I spent time in four different places on this trip: Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. I figured it'd be fun to compare them head-to-head across a bunch of random categories, based purely on my own experience. I'm leaving Macao out of this one — that whole side trip felt like such a fever dream that it doesn't really fit next to the others.

Convenience Stores

Every country does the humble convenience store a little differently, and I ended up relying on all four of them at some point.

Nature

I didn't come on this trip for the nature specifically, but a few hikes ended up among my favorite days regardless.

Legal Tender

Four countries meant juggling four currencies, four card systems, and a lot of very confusing coins.

Public Transit

I leaned on public transit constantly, and the differences between systems became obvious fast — Seoul's connections in particular are fast enough that I still bring it up, see 2025-10-04 for a good example. Taiwan's buses, on the other hand, earned themselves a whole paragraph of complaints in My Flop 10.

People / Culture

This one's the hardest to be objective about, but here's my honest read on how each place felt to actually be a foreigner in.

Museums

I visited a lot of museums on this trip — enough that I started noticing patterns in how each country curates and presents its own history and art.

Street Food

Street food was one of my favorite ways to actually taste a place, and the range across these four was huge.

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