Offline in China

Some of you got worried seeing no stories nor posts from us, and no WhatsApp or other messages for a while. That’s why this post.

First of all, let me tell you that we’re are fine and healthy and busy exploring this exotic, enormous, extraordinary country.

We’re just behind the wall. The Great Firewall of China.

We’ll tell you more about our adventures soon but now here’s a story why you don’t hear from us for many days already.

China is a unique place in many ways. One of them is the diligence the government protects their people from foreign influences with.

The Great Wall of China was built long ago to protect the Chinese people from Mongols. These days they’ve built another kind of wall – a virtual one – the Great Firewall of China. Many services we’re used to are blocked here: Instagram, Facebook, Google search and maps, Gmail and more.

There is a work around. But it doesn’t always work.

Before the trip we did our research and bought a VPN to stay connected with the world behind the Great Wall.

NordVPN offered a yearly subscription. We only needed one for the duration of our stay, that is for a month.

Express VPN offered what we needed – a one month deal, so we got it. We bought sim cards with internet at the airport upon arrival and enjoyed unlimited access to social media and Google for about a week.

But either we got unlucky or just scammed – our VPN stopped working. The support said it was being blocked. It never worked again, so we cancelled the subscription and PayPal returned the money instantly.

We still can use Internet, Bing search engine, Apple maps and Mapsme app to be able to move around, Google translate to survive (so grateful for this product) and Wechat to communicate online. Fortunately, WordPress works too and I can post here.

We’ll be back online in a week, when our China trip ends. But we’ll not be heading home yet. Stay tuned for updates.