Our story
It began with a notebook.
How four people, four countries and one rule — never recommend a place you haven't stood in — became Hideaway.
2017 · Kunming
A geographer's list of places worth the journey.
Hideaway started as a notebook in Wei Zhang's backpack. Wei trained as a geographer in Kunming and spent his weekends walking the old Tea Horse Road between Pu'er and Shaxi. Friends kept asking him where to go, so he started writing it down: the courtyard inn with only six rooms, the driver who knows when the mist lifts, the market town that is best on a Friday.
The rule was simple from the first page — nothing went into the notebook unless Wei had stood there himself. No hearsay, no "I've heard it's lovely", no places copied from a list.
The friends came back with the same story: it hadn't felt like a trip someone had sold them. It felt like being taken somewhere by a person who cared whether they loved it.
“A place belongs on the list only when someone has stood there and felt something they knew you would feel too.”
The first page of the notebook
How we grew
One notebook, four countries.
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2017
The notebook
Wei Zhang plans his first journeys for friends through Yunnan and Hunan. The name comes from his favourite kind of place: somewhere you could hide away for a week.
Wei · China -
2018
Japan joins
Yuki Tanaka, a Kyoto guide with a little black book of innkeepers and tea masters, brings the art islands, the ryokan and Nara at first light.
Yuki · Japan -
2019
A home in Seoul
Seo-yeon Park leaves ten years of architecture writing to bring Korea. Hideaway moves into a small hanok studio in Bukchon — it is still where every itinerary is drawn up.
Seo-yeon · South Korea -
2020
Taiwan, slowly
Mei-lin Chen, raised between her grandparents' oolong terraces and the alleys of Dadaocheng, completes the four. We decide to stop there — four people we can vouch for beats forty we can't.
Mei-lin · Taiwan -
Today
809 journeys later
Still four curators, still one country each, still nothing on the site that one of us hasn't visited in person.
Meet the four
What we believe
Five rules we have never broken.
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01
Stood there ourselves
Every hotel, table and trail on Hideaway has been visited in person by the curator who recommends it — and revisited, because places change.
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02
One person, one country
Each curator owns a single country and plans every trip in it end to end. You talk to the person who knows the innkeeper, not to a call centre.
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03
Fewer, better places
We would rather show you thirteen extraordinary places than thirteen thousand ordinary ones. Nothing is ranked by an algorithm or selected by committee.
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04
The people are the place
Temple cooks, market aunties, haenyeo divers, tea masters, the driver who knows when the mist lifts — a journey is only as good as the people you meet on it.
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05
We plan the pauses
East Asia moves fast. Our itineraries leave room for the slow parts — an empty courtyard at dawn, a second pot of tea — because that is what people remember.
And what we don't do
No shortcuts.
- No paid placements. A place cannot buy its way onto Hideaway, and nothing is listed because of a commission.
- No anonymous reviews. Every recommendation has a name attached — the curator who stood there.
- No packaged tours. Every itinerary starts as a blank page and a conversation with you.
- No countries we can't vouch for. When we add one, it will be because we have found the right person to own it.
- Since
- 2017
- Curators
- 4
- Countries
- 4
- Journeys planned
- 809
Start your own page in the notebook.
Tell us where you want to go — your curator will do the rest.