C Travel Adventures

Mount Popa

Having finished yesterday with a sunset panorama, we decided to follow up with the sunrise. This meant getting up very early and making our way to the temples before 6am. We had no particular location in mind and (with plenty to choose from) clambered our way up the side of a temple where there were no other people around. The sunrise itself was not that spectacular admittedly but it was still a wonderfully peaceful scene to admire the temples rising above the haze in the twilight. Having risen so early we made our way back to the hotel for breakfast and then checked out for our next major journey, this time to Mandalay.

A early start at the temples

The full team at Mout Popa

In order to make the most of our hired vehicle, I had asked the company to factor in a few diversions along the lengths of our major journeys to allow us to see more of the country than your average visitor. This journey was to be broken up with a visit to Mt. Popa, a major religious site located within a national park of the same name. The site, a temple perched on a rocky pedestal, is one of the iconic pictures from Burma but is not necessarily easy to get to without private transport – making a visit all the more tempting for us. It took us maybe an hour and a half to drive from Bagan to the village beside the pedestal where we were greeted with a massive traffic jam that forced us to proceed on foot and expose ourselves to being sprayed with water, as the festival was in full swing. As daunting as the climb appeared to be from a distance, the staircase to the top was covered and easily climbable – even with the phalanxes of monkeys that guarded the path. The views from the top over the countryside were impressive, but the temple itself was surprisingly a bit grim – dirty, crowded and a long way from the usual serenity found in Buddhist religious sites.

Dinner in a lake

After a few hours at Mt Popa we continued on our journey on the “Road to Mandalay” – a road that is entirely devoid of the romance that it has garnered from Rudyard Kipling’s poem, being for the most part flat, straight and featureless. It was perhaps another four hours from Popa to Mandalay and as we arrived the sun was just beginning to set. We entered the city through the south western suburbs, home to several lakes, one of which contained the iconic “U Bein Bridge” – the longest teak wooden bridge in the world and another of Burma’s most photographed locations. The water festival was now evident everywhere, with groups of children lining the road and covering every passing car (and motorbike) with buckets of water. At the lake we found that a range of restaurants had been set up (presumably for the festival) in the lake itself, with tables positioned in several feet of water. This was too interesting (and ridiculous) a place for us to not try it out, even if it meant breaking every rule of avoiding food poisoning… After dinner we had a look around the bridge itself, ambling all the way across and back for photos and to chat with inquisitive locals before watching the sunset and making our way into the centre of Mandalay to the Royal City Hotel where we would be staying.

Sunset at U Bein Bridge

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Bagan Temples at Sunset

During my last visit to South East Asia, I heard rumblings amongst my fellow backpackers that there was a region nearby that was stuffed full of spectacular temples - better even than Angkor Wat, which few people were able to get to. With a packed schedule at the time and with travelling within Myanmar being such a potential ethical and logistical challenge, I had to pass up the opportunity to get to Bagan, the region in question. Three years later, on my second visit to South East Asia, I was able to make it happen.

The Shwezigon Pagoda,

Karina is the first victim of the water festival

Having arrived the night before from Yangon to the wonderful Hotel Zfreeti, we would only really have one full day at the temples. The ruins at Bagan are the remains of what was once one of the most significant empires in South East Asia, with some of the highest standards of living on the entire continent. In the 11th to 13th century, around the time that William the Conqueror was invading England, Bagan was the capital city of an empire that stretched across almost all of modern Myanmar. Until it eventually fell to Mongol invasion, Bagan was truly one of the world’s great centres of Buddhist civilization. The religion of the region played a decisive role in its make-up, as its people believed that by building stupas, pagodas and other religious buildings would atone for any negative karma that they had accrued. Essentially, every time a wealthy person did a bad thing they could make up for it through an act of piety. The nearby town of Nyaung-U, where we were staying, just to the north of the ruins, itself contained a pagoda - this one a more modern one named the Shwezigon Pagoda which is still used by locals. It was our first taste of a Burmese religious site and it certainly didn’t disappoint - red robed monks and golden towers combined to produce an area of both peace and beauty. Outside the gates however, the water festival (about which much more will be said later) was just beginning and as we made our way back to our waiting van we were ambushed by a group of young locals armed with water pistols.

