Hi everyone, my name is Charlotte.
First of all, I want to thank all of you who wished me a happy birthday.
I celebrated well with my family. Just at home. Nothing big or special.
We are in crazy times with the virus and all, so it is better to stay at home safely, I think.
Now, I would like to share something super exciting with you!
You know I have been sharing news about Taiwan from an outsider’s perspective and outsider newspapers for a while now.
I have been checking all kind of newspapers in Europe, in the US, everywhere,… to see what kind of news about Taiwan we hear.
I think it is interesting to see what kind of news make it’s all the way to Europe.
I have also been checking a lot of Taiwanese newspapers and that’s why this article today is so special to me.
There is a Taiwanese English-speaking news platform called “The China Post” and they have written an article about me!
It is super exciting and honestly, at first when I was contacted by a person working there, I wasn’t sure if it was legit or not.
Right now, it is so easy to interview someone. They just wrote me a message on Instagram, asking me
“Hey, we’re this newspaper and we would like to interview you. Is that okay with you?”
Since it wasn’t an official account I was like: “I wonder… Is this really a newspaper?”
I had nothing to lose. It was just an interview. Of course, I said yes!
Luckily for me, it was really the newspaper they claimed to be.
The title of the article is: “Belgian YouTuber shares tips for solo-female travel in Taiwan”.
The title is very funny and unexpected to me, because when I did the interview by replying on Instagram,
That was just a very small part of the whole interview and it is funny to me that they decided to use this as the title.
I guess… Maybe people would click on it more easily with this kind of title? I don’t know.
It is very funny to me, who knows the whole interview, to see that they chose this specific title.
I would love to look at the article with you.
This article was written by Shelly Yang, The China Post, on September 7th.
It was my birthday on September 6th so that was a very nice timing.
Taiwan is known as “one of the safest countries in the world.”
The island-nation performs very well with street safety, low legal discrimination and low violence against women.
Charlotte, a Belgian YouTuber who recently traveled to Taiwan for a working holiday, shared some tips that solo-female travelers need to be aware of.
That’s funny! I guess I am a solo-female traveler. I travelled to many countries:
I studied in Sweden, I did an internship for 6 months in India, I have studied in South-Korea and then I was doing my “Working Holiday” in Taiwan.
Yeah, I guess you can call me a solo-female traveler.
It is very weird to me that they call me a Belgian YouTuber.
Even if I have been doing YouTube for a while now, it is still weird to consider myself a YouTuber. Do you know what I mean?
Charlotte took her first solo trip to Asia when she was 18. Since then, she has been an exchange student in Sweden and India.
That is what I just told you.
By the way, my first solo-trip when I was 18, that’s something I explained to her, but it didn’t come into the article.
They have to make a selection of what they want to write.
My very first trip was… I was living in an international student dormitory here in Belgium,
and I got along really well with some Japanese girls there and also a South-Korean girl.
After my first year of University I decided to travel to Asia all by myself and try to visit as many of my friends as possible.
That was, up until today, one of the nicest trips of my whole life. It was so nice to see all my friends back. I miss them all a lot.
After that solo-travel I really got a taste for travelling the world.
The first time she heard of “Taiwan” was when she was having a language course in South Korea.
Then, a friend highly recommended Taiwan to her, saying it was one of the best places she’d ever been.
This was a friend I made during a job. I was doing some “extra” or “modeling” job.
She was a girl who had worked in several countries. She works a lot in mainland China as well,
But she had been to Taiwan for jobs and she told me that there’s no country that compares to Taiwan.
It made me very curious, because I only had a vague notion of what Taiwan was, but I didn’t know anything about it.
So after she said that to me, that’s when I was really getting curious about Taiwan.
It was in that moment that a seed was planted in Charlotte’s heart and her curiosity about this beautiful island began to grow.
Yes, that’s true!
“I felt safe as a female traveler in Taiwan,” she continued.
It is so weird to say “she continued” when I am talking about myself.
Taiwan is so modern and has a very western feel to it, so I could be myself freely!
I have to say, some countries that have a lot of ancient traditions can have a very different style.
For example: I could feel that while I was living in India, it is so rich of culture, and the culture is so different from European countries.
The first thing I noticed when I arrived in India was that everybody was dressed very differently than me.
Personally, I didn’t want to stand out so much, because I was already looking different. I didn’t want to have different clothes as well.
