“Blessed are the curious for they will have adventures.”
Our Story
Beyond The Bay is a travel blog started by two Australian travel enthusiasts who live in Melbourne, Asher X and Ralph. Created with a vision to inspire everyday travellers all around the world, Beyond The Bay's aim is to help you tick those travel bucket items off the list and fulfill your wanderlustful desires. We present itinerary ideas, must-see sights alongside photographical evidence to answer those travel questions of yours.
When the Beyond the Bay boys aren’t traveling, Asher works as a marketer, university teacher and freelance writer. Ralph works a corporate job in resource management. This means we’re often time constricted with annual leave dates, deadlines, and other commitments. We know what it’s like to juggle travel and work - and we love it.
We only write about destinations that we’ve personally visited and use photographs that are ours on our posts, unless stated.
We’re travelers with busy lives - just like you. We enjoy using travel as an outlet to take a break, but we have other interests too that keep us busy. Our nature of travel allows us to tackle each trip with excitement, enthusiasm and practicality - we don’t have all the time in the world, and we know many of you are in the same boat.
Through our unique perspective, we’ve carved out a niche that has seen us work alongside numerous organisations within the travel industry, including hotels and resorts, apparel brands and tourism boards. Among other travel industry leaders, we’ve collaborated with organisations such as Hilton, Westin, Marriott, Raddisson, Pan Pacific, Pullman, Disney Pixar, Braun, Pinterest, Visit Luxembourg, Zermatt Tourism, Grenada Tourism Authority, Beautiful Samoa, PeruRail, Colonia Express, Lao Airlines and more. For a more in-depth list of who we’ve worked with, please visit our Work With Us page.
Our blog has also been featured on Feedspot’s 100 Travel & Lifestyle Blogs. We’re honoured to be in the company of other amazing blogs such as Nomadic Matt, Goats on the Road and The Blonde Abroad!
We've visited 100 Countries!
On 27 December 2023, I reached my lifelong goal of visiting 100 Countries before the age of 30. Here’s my final country rundown!
How many countries are there in the world?
We used the United Nations list of 193 member countries, plus 2 recognised independent nations, which are Vatican City and Palestine, plus Taiwan and Kosovo.
Note: I have visited some countries more than once, but I’ve only included the year of the first visit.
1. Indonesia 🇮🇩 - 1994
2. Singapore 🇸🇬 - 1998
3. Australia 🇦🇺 - 1998
4. China & Hong Kong 🇨🇳🇭🇰 - 2000
5. Malaysia 🇲🇾 - 2002
6. Japan 🇯🇵 - 2003
7. Germany 🇩🇪 - 2004
8. Italy 🇮🇹 - 2004
9. Vatican City 🇻🇦 - 2004
10. Greece 🇬🇷 - 2004
11. Turkey 🇹🇷 - 2004
12. Monaco 🇲🇨 - 2004
13. Spain 🇪🇸 - 2004
14. Thailand 🇹🇭 - 2005
15. New Zealand 🇳🇿 - 2006
16. United Arab Emirates 🇦🇪 - 2007
17. Bahrain 🇧🇭 - 2007
18. Kuwait 🇰🇼 - 2007
19. Oman 🇴🇲 - 2007
20. Canada 🇨🇦 - 2008
21. United States 🇺🇸 - 2008
22. France 🇫🇷 - 2011
23. United Kingdom 🇬🇧 - 2011
24. Denmark 🇩🇰 - 2011
25. Vietnam 🇻🇳 - 2016
26. Philippines 🇵🇭 - 2016
27. South Korea 🇰🇷 - 2017
28. Maldives 🇲🇻 - 2017
29. Netherlands 🇳🇱 - 2018
30. Norway 🇳🇴 - 2018
31. Estonia 🇪🇪 - 2018
32. Russia 🇷🇺 - 2018
33. Finland 🇫🇮 - 2018
34. Sweden 🇸🇪 - 2018
35. Iceland 🇮🇸 - 2018
36. Ireland 🇮🇪 - 2018
37. Austria 🇦🇹 - 2018
38. Slovenia 🇸🇮 - 2018
39. Malta 🇲🇹 - 2019
40. Slovakia 🇸🇰 - 2019
41. Hungary 🇭🇺 - 2019
42. Czech Republic 🇨🇿 - 2019
43. Ukraine 🇺🇦 - 2021
44. Lithuania 🇱🇹 - 2021
45. Latvia 🇱🇻 - 2021
46. Poland 🇵🇱 - 2021
47. Portugal 🇵🇹 - 2022
48. Luxembourg 🇱🇺 - 2022
49. Switzerland 🇨🇭 - 2022
50. Liechtenstein 🇱🇮 - 2022
51. Armenia 🇦🇲 - 2022
52. Georgia 🇬🇪 - 2022
53. Uzbekistan 🇺🇿 - 2022
54. Kyrgyzstan 🇰🇬 - 2022
55. Nepal 🇳🇵 - 2022
56. India 🇮🇳 - 2022
57. Pakistan 🇵🇰 - 2022
58. Brunei 🇧🇳 - 2023
59. Laos 🇱🇦 - 2023
60. Cambodia 🇰🇭 - 2023
61. Taiwan 🇹🇼 - 2023
62. Mongolia 🇲🇳 - 2023
63. Haiti 🇭🇹 - 2023
64. Antigua & Barbuda 🇦🇬 - 2023
65. Saint Lucia 🇱🇨 - 2023
66. Saint Kitts & Nevis 🇰🇳 - 2023
67. Costa Rica 🇨🇷 - 2023
68. Panama 🇵🇦 - 2023
69. Colombia 🇨🇴 - 2023
70. Bahamas 🇧🇸 - 2023
71. Barbados 🇧🇧 - 2023
72. Trinidad & Tobago 🇹🇹 - 2023
73. Dominica 🇩🇲 - 2023
74. St Vincent and the Grenadines 🇻🇨 - 2023
75. Grenada 🇬🇩 - 2023
76. Mexico 🇲🇽 - 2023
77. Peru 🇵🇪 - 2023
78. Bolivia 🇧🇴 - 2023
79. Chile 🇨🇱 - 2023
80. Argentina 🇦🇷 - 2023
81. Uruguay 🇺🇾 - 2023