Ruins at Bagan

From here, we headed south into the main area of ruins. With only one day and with there being no stand out ‘must-see’ temple, we were happy to just make our way around the vast Bagan plain, stopping wherever we saw an interesting structure or vista. We used the Lonely Planet maps to give us some structure however, dedicating the morning and early afternoon to so-called 'Old Bagan’ before moving to the 'newer’ region and the banks of the Irrawaddy around sunset. Some of the temples had been renovated (with mixed results) after a combination of earthquakes and general decay had made some of the ruins unstable - this took nothing away from just how amazing the place was however. In terms of practicalities, visitors to the temples are supposed to pay a $15 entrance fee for a ticket which lasts for five days. This is loosely enforced however, though we got caught without a ticket at our final temple and had to pay up - in our defence, even if we had been aiming to buy the tickets there was nobody visibly selling them. In the olden days, I would have done my best to avoid giving money to the government, but things are supposedly changing and it now feels like a small price to pay for the preservation of what is undoubtedly up there with the greatest monuments I have ever seen - more impressive than Angkor Wat and as good as any of the ruins of Ancient Egypt. In terms of required time, I am very aware that we did not stay long enough to fully immerse ourselves (particularly as we were travelling in the van), but gave ourselves a good overview. As a solo traveller with more time, it makes sense to travel by bike (pedal or motorised) to get around - both varieties of two-wheeled vehicle are available everywhere. We stayed around the temples until sunset (and would be getting up the next day to watch the sunrise).

This is a difficult blog to write really, as the ruins of Bagan are best explored at a reasonably leisurely pace with no particular goal in mind - so its hard for me to list a comprehensive list of things that we did. As a result, I will just let the pictures do the talking:

A temple on the banks of the Irrawaddy

A young monk and his friend on a wall at a temple beside the Irrawaddy River

Sunset over the ruins

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I have often talked, on this blog, about destinations whose very names evoke an air of adventure and exoticism. For Brits, Burma and its major cities from Mandalay to Rangoon (Yangon) are familiar in name but in little more than that. The country has gone through much and has experienced more change in the last decade than many nations do in a century. These changes have allowed tourists and travellers to begin to enter Myanmar with greater ease than ever before and as a nation with a wealth of historical sights and a unique culture, sandwiched as it is between India and China, now seemed like a unique opportunity to visit.

Sitting in the departure lounge at Hong Kong International was a unique experience in itself, joined as I was by people ranging from orange-clad monks to western families on holiday, Chinese tour groups to businessmen from all over the world. Additionally, of course, there were a few scruffy fellow backpacker types. I arrived at Yangon International Airport in the early hours of the morning on a direct flight with Dragonair and met up with the rest of my travel companions (seven of us) at the hostel. By happy coincidence our entire ten day trip to the country would fall between the Burmese Water Festival and New Year’s celebrations – every day being a national holiday. While this was excellent in terms of seeing and experiencing something new, it also meant that travelling as such a large group would be challenging – particularly when it came to getting bus and train tickets to move around. Our solution to this was to turn our large group size to our advantage and we therefore hired a minibus with a driver who would stay with us for the duration and turned the trip more towards being a bespoke independent expedition.

Taukkyan Commonwealth Cemetary, Yangon

The following morning we woke early to travel 400 miles north to the ancient town of Bagan. As the distance suggests, this was going to be an almighty journey across much of the country – though as a nation three times the size of the UK, we would only be travelling about half way up it. It was to be the longest journey of the trip and also our most boring – as we headed along the brand new highway between Yangon (the old capital) and Nay Pyi Daw (the new capital). We left Yangon early, though on our way through the outskirts were able to quickly visit the British and Commonwealth cemetery at Taukkyan, for those who fell fighting the Japanese during the Second World War. The road, almost Romanesque in its dead straightness, was almost entirely featureless beside the occasional pagoda-topped hill. We arrived at our hotel (the brilliant Zfreeti Hotel) in Nyaung U, the main town next to the ruins of Bagan in the evening and were able to eat at one of the town’s excellent restaurants before a swim in our hotel pool. All in all, not a particularly exciting day, but necessary for us to begin our sightseeing.

The featureless road to the north

(as a side note I will switch between Burma and Myanmar because I haven’t actually yet heard a 100% convincing argument as to which name I should be using)

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The campus in the clouds

As the rain and cold of February cleared, March brought mild temperatures and fog. For days on end the campus was totally engulfed in cloud - a cloud that was so intense that it made its way into the corridors and rooms and made everything damp. While it rarely rained, the whole campus was always wet. This cloud served as a suitable metaphor for the month in general. March was always going to be a reasonably tough month, full of deadlines, assignments and the start of mid term exams. The biggest of these deadlines would be for the first draft of my research project. The completion of this required one of the most intense periods of studying and working of my academic life - endless late, late nights in the library reading journals, running computer simulations and writing reports. There was no escaping the campus - and thanks to the cloud it was as if the world outside of the campus didn’t exist anyway. I was, however, able to survive this busy period feeling reasonably positive (if exhausted) as unlike similar periods back in the UK, I was able to at least say that I had tried my best - I literally couldn’t have squeezed out any more hours and that knowledge brings with it a certain peace of mind.

