I Never Wanted to Say Goodbye

For the first time in almost six months, I spent an entire day back in the familiar surroundings of York today.

My journey officially came to an end yesterday night at just after midnight when I came back home, and I'm not going to lie, it feels strange to be home.

Naturally there is going to be a period of adjustment as I try to acclimatise myself back in to the non-travelling ways of life where I don't get stared at for being different, and where everyone can now understand most of what I say.

I explained a little bit about my journey in yesterday's post, but as it was quite late when I eventually got to bed after writing it, who knows what I missed out.
It was a long journey back to York last night as we took a twelve hour flight from Hong Kong International to Amsterdam where we had a two hour stop over before continuing on to Manchester Airport where we eventually landed.
Unsurprisingly for Manchester, and England in general it wasn't a very warm evening with lots of wind around but at least the rain had decided to hold off. Making the adjustment from 30+ degree temperatures everyday in Hong Kong is probably going to take a while although I'm hoping to have timed my return perfectly as spring and summer sweep across this country.

I spent a lot of the flight drifting in and out of conciousness but had the time to make use of the on-board entertainment services in between times. Flying from Asia back to Europe is a bit of a strange one, especially at the time we left because your body clock has a natural inclination to gravitate towards the timezone it has just departed from, and in our case it was just coming up to lunchtime, and not too many sleepy feelings were sweeping over my body. Realistically, I doubt there are many people who would want to stay awake for an entire twelve hour flight, despite the time, but the cabin lights remained on throughout, and I think it was when I got to Amsterdam that I started to feel a bit more time.

The flight from the Dutch capital back to Manchester was only just over an hour so I didn't doze very much, instead looking out of the window at the brightly lit orange sky and the fluffy clouds that we soared above.

Coming back to my house this morning I had the unenjoyable task of unpacking my bag although it was pretty easy to organise as things were either going back into a box, staying in the bag itself or headed for the washing machine / dirty clothes basket.

I'm sure it won't take long before the whole trip becomes a distant memory, but I was delighted to discover today that the hard drive where I was originally storing photos hadn't been corrupted, and therefore the memories of the early part of my journey have been saved. Pre-Thailand things are particularly hazy, and I think that pretty soon I'm going to have to give myself a little reminder about the things I saw and did there so that I can rekindle those memories.

As well as pictures I have plenty of leaflets, receipts and other bits and pieces to arrange into several scrapbooks somehow, although I have a feeling that will be a rather long project considering how much there is. I brought back currency from each country that I visited and hope to make a collection of the coins and notes somewhere to.

Having spoken to several of my friends, and also some members of my family today, I think what I have accomplished might be starting to be fully appreciated somewhere deep inside my gut as I discuss some of the things that I have spent my time doing, as well as thinking about my favourite countries and cities to visit.

Even though the physical part of the journey is over, I have a feeling that this may be a long, slow and drawn out process before everything is acknowledged and I'm able to feel like I have totally achieved the goal I set out to in February. I'm already starting to feel a great sense of pride about the fact that I survived almost totally alone for a third of a year on a different continent, and even though I have just got back, I'm already looking forward to my next adventure.


Over My Shoulder
Mike and the Mechanics (1995)

So Many Tears I've Cried, So Much Pain Inside

It feels strange that a journey which I often thought would never begin has finally come to an end.

This evening at just before 10pm I touched back down into Manchester Airport, and breathed in English air for the first time since February.

I wouldn't like to analyse whether the feeling of returning home is a good or a bad one as yet, seems to me that it just one that exists and I'm not quite ready to decide yet which way it is leaning.

After four months away, one thing that I am pleased about is that I made it home safely, in one piece and without anything disastrous happening to me. In fact the most distressing thing about this journey might have been when I dropped my wallet at 6am on the morning as I was travelling from St Neots to Heathrow!

Returning to this country was much smoother, and fingers crossed I didn't suffer any misfortune in ensuring that I brought everything back.

Our journey from Hong Kong back to Manchester was extremely long and tiring but relatively event-less.

We left our hotel at about 9:15am this morning making our way to Hong Kong airport via the same route that we got here by taking the MTR to Central, and then picking up the Airport Express which got us back to the terminal in plenty of time.

I don't think I mentioned in the last couple of days that I had a bit of drama with the booking, then cancelling and then re-booking of my flight through KLM, but upon checking in we had to change our seats in order for us to be able to sit together (a problem we experienced yesterday and didn't fancy going back to again). Our flight was about 30 minutes late in departing Hong Kong and during most of the flight it won't be too much of a surprise to read that I mostly drifted in and out of sleep. Throughout this journey I have made waking up at crucial times a speciality of mine and I got up whenever the air hostess' brought food around. and did spend a little bit of time watching some of the many things which were available to view on the plane.

Despite setting off late we arrived perfectly on time in Amsterdam although that meant sitting around and waiting for just under two hours before being able to board our flight which was again late in leaving.

It was only an hour or so's journey to Manchester and I spent most of the time admiring what was an extremely beautiful sunset out of the window as we flew below the clouds to our eventual destination.