82. Brazil 🇧🇷 - 2023
83. Paraguay 🇵🇾 - 2023
84. Fiji 🇫🇯 - 2023
85. Vanuatu 🇻🇺 - 2023
86. Qatar 🇶🇦 - 2023
87. Morocco 🇲🇦 - 2023
88. Andorra 🇦🇩 - 2023
89. Belgium 🇧🇪 - 2023
90. San Marino 🇸🇲 - 2023
91. Croatia 🇭🇷 - 2023
92. Serbia 🇷🇸 - 2023
93. Bosnia and Herzegovina 🇧🇦 - 2023
94. Montenegro 🇲🇪 - 2023
95. Albania 🇦🇱 - 2023
96. Kosovo 🇽🇰 - 2023
97. North Macedonia 🇲🇰 - 2023
98. Bulgaria 🇧🇬 - 2023
99. Jordan 🇯🇴 - 2023
100. Cyprus 🇨🇾 - 2023
101. Romania 🇷🇴 - 2023
102. Moldova 🇲🇩 - 2024
Our Style of Travel
How are we different from other travel blogs?
We’re efficient travelers, balancing other life interests and commitments.
Just like you and me (and most of the world, to be honest…), we’re often limited by time when we travel. While we would love to travel for months on end, our short-term travel style suites our lives better for the time being. That’s why our itineraries are often on the shorter side. While others might suggest 1 week in one place, we might spend 3 days. A three-day trip might be turned into a half-day trip. Here are some examples:
We’re focused on the highlights, and achieving the ‘overall feel’ of a destination, instead of basing ourselves out of one place for weeks on end. Don’t get us wrong - if we fall in love with a place, we would totally recommend you to either stay longer, or to come back at some point. Some examples of this include our trips to the Philippines, South Korea and Finland - all of which we’ve come back several times to because we loved it so much.
In other words, our blog is for the everyday traveler. It’s for those wanting to tick off bucket list items and explore new countries efficiently. It’s for those also dealing with ‘normal’ life circumstances, such as employment leave, juggling a family, university work and the like. We totally understand that you might not have a year up your sleeve to travel - but we still want to help you make the most of the time you have to travel.
We’re interested in a lot of different things, but we focus on sightseeing.
Our primary goal is to help you with travel planning and sightseeing. In particular, we’re interested in:
Nature (mountains, beaches)
Architecture
Hidden Gems
Hiking
While we love other aspects of traveling too, such as trying the local food and perusing museums, these areas are what we’re most passionate about.
Our Favourite Travel Moments
These are the places that make our heart skip a beat.
We haven’t quite gotten through our backlog of posts that we would love to write about, but here are some of our travel highlights.
South Korea: Seoul is our favourite city in the world, as you can tell from our many blog posts about this destination.
Malta: This tiny island just makes our hearts sing when we think about it.
Kauai: One of our favourite tropical island paradises.
Slovenia: A postcard-perfect, dreamy country.
Philippines: Home to the friendliest people and endless islands.
Ukraine: A misunderstood, underrated gem.
Spain: This country just has everything.
Iceland: If you’re a nature lover, you’ll fall in love with Iceland.
Finland: We loved Finland after visiting Helsinki for the first time, but we loved it even more after our visit to Lapland.
Luxembourg: Another small, underrated country that we adored. Blog post coming soon.
Lithuania: We loved this underrated capital! A pleasant surprise on our travels.
Mexico: Culture, food, nature, architecture - Mexico is Asher’s favourite country.
Peru: Unspeakably beautiful sights and kind people.
Argentina: Buenos Aires is one of the most amazing cities we’ve visited.
Brazil: Wild, loud, vivacious and unforgettable.
Grenada: Our favourite Caribbean island.
Uzbekistan: A memorable step back in time with the most gorgeous architecture.
Mongolia: Vast landscapes and nomadic culture.
India: Simply the most unforgettable place we’ve ever been to.
Italy: Rome, Venice, Florence, the Dolomites and more…Always a classic.
Switzerland: The Swiss Alps are a visual treat.
Norway: Fjords, fjords, fjords.
Where can you find us?
Follow our adventures.
You can find us on our Instagram account, Beyond the Bay.
You can also follow Asher X on his Instagram account, Asher X Travel, and on TikTok.
Work With Us
Interested in working with us?
We have 7+ years of experience working with leading organisations in the industry. Please click the Work With Us page to find out you can collaborate with us.
Have another question you want answered? You can contact us here.