Technology, jobs, films, houses, food - you name it, I feel like I've had my fair share of 'new' over the years.
On my travels I feel like I have been attempting to do my best in terms of 'new', and I feel like I have achieved that really well having visited new cities, new countries and new sights whenever possible and on a micro level I've attempted to go to new places to eat dinner each night, visited new shops and I hope this has led to me having new experiences each and every day.
I feel like if I was the kind of person who didn't really enjoy new things then this travelling lark would be pretty impossible. Even when I've been away before, just to one country, I've always made it my goal to go to different places to eat each night or taken routes to get to and from my hotel in order to keep things fresh.
Coming towards the end of my journey I feel like I am going to make a concious effort to try and do as many new things as I can before departing this continent. That's not because I'm worried that when I return home there will be nothing new, but it's mostly due to the fact that as I have thought about all along, this may be the one and only opportunity I get to do something like this and as with all the countries that I have visited, I have no idea if I am going to get the chance to visit any of them again.
An ability to adapt to new things is pretty difficult to develop, and even though I would definitely say that I am someone who has that in their personality, it can still take time to adapt to certain situations and places even for the most 'open' of characters. Many times when I have arrived in a new city or a new country I have felt somewhat overwhelmed and then over time things have got a little easier for me.
As I worked out early on in my journey I didn't particularly like days when I was travelling from one place to another, and I feel like that was my way of letting out nerves because I was likely to feel slightly daunted by my new surroundings.
Thankfully, each and every time that has happened, my instincts have kicked in and pretty soon those feelings have faded and it has allowed me to keep enjoying things which are new and exciting for more than three months.
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I don't know if I can say that I have felt relaxed and refreshed at any point during my journey, but over the last couple of weeks, probably since arriving in Korea, my schedule has got much more packed and I can feel myself being more physically drained by the end of the day. Obviously that's not a bad thing, and I certainly wouldn't say that I have been overdoing it, but the journey through Japan particularly had some very late nights and a lot of physical exertion from day to day.
I think I mentioned at some point (perhaps even several times) that I wish my Fitbit was in working over as I think I would have clocked up some pretty impressive statistics in terms of the distances that I have been walking on this journey.
I always find it strange how travelling and essentially doing nothing can make you tired. I understand if you are on a plane for a long time and going across several different timezones then your body usually gets itself into a bit of a mess. But yesterday I only moved from +8 to +7 and I probably spent as much time waiting for planes as I did sitting on them. Just generally it's a theory I'm always interested in. Like why is it the more you sleep the more tired you feel? It's hard to win either way with that one though because the less you sleep the more tired you feel also! It's clearly a fine balance!
Sarah and I hadn't explored too much of the vast space of Hong Kong yesterday, but as I said I think we both got a good sense of what it is going to be like here for the duration of our time.
One thing I must point out is that Hong Kong is sweltering! I don't like to be prisoner of the moment, but I feel like it could definitely compete with the heat I experienced in some of the earlier parts of my journey. It's more the humidity than anything, and perhaps because I haven't had to deal with it in the last couple of weeks is what makes it feel quite so overwhelming.
Even the short walk we took last night close to midnight was an extremely warm one and I think coming from Japan (and Sarah from England) it's going to take a period of time for us both to adjust to it.
In terms of what is around us, we obviously didn't discover a great deal last night apart from that even late into the evening Causeway Bay is still alive with people. Aside from some of the shops (including Forever 21 which opens until 1am) pretty much everything is still active. There are lots of shopping centres close to where we are and although all of their stores seem to be closed, the buildings themselves and also the restaurants are still open and even though I have just been in a country where things stay open until pretty late, that struck me as odd.
There seems to be no shortage people milling around even that late in the evening and as in Taiwan and Korea everything is piled on top of each other so often it can be hard to see where everyone else is coming from or going to, as soon as you look up, you realise that there are sometimes six or seven floor high buildings with restaurants and cafes in them.
Between the two of us we have made a long list of things that we'd like to do in Hong Kong, but we're very dependent on the weather which I can already tell is going to play havoc with our plans as because of the humidity we're likely to experience plenty of thunderstorms on the forecast so I'm hoping that if there are going to be any then these all occur at night so that we avoid them all.
We'd made a plan today to pretty much walk around and see where the afternoon took us. I've spent pretty much the majority of this year so far making decisions about what to do and where to go each day so it was nice to share the responsibility with some else.
Intrigued by designer labels and potential shopping opportunities nearby we decided to start the day by walking through a few of the outlets which are in the area where we are staying. The nearest one to us is called Lee Gardens, and we'd seen that it was filled with plenty of designer brands as we eventually made our way to the hotel last night.
I'd estimate that we probably walked through there for about thirty seconds before deciding that it wasn't very exciting, and also didn't contain may shops so we decided to head onto the next place to see if that was any different.