It's funny that in the last couple of months I have spent plenty of time queuing up at airports waiting to get through immigration to never have any issues, but get back to my own country to find out that the electronic face scanners apparently didn't want to recognise me and I had to wait in line at the counter instead. Thankfully it wasn't too busy and that also gave time for our bags to be there waiting for us when we arrived.

Sarah had parked her car at Manchester Airport over the last week so we didn't have to worry about getting the train back to York although we did have to take a twenty minute bus ride to get to the car park and find where she'd left her vehicle.

On the way home we stopped off at the services to get ourselves some food - a wide decision considering that air-plane food is probably equivalent to one full meal for me and we had been travelling for a rather long time.

We eventually arrived back to York just after midnight and it was odd to see familiar surroundings once again.

Over the next couple of days I will be experiencing the fun task of sorting through all of the clothes that I brought back - probably throwing most of them away because they have become threadbare or bleached by the sun. I'm well aware that when it comes to tasks like finishing off this blog, printing off all of my pictures and trying to create some form of scrapbook about my entire journey, I could be at it for a while so just because I am back home certainly doesn't mean that everything relating to this journey is instantly forgotten.

I feel like I will be in a bit of a strange place emotionally as I battle with the pleasure of being home, safe and in a familiar place, but also probably quite a lot of sadness when I consider everything that I have been through and the many magnificent things I have experienced since leaving to go travelling.

It is very easy to reflect on the latter part of my journey through Japan and Hong Kong as a success as I'm pretty sure that these were two of my favourite places to visit along the way. But in a strange way I am more looking forward to considering the beginning of the trip and also the whole thing in its entirety as I know there will be plenty of memorable moments which I have forgotten and fabulous sights which have slipped my mind.

Although tonight marked the end of my journey, I feel like it is far from finished....

It Ain't Over

Lenny Kravitz (2001)

Now, Don't Hang on, Nothing Lasts Forever but the Earth and Sky

"All good things must come to an end"

I've been having such a great time in Hong Kong that I've not really focussed on the fact that my journey through Asia is about to end. The last week or so has gone by really quickly, and it's difficult to contemplate the fact that after nearly four months of being on a different continent I will be returning to my own tomorrow.

I haven't had the chance to think about it too much (partly because I can't share the memories with myself because of a broken hard drive) but it really does seem as though this whole journey has gone by in a blur. It's one of those strange occasions where things feel like they happened an eternity ago, but also the memories of them are clear as day in my head.

I never remember exactly how many cities or countries that I have visited in my time here, but very soon it is going to be time to start contemplating the highs and lows from my trip as I try to collate everything that I have picked up on my travels.

Before leaving Asia however there was one more place that I needed to visit, another of this continent's islands which sits just off the mainland of China.

Macau may not be a heralded tourist hotspot for westerners, but over here it is extremely popular, in the same way that Jeju Island is popular with Koreans because it offers some diversity compared with many large cities in the country, Macau offers something different to many Chinese people from cross the border in rising numbers each year.

Where as Hong Kong and Taiwan are Chinese territories that you could spend a long time exploring, Macau is very different.
There are certainly elements of tourism, but most people travel to Macau in order to frequent the large number of casinos which borders the Guangdong Province. The Special Administrative Region of China was administered by Portugal and until just before the Millennium was the last remaining European colony in Asia before power was transferred back to the mainland. It is the most densely populated country in the world at 30.3 km squared, although having been in Hong Kong for almost a week now I'm not sure that we were going to be daunted by a few crowds.

I feel like over the last couple of days Sarah and I have done a great job of exploring Hong Kong and although it'd be nice to spend out last day in the city / country which has brought us so much joy our schedule meant getting up and heading to the ferry terminal this afternoon in order to travel to Macau.

We caught the tram from Causeway Bay and then rode it all the way to the Macau Ferry Terminal stop, although I think we got off a couple of stations early as we had to walk for a little while and then work out how we were going to get across the road. Eventually we came to a large pedestrian bridge which we were able to cross and then went inside the terminal which was heaving with people.

Ferries come and go from Hong Kong quite often, and as well as being a hub for Macau, this is also the place where you can get to mainland China from also. It took a while to navigate through a bit of a shopping centre-type area before we eventually came to the place where we could buy our tickets.
There was an automated ticketing machine which we tried to use but in the end we had to do it the old fashioned way and actually go up to the counter to buy our tickets.

Even though I'd read that it can get booked up quite early depending on when you travel we managed to get a seat on the next ferry going and in what felt like a rather strange move we had to go through passport control and essentially get 'stamped out' to leave Hong Kong. When we were walking down towards where the boat was going to be leaving from a lady asked to see our ticket and applied a sticker which I'm pretty sure was our seat number. There was some doubting from Sarah who wasn't impressed when she discovered that I was correct and she had to go and sit on the upstairs deck whilst I took my seat on the ground floor.
We did try and sit next to one another, but the boat was pretty much full so we spent the hour journey apart from one another finding each other eventually when we reached the other side.