I decided to change to an Indian girl style as fast as possible.
I think it is nice when you go to another country to try and merge into the culture that is there.
I think it’s also a way of showing respect to that country that accepts you as a guest.
Let’s go on with the article.
She advises women traveling alone to observe the behavior of women in a country and just do the same.
That’s simply put, but that is kind of what I mean.
For example, if a local doesn’t take the train alone after 8 p.m., then just don’t. If a local person dresses in a way that doesn’t show her legs or cleavage, then do the same.
This is so interesting, because I noticed that in South-Korea for example, girls don’t show cleavage much usually,
But they will show their whole leg up until very high, like mini-skirts, mini-shorts,… all that.
While here in Belgium you might see more cleavage, but not many mini-skirts or shorts.
It is just a cultural thing. A small difference.
“But in Taiwan, I didn’t feel like I had to adapt much,” she added.
Yeah, that’s true. In Taiwan I just wore my usual clothes. I guess my style is pretty safe in every country. XD
Not only did the safety in Taiwan amaze Charlotte, but the culture of milk tea, covered sidewalks and garbage trucks were also very new to her.
That’s what I talked about in my very first video. That video was titled: “I moved to Taiwan!”
At that time, I was still thinking that I would be in Taiwan for a much longer time.
Nobody could have predicted this whole coronavirus situation.
Now in Belgium, Charlotte said, I honestly miss the garbage truck music after leaving Taiwan!
Other things that she misses are the food. Of course!
Not just the taste, but also how convenient and easy it is to eat out.
That’s very true. Here in Belgium I rarely eat outside because it is quite expensive and in my town there’s nothing much to go eat.
In Taiwan I could go outside and at 5 minutes from my place I could find at least 15 different places where I could go and eat.
“When I was In Taiwan I rarely cooked, because there were so many convenient, delicious and affordable options around.”
Of course, the friends she made in Taiwan, kind people, and a coffee shop where you can spend all day, are all fond memories that she will never forget after she leaves Taiwan.
“I hope the virus will be under control soon so I can go back and make more videos showing Taiwan to the world.”
That was it for the article. Sorry by the way… I just noticed that there’s a weird part of my hair sticking out.
I think it came because I just took a nap and I must have been laying in a very weird position.
My hair got messed up really badly. My apologies.
Something else I wanted to say about the article, that I found very interesting, was that:
One of my Patreon-members brought to my attention that the title in Taiwanese was a bit different than the title in English.
In English, the title is: “Belgian YouTuber shares tips for solo-female travel in Taiwan”.
But in the Taiwanese version they wrote: “Belgian model shares tips for solo-female travel in Taiwan”.
I think that is very interesting, I was wondering why they changed this word. Is it because there’s no official word for “YouTuber” in Chinese?
I’m not sure. What do you all think?
It’s a small detail but it made me wonder. Why would they change that word in the Taiwanese version?
Thank you so much for watching!
If you watched until the end, I want to tell you a password, so I know that you are awesome and you watched until the end.
The password I’m going to choose today, is one that I used in one of my very first videos. It is:
Milk tea ~
Actually, I even made myself a little T-shirt with “password: milk tea”.
To me, it’s an inside joke of my channel. I really like it!
When I told my sister and mother about this little idea, that I wanted to make myself a T-shirt they asked me to make one for them as well
My mother has a yellow one and my sister has a white one with long sleeves.
I was thinking “OMG! I should really put this on my YouTube channel so that everybody can buy it,
But sadly, they don’t deliver it everywhere in the world… So it’s just for me now!
Thank you so much for watching. I hope everybody is safe. Don’t work too hard!
I noticed that last week, I kind of overworked myself a bit and in the weekend, I was so exhausted that I couldn’t do anything.
So this week, I was very careful and I forced myself to take enough rest, because I didn’t wat to miss another chance to make a video.
I’m always very excited to make a video for you all. Thank you for always supporting me.
I also want to give a special thanks to my Patreon-members. It is always nice to have a chat with you in Patreon!
Thank you for watching. If you’re interested to read the whole interview (all the questions and all the replies)
I will put it on my Patreon. But it is really long, so it is probably not that interesting…
I’ll put it there for anyone who wants to read.
Once more: thank you for watching and see you very soon in the next video. Bye bye ~