A colleague on our team came back from this trip and told it to me in her own words. What follows is hers, first-person, as she said it. — Chin Qi Yong
The step was sunscreen — the one thing I'd never skip at home. But cool air, short grey days and none of the usual tropical glare talked me out of it up in the Yunnan highlands, and ten days later my skin was dry, red and sore, and a skin scan put numbers on what I could already feel. Cool and cloudy is not the same as safe, and thin mountain air makes the sun stronger, not softer. Sun protection isn't "did I put something on" — it's whether you keep the measures up.
For once, the sun was not the enemy. I'd grown up in Malaysia treating it as a daily opponent — the dash from the car, the umbrella, the reapply — and here I was in the mountains of Yunnan in February, up near the snow peaks, and the sky was a flat, kind grey. Cool enough for a jacket. The sun barely showed its face all day. My guard just… came down. This felt like a holiday from sun-worry, and I took it.
I didn't stop protecting my skin completely. I just stopped taking it seriously — a bit of sunscreen some mornings, no reapplying, no hat, no looking for shade, because what was there to hide from? Grey sky, cold wind, short daylight. Nothing about it said "sun."
Why cool, cloudy weather fooled me
Two things were happening that I couldn't feel, and that's exactly why they got me.
First, a grey sky is not a sunshade. Unless the cloud is really thick, most of the sun still comes straight through — "cloudy" just means less bright and less warm, not less sun on your skin. And I was up high, where there's less air to soften the sun, so it hits harder the higher you go. Add the snow bouncing it back at me, and I was actually catching more sun than a grey day at home would ever give me — while feeling like I was catching none.
Second, the cold dry mountain air was quietly drying my skin out the whole time. Cold air barely holds any moisture, heated rooms hold even less, and skin left in that kind of dryness day after day just gives up on you — it goes thin, tight and quick to sting. On top of that, my body was still getting used to the height and the change of food and water — that off-feeling you get travelling — so nothing about me was at its best.
So it wasn't one slip. It was strong sun I didn't respect, landing on skin the cold had already worn thin.
What the skin scan showed when I got back
By about day ten my face was dry, tight, red in patches, and stinging in the cold. A skin scan — the kind they run at a facial place, a machine's readout, not a doctor's word — put numbers on it: inflammation up, and more signs of sun ageing than I'd ever have guessed from a trip where I never once felt hot. My "sunless" holiday had quietly aged my skin.
That's the part that stuck with me. I hadn't skipped sun protection out of laziness. I skipped it because the weather told me I was safe — and I believed the weather instead of the facts.
How I got my skin back to normal
Coming home, there was no quick fix, and I stopped looking for one. Wash gently, nothing harsh, nothing new. Keep it moist, keep it covered, let it look a bit dull for a while. Leave the tight, flaky bits alone. Sleep. It took a good ten days or more of plain, boring care before my skin felt like mine again — skin heals on its own timing, not yours.
What I'd tell anyone travelling somewhere cold
Sun protection was never about whether I put something on that morning — it's whether I keep it up all day, whatever the sky's doing. The real trap isn't the tropics, where we're already on guard; it's the trip that doesn't feel like one — cool, grey, short days — often somewhere the sun is actually stronger than home.
So don't let the weather decide for you: cover up, find shade, put the sunscreen on again, exactly because it doesn't feel necessary. And if a trip roughs your skin up, go easy on it — gentle, moist, boring care, and time — and watch what your skin's telling you rather than waiting for a mirror or the flight home. If it stays red and sore, don't reach for another product — get a doctor to look at it.
This article is general skin and travel information, not medical advice. A skin-analysis scan is a device reading, not a diagnosis. Last reviewed: July 2026.