We had to go through immigration in Macau which provided us with a 90 day stay in the country (the only people in the world who have that luxury - even Portuguese can only stay for 60) and then grabbed a guidebook and headed outside for some fresh as we were both feeling somewhat worse for wear after a fairly choppy journey.

I've never been a huge fan of boats, although can't say that I have experienced travelling on one too many times. When I was about eight or nine I went to Denmark on a ferry which was a miserable experience, not just because it rained for three days, but also because of the ridiculously choppy waters we encountered along the way which essentially meant that when I wasn't sleeping I spent my time either being sick or feeling like I was going to be sick.
My other experiences weren't quite as vomit-filled having taken the boat over to and from France on several occasions as part of a university trip, but even then I remember having to go outside for some fresh air as during a game of cards things started sliding around on the table a little bit too much for my liking,and I'm pretty sure there were a few moments that I thought I was going to have to jump off the boat and swim to France in order to avoid hurling all over the place.

The weather in Macau didn't do much to soothe the struggles we had with humidity during our time in Hong Kong as if anything it was even warmer and more overcast here than where we'd come from.
Rather than having a plan of exactly where we were going to go we decided to head towards the city centre which is where much of the activity would be and after a while to get out bearings we began following the main road towards what we thought was the heat of Macau.

It took us ages to find the city centre and having grabbed some food along the way we walked past a couple of parks and started to feel like we were making progress as a few casinos sprung up from around it.
Like when I was in China, there were pretty much no western faces whatsoever, and it was a little off having come from Hong Kong where you see such a diverse mix of people

Although Hong Kong isn't exactly Singapore when it comes to cleanliness, Macau was perhaps a degree or so lower on the scale when it came to its appearance. Neither of us were very impressed by how it seemed to be fairly run-down and there wasn't the same 'atmosphere' that we'd experienced over our last couple of days. Macau might have as many casinos as Las Vegas but it certainly doesn't match up in other more noticable ways.

We passed a couple of impressive looking casinos, and some very narrow streets which looked as though they went on forever and eventually we came to a square which had a rather large structure in the middle.
All around us were casinos, but the huge one standing in front of which everybody was photographing was The Lisboa Grand which I think is the most popular one here:

Around this area there were another couple including the MGM Grand Macau, but this seemed to be where most of the attention was focussed and I have to say that pretty much entirely covered in gold I can see why there was a massive queue outside.

We followed the road past the casino figuring that it probably led to the city centre, and eventually we started to find the hub of people wandering round in what seemed to be where we'd been intending to head all along.

The Portuguese influence was clear at this point as we started to see some very European looking buildings, and for me this was what I'd expected rather than a run down area or pretty much nothing that we'd walked through.

Eventually we crossed the road and came to this area.....

....looking at the map we discovered that this was Senado Square which had lots of streets leading off it and reminded me a lot of places I'd been in other parts of Europe. We followed some signs through the windey streets which led off in different directions and eventually things opened out to Macau's main sight, St Paul's:

There aren't too many touristy type things to see in Macau, but this is certainly one of them and it was possible to see why as the impressive façade of the cathedral stood in front of us:

Walking up towards St Paul's it was very busy and we sat for a while just watching the people around us mill about.

Continuing on we walked to the right of the ruins where we came across Fortazela do Monte which sits at the top of the historic centre of the city:

It was pretty quiet walking around there and from the top you got a great view of everything that we'd just walked past including the casinos, and from here you could also see Macau Tower which is the next thing we decided to walk towards:

We walked back in the direction we'd just come from and then took a right turn towards a huge body of water which sat in front of the tower. It was relaxing just to sit for a while and watch the sun (what little of it there was) disappear as everything started to be lit up at night. The transformation was quite strange and seemed quite gradual:

After a while we decided that it was time to walk back through the now fully lit up streets of Macau and head back to the ferry terminal so we traipsed out way back a different route which led up past some of the casinos fully lit up at night....

.....before eventually arriving back at the boat.

We made sure to actually hand over our tickets together this time in order to get a seat next to one another, and it wasn't quite so busy on this occasion so we actually had nobody sitting behind us.
Sarah didn't really enjoy the journey which started out ridiculously choppy before eventually calming down as we came back to Hong Kong, went back through immigration and caught a tram back to Causeway Bay.

We went along the same street we'd frequented a couple of times, going above the restaurant where we'd eaten French Toast for our last night in the city and returning back to our hotel despite having a quieter day than some of the previous ones we'd experienced I felt like I was pretty tired.

It may have been a quiet day with not too many activities, but I'm glad that despite there not being much there that I made it to Macau - it adds another country to the list that I have now seen and realise that I don't need to go back to again!
It felt kind of sad this evening to be returning back to my hotel knowing that tomorrow morning I will have to wake up from this wonderful dream and start preparing for the fact that it is coming to an end.

Hong Kong has been everything I hoped it would be and more. Having the company of Sarah was a pleasure and I'm glad that we was able to make this trip and we were able to finish off my journey together.

Dust in the Wind
Kansas (1977)