All About Rose

Hello there, Friend!

I’m Heather Rose-Chase, author of All Rose Knows. I’m so glad you’re here!

I was born in Los Angeles, California. From earliest childhood all I wanted to do was see the rest of the world up close. But my parents, who had spent decades of their lives traveling before kids, believed we should spend our vacation time focusing on all the Great State of California had to offer before taking us further abroad. California is great, I can’t deny that, but I think this upbringing only fueled my deep desire to go further afield.

My first year of high school I applied for and was accepted into a program which would send me to the former Soviet Union for the summer. It was a government exchange program, and I got to experience meeting with teenage peers living under Communism, talk with low level officials, and experience the trials and scarcity of daily life for the citizens of Russia under Gorbachev. For a girl from a relatively affluent country like America, my experience behind the Iron Curtain in the U.S.S.R turned my life upside down. I understood with great clarity how little I actually knew.

I made it my ongoing quest to learn all I could about the world, firsthand. Unsatisfied with mere travel, where you visit a place for a few days or a week, I jumped headfirst into being an expat in 2001. My husband and I moved to Tokyo, Japan in 2001, just weeks after giving birth to our first child. Looking back, I can tell you this was a crazy move, but at the time I was ready for anything. Since then, we added a second child, and home addresses in San Francisco (which is very different than Los Angeles!), Hong Kong, Macau, Shanghai, and are currently back in Hong Kong a second time!

Living abroad has been incredibly challenging but also wildly rewarding. And an added benefit of being based in Asia is cheap and easy access to the rest of the world. I’m always up for a last minute trip to a new country, and love helping other people discover there’s so much out there beyond just “bucket list travel.”

I’ve always loved to read, but my favorite kind of book is the one that moves me to go do something. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve read something in a random paperback, flung it aside and picked up my phone to google about a place I just read about. More often than not, this is followed by trying to figure out the best way to convince my husband that we just have to go to Stockholm see this one thing I just read about…

I’m very much an introvert (I get my energy by spending time in solitude without interaction), but my primary driving force in life has always been curiosity, which means yes I will march up to a random stranger and ask them questions about what they are doing or what they are wearing or why they are there… Rose Knows came about from my husband, who coined the phrase after years of hearing me say, “Did you know that…,” followed by whatever interesting factoid I’d just learned. I started posting on Instagram as @roseknows, and frequently get messages asking about a location I’ve posted about, or requesting tips on travel or international culture or expat living.

For years I’ve taken the time to write back every single person, sometimes giving the same information over and over again. In 2018, my friend Melissa really pushed me to take that a step further and actually blog about all the information I love to share, plus post about the most common questions I get. So here we are today, with All Rose Knows, your entertaining resource for the the awesome things you can go see and do in this amazing world.

Every time I discover something new or visit a new place, I still feel like that 15 year old girl long ago, standing in Moscow and realizing there’s more to know than I’ll ever actually be able to discover in this lifetime. I’m not going to let it stop me from trying! So glad you’re on the journey of discovery with me!