What up, guys. Hello.
I just got into Stavanger in Norway.
This is a southwestern part of
Norway and it's known to be the gateway to
all the most beautiful hikes in the country.
So I've just arrived at my friend's really
gorgeous apartment. And what brings me here?
Well pretty much my friend, Angie,
she met the love of her life,
a Norwegian man named Ivar.
So she quit her job, packed her bags and pretty
much moved to Norway.
Since I'm going to be
travelling around the Arctic Circle and Scandinavia,
it will be a crime not to stop by.
It's kinda nice to be around friends, you know?
It's good for the heart, and for the soul,
and for the mind.
I'm very excited of
what's gonna happen over the next few days.
Hello! I'm in another part of Norway right now,
in this place called Valldal.
I'm staying at this hotel called Juvet.
It's more famously known as the house that was featured in this
Sci-Fi dystopian film called 'Ex Machina'.
It's one of my favourite films of all time,
and the house, the architecture featured in
that film were stunning. And I found out that
it was actually a hotel in real life!
It is stunning. I'm just so happy to be
surrounded by nature.
I'm gonna take you around the hotel
grounds and you can take a look.
The drive from the airport, while long,
is a super picturesque drive. You'll be pretty
much surrounded by nature, mountains, valleys, fjords.
And then you'll arrive at this barn-like building
So you walk through this door
to the main reception.
So this is the main reception,
everything's pretty chill.
And then that's the kitchen.
This is where all our meals are prepped.
Hello! Hey!
Everyone meets for dinner at the main room.
Isn's this beautiful? Very typical, Norwegian
cabin vibes.
This is not even the best part yet, guys.
Here is the stunning outdoor area.
And yes, this is still not the best bit, guys.
I picked a really good time to record this
because all of the guests have checked out.
I'm the only one left. I'm gonna try see if
I can kinda sneak into one of the rooms to
show you what's the inside like.
This is just one of my favourite rooms.
See how it just camouflages into the landscape?
I'm gonna try to go up here to see if I could
get into the landscape rooms.
Look at this...
Beautiful.
It leads out to the wild river just at the back.
Each of the landscape rooms
has a unique design. No two rooms are the same.
Okay, I could go into one of these rooms
and I can show you.
Here's the shower.
Oh this is so cool.
This is one of the designs in the landscape room.
Holy shit.
Each of the rooms are designed with dark interiors
to pull the focus to nature.
And this is where the bed is.
So if you've slept, this is the view.
So gorgeous!
I never really caught the nature bug until recently.
I used to think like "Oh it's uncomfortable, it's humid,
it's hot", but that's because I'm in Southeast Asia.
I really like nature
when it's like this.
I like feeling small.
I like being made humble by things bigger than me,
like mountains and raging rivers.
So here's the spa.
There's like one hot tub right there.
And the view is insane.
We're gonna go in and check it out.
As you can already imagine, it's
stunning as fuck.
Okay, so this is the spa.
There's is somehow like a bedroom here.
I don't know who sleeps here but
I wouldn't mind waking up to this.
The main area... oh my goodness.
This is the
sauna, bitches.
It's beautiful here in the winter.
I can just spend all day here sweating it out
And here's the other room.
Oh my god!
So what is there to do once you're here, you might ask.
Well since we're super far away from everything,
you either rent a car and you drive around the hood
to a nearby mountain to do hikes.
Or, you can just do it like me,
because I've done so many hikes already in Norway,
I just wanna just relax.
It's not often that I get to be surrounded by nature
like this, especially when we live in Singapore.
So I'm just gonna savour it, do nothing, and
be comfortable at doing nothing, and just zen.
I'm gonna show you my room,
which is not the landscape room.
It's one of the two single rooms
that are available on this property.
It's called the Birdhouse. It's very small, very cosy,
but very intelligently designed.
Okay. It's a really cosy space.
Here is my bathroom.
It also doubles up as a shower.
And I like that I have access to the nature as I shower.
The space, as you can see, is
super small. It's very IKEA.
And this is the little space where I shower at.
Where is the shower head, you might ask.