End of the brown line - Wu Kai Sha

After a monumentally busy day which contained two assignment submissions, a midterm exam and my research deadline, I was able to all of a sudden break free from the library. Appropriately, both for the sake of my extended metaphor and for my post-library rehabilitation, the cloud broke the following day - allowing me to get out and about into the city again. This began with a spontaneous afternoon trip to an area that I had seen on the map and was intrigued by, just north of the campus at the end of the Man On Shan MTR line. I had no idea what was there and that was the point in visiting. It turned out to be a high-rise residential area on the coast, with a lot of construction work going on. There were some reasonably pleasant little beaches where locals were sitting out in the afternoon sun having barbecues and, while the area would be a long way from your average tourist’s itinerary, it was interesting to see another part of Hong Kong. As we were just around the headland from beautiful Sai Kung Town, we caught a cab for a Sri Lankan dinner on the sea front. Over the next few days I was able to take part in two hikes (that are mentioned on accompanying blogs) and in a flash it was April, with only two full months of the year abroad remaining.

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View from Lion Rock

The Lion Rock (uncanny really)

Having battled through a particularly mean patch of university work, it was nice to be able to get off the campus and into some of the fantastic countryside around Hong Kong. I hadn’t been able to hike at all in this semester and thankfully the weather cleared up a bit as my block of deadlines passed by. The first of my hikes was supposedly one of the best in the whole of the territory, up to the Lion Rock - one of the iconic images of Kowloon. The beauty of walking along the so-called “Kowloon Ridge” was that we would be able to have beautiful views to both the south (over Kowloon and Victoria Harbour) as well as the north (the New Territories), encompassing a vast amount of the total territory of Hong Kong. The hike was described as being hard work and a little bit dangerous, but conditions seemed good as a group of ten students from UST and HKU (University of Hong Kong) made our way along the Ridge. My previous hike to the Kowloon Reservoir system had actually ended at the same point as this one started, at the Kowloon Reservoir stop on the number 81 bus from Prince Edward station. The bus stop is absolutely swarming with monkeys, as was the first section of the hike. As Hong Kong monkeys are notoriously confident, we were happy to get away from them as we made our way up to Eagle’s Nest, the first of three peaks which we would be climbing over the next eight kilometres and four hours. The hike started on a section of the famous MacLehose Trail which bisects the whole Kowloon peninsular, but we soon broke off to follow signs to the Eagle’s Nest, followed by Beacon Hill and finally the Lion Rock itself. The climb up to the rock was reasonably precarious (though not as bad as we had prepared ourselves for), though an alternate route allows the climb (but also the best views) to be avoided. The hike finished at a little noodle restaurant from where we made our way back into the outskirts of the city, from where we were able to get a minibus at Wong Tai Sin station. Possibly my favourite hike in Hong Kong so far, along with the Dragon Back - though definitely not one for the unfit or the faint hearted. More photos below:

Team Photo at Lion Rock

View to the north over the New Territories

Resting at the summit

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Church of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception

If my recent week-long visit to Japan warranted a summarising blog, then this month in India may need a full dissertation to do it justice. We spent our final morning packing, before heading into Panjim to have a morning looking around the few sights that the city has to offer. The main one of these is the Church of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception - a beautiful church that is perched on a hill overlooking the town. As Panjim is located on the Arabian Sea coast at the head of the river that makes its way to Old Goa, this church was often the first that sailors from Portugal would have seen and was therefore often used to give thanks for a successful voyage.

Our journey back to Hong Kong, while not as precarious as a trip on a tall ship back to Lisbon, was still set to be quite an ordeal. We would be flying from Goa to Mumbai, before making our way between the domestic and international terminals (as we just about managed to do when going from Aurangabad to Hyderabad), then getting on a plane to Hong Kong that would go via Delhi. Goa Airport is about the most grim airport that I have ever visited (though a brand new terminal appears to be about to open) and our first flight was delayed by half an hour - potentially increasing the time pressure on our connection in Mumbai. Upon arrival, we made our way as quickly as possible to the international terminal, only to find that our flight to Hong Kong had been totally cancelled. As it happened however, this turned out to be quite a bonus as Air India (who had been superb throughout the trip) had put us on a direct flight with Cathay that would depart five hours later. This second flight turned out to be almost empty and myself and Sergei both had a full aisle to ourselves - allowing us to sleep lying down for the whole journey. The ultimate blessing in disguise.

