Back to Beijing!

Jul 01, 2025 2:48 am

Welcome to this week's (late again) edition of the Language Vlog Newsletter!

My apologies for the lateness as it really was one of the first trips we had ever taken with the idea of publishing throughout. We learned some things and will make some improvements for future work.

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This is a long one, but good reading material. Don't want to read?

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That being said and done, we are back in Beijing and settling in once again for a hot and humid summer. Although we didn't publish much over the last two weeks, here are some of the notes I made from our travels:

-Yes, Australia is expensive, but the minimum wage is around $24.95 per hour AND, if you are lucky enough to get a contract for work (I'll explain in a minute), then you'll receive additional benefits such as sick leave and annual vacation (both of which can be rolled over), health insurance, weekends off, and a host of other benefits.

But...getting a contract?

-SOME industries (eg, mining), but not in ALL (eg, office work or landscaping) will offer you a contract + visa support. You will have to sign on for a longer term commitment and, tbh, many of those jobs will be tough to do for one reason or another (the mining jobs in particular are mostly FIFO - fly in fly out - and often three weeks on, two weeks off).

-The hostels were full of young people taking advantage of the working holiday visa scheme (valid until the age of 30). Many of the people in the hostels were those who were still doing their 90-day rural work, which has to be done IF you want to renew the visa a second time (even if you turn older than 30 in that year).

-Australian coffee was GOOD, mostly because it was consistent. That is, many places used fresh beans and ground them as they were ordered. My go-to was the Long Black (another name for an Americano), but we did try the Flat White (in Chinese it's called an 澳白). Not surprisiginly, there were FAR FEWER Starbucks than there are in China since every few shops seemed to be a cafe.

-As noodle shops are to China, cafes and pie shops are to Australia.

-We only visited Sydney and Melbourne. We were hesitant to go to Uluru (Ayer's Rock, the big red rock in the middle of the continent), but getting there was expensive and required a bit more time than we originally allotted.

-I found a new travel hack... which most Chinese people would find boring: search Taobao for tour groups to join. Most tours offered by the hostels would cost about $100 or more but only have a minibus of 10 people or so. However, if you search Taobao for group tickets (in Chinese, of course), you can find tour groups that ride in the big buses to all of the major sightseeing spots. Great Ocean Road for $129 AUD? Nah, 192 RMB ($40 AUD) for same same but different! ... But it was all in Chinese. ;)

Major highlights included:

Sydney: Harbour Bridge, Opera House, The Rocks, Hyde Park Barracks, St. Mary's Cathedral, Australian Museum, CBD, George Street, Sydney YHA Harbour, Bondi Beach, Southern Cross constellation, Australian Stock Exchange (all digital!).

Melbourne: Melbourne Museum, downtown Melbourne (both on our own and with a free walking tour), Great Ocean Road, Victoria Market, Victoria State Library, kinda seeing koalas but we DID see a mob of kangaroos, Haigh's Chocolates, kangaroo burger, chicken parmisean (apparently very Australian pub-style), and fish n chips.

All told we spent around 30,000 RMB, including visas and flights, for an average cost of about 1200 RMB per day, or about $275 AUD per day.

Would we go again? YES. Would we move to Australia? We WOULD. What holds us back?

1) Distance from relatives and the rest of the world.

2) Visas and jobs.

3) Timing = when would we go?

4) Do we really want to leave Beijing and China?

All in all, I don't think I'm out of place in saying this, an expensive trip, but a good test. Not just of our bank accounts, but of travelling in a developed country such as Australia, running a YouTube channel while on the road, and generally seeing how other people are living and working in other places in a post-COVID world.

We'll leave it there for this week. I know it was a longer email but I figured it would be good reading for those who are thinking of going to Australia, or wondered if it's worth the trip. Short answer: yes. Just be prepared to be spending as if you're travelling through you own country.