... But after exploring it a little bit deeper, I realised that it was not just about neon lights, busy streets and modernity. The atmosphere is radically different between the crowded avenues and the tiny lanes of Golden Gai, between the park of Gyoen and the strip clubs of Kabukicho, between day and night. Here are a few ideas of what to do in Shinjuku, the most contrasted area of Tokyo!
The movie Lost in Translation is one of my favourites, but it became even more special for me when I re-watched it after travelling in Japan. It reminded my last melancholic day in Tokyo, of which here is the story!
A giant red torii emerging from the water, a beautiful temple and a tall pagoda, wooded hills overlooking the bay: that’s the extraordinary view awaiting visitors taking the ferry to Miyajima, a little island close to Hiroshima. Here's the story of the day I spent there, one of my best memories of Japan!
It would take a lifetime to explore the more than 1600 temples of Kyoto, the former capital of Japan which still remains today the spiritual and cultural centre of the country. Here's a selection of 9 of them that I particularly liked and that should be part of your itinerary if you're visiting this wonderful city!
Before travelling to Japan for the first time in 2018, I had in mind a lot of clichés about the country: sushis, technology and robots, sumo wrestling... In this article, I'm comparing 10 of these clichés to what I actually discovered!