Mumbai clothes washing district

Arriving back in Hong Kong was like coming home - both due to our natural affinity with the place and as its relative calm and normality was so soothing after India. When my younger brother arrived back from spending a month in India he often appeared to hesitate when asked whether he had had a good time. At the time I hadn’t been able to understand this - for ALL of my other trips I had been able to say categorically that, yes, it had been brilliant. Looking back on my own time in India I can now begin to empathise. Yes, I did have a great time and my experiences in India were amongst the most memorable of all of my travels. However somehow this needs qualifying. India has the power to both inspire and shock - to see the beauty of the human race and all that is so fundamentally wrong with it. And there is just no escaping becoming immersed in all of it, good and bad. Nowhere summarises this best than Mumbai where as we stepped out of the airport we were confronted with car horns, beggars and wild dogs - all in the shadow of the brand new steel and glass International Terminal 2. This city, containing both the world’s most populous slum and its most expensive house, is quite the potent metaphor and is a place that is intoxicating and revolting in equal measure. Being there did feel like “proper” backpacking, but at the back of my mind I hoped that the rest of our trip would be both easier and more pleasant. This did not disappoint and while Hyderabad wasn’t too dissimilar to the feel of Mumbai, the historical sights of the first part of the trip at Ajanta, Ellora and Hampi were some of the most awe-inspiring locations I have ever visited - with the latter of these sitting comfortably in my top 10 destinations.

Amazing Hampi

Everyone wants a photo

It was at Hampi that we were able to experience what a wonderful people Indians are. Once away from the sellers of the big cities, people talk to you because they are curious and excited to meet you. The bravest of these curious people are the children of India who would always want you to take their photo or be in a photo with them. Every school bus that passed us would be accompanied with a cacophony of greetings and questions and I am sure that there is at least one photograph of myself and Sergei up on a classroom wall in their school photo. It is tempting when talking about children in India to immediately move on to the poverty angle but that is a path that is well trodden and a discussion to which I have nothing novel to add beyond how heartbreaking it is to see and how lucky I feel to have been brought up with the opportunities that I have. It is more relevant to talk about how happy the children appear to be and how, despite everything, carefree they appear. Every open space contains kids playing - anything from cricket to kites, in a way that you just don’t see in England. You get the feeling that if a parent in the UK saw his kid waving at a tourist and shouting hello, they would be told to quiet down. Strange how our cultures differ. Towards the end of the trip we met some great characters, particularly in Kerala where we were helped out so much by Motty and Abey who were so keen to help us and show their country off.

The Gateway of India - Britain’s stamp on Mumbai

It is difficult (perhaps rightly or wrongly) for a Brit to travel with India and at least not think about the impact of Imperialism. Having spent so long in Hong Kong, my view of the British Empire has now settled on a feeling of how absurd it was that we (and to be fair the other European powers) thought we had a right to administer territories so far away, both geographically and culturally. I am reminded of a joke by a comedian (I can’t remember who), which goes something like: “I went into an Indian restaurant in London the other day. After I sat down the owner hit me with a baton and told me to build him a complicated railway network”. The sheer audacity of the British in building their empire now almost clouds any perception I have of whether it was good or bad and I think that the only people who would be able to answer that in anything more than a purely theoretical sense are the Indian men, women and children who had to live under colonialism. As a Brit who even today is probably still reaping the benefits of Empire without having experienced any of the cost, I feel it is not my place to comment.

Train travel in India

Practically, as a backpacker, India is (as in all respects) full of many good and bad aspects. For the money-conscious traveller, India is an absolute dream. The cost of living is extremely low, as is getting around. I wasn’t as stingy on this trip as I have been in the past, staying at reasonably comfortable hotels (private, air-conditioned rooms) and eating out at nice restaurants - travelling in what the category that Lonely Planet would designate as ‘mid-range’. This meant that on average our daily costs broke down something like:

Accommodation: £15 per person per night
Food: £5-10 per day
Transport (excluding internal flights): £5-10 per day
Other (entrance fees etc): £5 per day

All things considered, therefore, we probably spent between £30-40 per day and I have no doubt that it would be possible to get by on £10-15 per day for a backpacker willing to travel slower, eat more street food and stay in non-aircon dorm rooms. After taking slightly longer to acclimatise than I am used to, our biggest challenge was deciding how best to get around from city to city. The ideal choice would have been by overnight train, but as we were travelling in peak season this would have needed us to book the tickets weeks in advance - which would have cost us a lot of flexibility. We therefore were faced with the choice of quick, expensive flights or slow and uncomfortable (but cheap) sleeper buses. Having been pretty apprehensive about taking the latter at first, I have to say that they were nowhere near as bad as I had assumed and I wouldn’t mind taking them if I returned. Their major advantage is that tickets can be purchased on the day more often that not, allowing a great deal of flexibility.