Hysan Place was a bit more like the kind of 'regular' shopping centre when you can actually go and browse without feeling pressured into buying something or where sales assistants feel it necessary to help you make an expensive purchase. With about six or seven floors to explore we made a good job of walking around there and filled about an hour or so before deciding to spread our wings a little and head in the direction of the main road:
I know that Hong Kong is one of the most populous countries in the world, and we got a prime example of that walking down the main roads as they were very busy with both people and traffic. We walked away from our hotel in the direction of Wan Chai which is the next stop on the MTR from us,and it took about twenty minutes to get there as we walked past shops galore selling different things, a lot of them we didn't have a clue about.
I'm not sure what it was about walking the streets of Hong Kong, but I felt somewhat like I was in a time-warp. Although everything around us seemed to be fairly modern there were trams on the roads and the old looking red and yellow taxis travelling up and down the concrete roads which gave it a strange feel. I'm not sure if it's just because that's the image of Hong Kong I have in my head from films, but as we walked down the streets I couldn't help but feel like I had been transported back in time ten years or so:
Eventually we got to Wan Chai and both hungry at this point we decided to search for some food but eventually ended up walking down by the bay.
As I mentioned in my blog yesterday we are staying on Hong Kong Island which is perhaps the smallest but main island of the country. We walked along a bridge which took us across the main express-way and came out in an area where there were lots of road improvements being done and following a few diversions we eventually made our way to a bit of a promenade near the Convention and Exhibition Centre:
Behind us there were a number of buildings belonging to well known companies which had huge neon signs on them, but across the bay was equally impressive as there were plenty of boats going backwards and forwards as well as some very impressive skyscrapers which were towering above everything else.
There were quite a lot of people along the promenade several of which Sarah found herself very popular with as at least one person asked to take a photo with her - made even funnier by the fact that at first she thought they wanted her to take a picture FOR them not WITH them.
From here we walked back to get some lunch which was welcomed by us both, not just because we were starving and hadn't really eaten breakfast, but also because it gave us a good excuse to get out of the heat and enjoy air conditioned surroundings for a while.
After a little break we decided to continue a little bit further on and boarded the MTR. Although I've had the opportunity in several other cities that I've visited and not bothered to take up the option, we felt like it was a good idea to buy an Octopus travel card for the next couple of days so we managed to sort ourselves out with one of those and then get the metro to central where we walked for a little bit in order to get to Man Mo Temple.
Man Mo pays tribute to the God of Literature and the God of War, and is the oldest in Hong Kong. It looked very different to several I had visited in the last couple of months I'd spent in Asia and it was intriguing to walk around and see everything that was there.
One notable thing about it was the incense that was burning everywhere which gave the whole place an ancient feel and looked particularly terrific in the middle section where sunlight shone though the roof into what was an otherwise dimly lit area:
After walking through the two side-by-side temples we headed back in the direction of Central where we walked around for a little while before deciding to go into a shopping mall which was just opposite the station. If I felt like I was in a time-warp before, then walking around Central brought me out of it because there were so many tall skyscrapers there that it made me feel like I was in the future instead of the past!
We walked around in the IFC Mall for a little while and discovered that the smaller building we were in was actually liked to a much larger building next door, IFC Two. We found ourselves able to go outside on a roof garden and take some photographs of what was around us and it was a fairly impressive sight over the bay:
In need of another little rest we went into a coffee shop inside the mall which was very nice but also very busy and admired some more of the views out of the window before making a decision to go and head in the direction of them to get a close up view.
Walking from the shopping centre we went across a couple of bridges and eventually found ourselves at the Central Ferry Pier which had a great view of where we had walked earlier and also where we'd just come from:
Right on the water there was a small park as well as a bit more of a promenade which had a large Ferris wheel sitting on it.
We walked down the promenade back in the directon that we had originally come from and went through Tamar Park in order to get back to Admirality Station which led us back to our hotel.
A couple of hours walking around in the humidity had made us fairly tired so we recuperated before taking a walk back out once the sun had gone down in order to go to Happy Valley Racecourse.
I wouldn't say that Hong Kong is particularly known for it's sporting prowess, but the country does have two or three racecourses which are fairly well frequented by people from across the islands. Wednesday night is the biggest evening at the Happy Valley Course which happens to be about fifteen minutes from where we live so we decided to take a walk down there and sample the atmosphere (Well I was happy with that Sarah wanted to win some money!)
We eventually got to the racecourse and it was looking very quiet and not very well lit up, but we figured that we might just be one of the early arriver's as we had got there just as advised on the website. It didn't take long for us to work out that the action on the big screen in the middle of the track would be the only horse racing which would take place there tonight as somehow we manage to pick the only Wednesday when there was no actual action taking place.
Still, we wanted to make the most of our time there so instead stood by the track and admired the surroundings which were rather bizarrely wedged in between what looked to be a large area of housing:
After a couple of hours we decided to go and grab some dinner and headed back in the direction of one of the many shopping malls where we figured there'd be some good food to eat. We settled on a restaurant called S/M/L which was very nice, but also very expensive inside the Times Square Mall.
I felt like we'd done a good job of exploring our surroundings today as we headed back to our hotel. We'd spent a lot of time walking around and seeing the sights whilst also getting some great views across the bay and doing our best to eat and drink well (and get some air conditioning).
Promenade
U2 (1984)
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