This tap doubles up as a shower head.
How brilliant is that?
The living room space is big enough for two large suitcases.
Here's the seating area.
And yeah, I look out to this gorgeous view.
Not too shabby. Not too shabby at all.
Now I'm gonna take you upstairs to where I sleep.
I have to climb up this rung.
This is where my bed is.
When I wake up, I look down to this amazing view.
To get here, there's some direct flights from some Scandinavian countries. But most flights
pretty much connect from either Oslo, which is the capital city of Norway, or Bergen.
And then from these two places, you can kinda take like a domestic flight to Ålesund, and
then the journey begins. A two hour drive from the airport. So you can either rent a
car or you can take a bus, which will take about four hours to get here. If you can't
drive like me, or don't wanna waste time on a bus...
You take a cab.
It was very painful.
It was a $500 taxi ride.
Okay, because everything in Norway is fucking expensive.
So... because I had two large suitcases
and a bag pack,
I was like "You know what? Fuck it."
I'm just gonna work harder
to earn that money back.
On the bright side, I really love this place.
And it's making my heart sing, I'm very happy.
Food wise, there's only the main kitchen
in the main house.
Dinner is communal, so all the guests who live
on this property pretty much meet at dinner time.
Last night we had reindeer, which was amazing.
I kinda stayed off eating reindeer forever because
Rudolph.
Rudolph the red no- nope.
Just a piece of red meat on my plate.
Okay, I'm gonna get off the camera right now.
Hope you liked the little tour!
This is pretty much the lodge.
This is my view from my bedroom window.
It's really nice to stay at the lodge for a couple of nights,
get away from the city life and just surround
yourself with nature.
This is the craziest, steepest incline.
There are like three hills you need to climb.
You can see the trail just in the distance, that's where we were.
We're at the halfway point right now,
and it goes all the way up there.
Wow, I just got back from the hike to Preikestolen.
I decided to do a sunrise hike to Preikestolen
because this is one of Norway's most popular attractions.
200,000 people come here on the average,
every year, to hike the place.
So I don't really want to be rubbing shoulders
with other tourists.
One way to do that is to start your hike before the sun rises.
This is probably my toughest hike to date.
Not because of the physical exertion, but rather
the conditions we're hiking in. It started to snow.
At some points, the wind was crazy strong.
And of course the rocks were very slippery.
Naturally, I was the slowest in the group and
I got left behind a few times,
which was quite scary especially going uphill
in the dark.
I was the only head lamp that was glowing in the darkness,
so that was pretty freaky.
The most challenging part of the hike
for me was the mental bit.
Because I was so slow, I was the weakest link,
I was lagging behind quite a bit.
That triggered like a psychological and emotional fear
of literally being left behind.
I think that kinda stems from my daddy issues,
thanks to my dad leaving me when I was a child without a single word.
I felt a bit of anxiety throughout,
and it was not nice, but I just had to suck it up and deal.
I've also got my guide, Erlend, to thank.
He was very encouraging. He shared a quote with me
from John Wayne.
Courage is being scared to death
but saddling up anyway.
Courage cannot exist without fear,
so you're doing very well Rozz.
On hindsight, that's kinda like cliché,
maybe a bit cheesy, but
at that moment when he said those words, it was
really powerful and very much needed.
I needed that boost to just prod me along.
Sorry I didn't get to shoot much footage of the climb
as I would like to, because I was just
100% focused on landing my next step without
slipping off the cliff.
From this, I decided that for my 40th birthday present
to myself, I am gonna try to get fit.
I wanna get stronger in strength and endurance.
I think it'll be quite fun to see how far I
can push my body and my mind.
Tomorrow, I'll be leaving Norway
and heading to the cities of Stockholm,
and then Copenhagen,
where I'll be spending some me-time.
I won't be vlogging
during my time there,
but I'll be coming home for a short bit
and then leaving again for
the Trans-Siberian Railway adventure.
And then, I'll get you along with me on the ride.
But meantime, subscribe to our channel.
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at @heyrozz on Instagram.
Alright, that's it!
I'm out, gonna catch my bus.
Bye!