The four weeks spent in India enabled us to do a reasonable job of visiting the south, but even so I would have loved to have spent more time in Kerala and to visit the east coast around Chennai. I know that there is even more to see in the north and that another four weeks still wouldn’t be enough to do the country justice. As a result, I’m sure I will be back. To conclude, after discussing with Sergei, we thought we would finish with a list of the best moments. So here goes:

Best Restaurant: Khyber, Mumbai - probably the most exclusive restaurant that we visited, apparently frequented by businessmen and diplomats, but with a curry and a beer costing less than £10 it was (while very expensive by Indian standards). www.khyberrestaurant.com

Best Hotel: Hotel Malligi, Hospet - while staying in Hampi itself would have been more convenient for exploring the ruins, staying in Hospet allowed us to stay in a hotel with a great restaurant and a pool which was the perfect place to cool off after a day of exploring. www.malligihotels.com

Best Journey: Alleppey to Munnar - the return journey was slow and congested, but getting up early to visit our first hill station took up through terrain unlike any that we had seen earlier in our trip - from waterfalls and mountains to reservoirs and tea plantations.

Best Day: Day 11, Hampi - our first day in Hampi had allowed us to get our bearings so that on the second day we could travel around at a leisurely pace on bicycles with a group of other backpackers from all over the world. Cycling through the ruins was the best way of seeing them and sitting drinking lhassis in the bazaar with a good book while waiting for the beautiful sunset was the best way to spend an afternoon. I even got to see a monkey steal Sergei’s chocolate bar.

Best Experience(s): Keralan Backwaters and Massage - Kerala was a wonderful place to spend a few days and travelling through the backwaters on a boat was an unforgettably peaceful experience. After getting back on dry land in the afternoon we were treated to another unforgettable (though not particularly peaceful) experience in the traditional oil message parlour. Being dressed in a loin cloth, getting covered in hot oil and then being manhandled around a wooden table was as memorable as it was undignified

Top Three Destinations (I can’t just pick one…):

1. Hampi - a laidback backpacker ghetto surrounded by a unique, boulder strewn landscape and the ruins of what was once the second largest city on earth? Absolutely unmissable and in many ways worth a trip to India in its own right.

Hampi Bazaar

2. Kerala - a very close second and a place that definitely needed longer. A state that ranges from the sedate backwaters, to beautiful beaches, to the vibrant port of Kochi, to the dramatic hill station at Munnar. Four days just was not enough time.

The Backwaters of Kerala

3. Goa - I must admit that I arrived in Goa expecting it to be little more than an Indian Benidorm. I was very pleasantly surprised however to find a great blend of perfect beaches, great food and interesting culture. We were perhaps lucky to arrive just at the end of the season when it was a bit quieter - I can imagine it wouldn’t be as nice in high season.

Sunset in Goa

I hope that this does the trip some kind of justice and also that this is not my last ever blog about India. Thanks for reading.

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Chinese New Year Fireworks in Victoria Harbour

Nothing quite focusses the mind like waiting for a delayed flight, and sitting in Bombay airport trying to return to Hong Kong for my second semester, my mind turned to the great dialogue at the end of the Great Gatsby between Nick and Gatsby, which essentially sums up that most wonderful of novels. The ever-rational Nick tells Gatsby that “you can’t repeat the past”, to which the protagonist responds (incredulously) “can’t repeat the past? Why of course you can! I’m going to fix everything just the way it was before”. I have always been attracted to Jay Gatsby’s particular brand of hope, optimism and blissful ignorance and returning to Hong Kong felt like one of life’s rare chances to re-live a period of happiness and energy and (dare I say it) self-discovery. If anything, with Hong Kong feeling more and more like home and with the knowledge that the clock is now starting to run down, there will be even more incentive to squeeze out every drop of good times over the remaining four months of my year abroad.

A balloon octopus - about as good as it got

This certainly started well as we strategically timed the India trip to finish for Chinese New Year, one of the best times to be in China. Unlike ‘western’ New Year, which is a very specific evening of resolutions and drinking, the Chinese equivalent is a festival that runs over a week or so. Most nights of the holiday would include events and the first of these was a parade that made its way along Nathan Road in Tsim Sha Tsui on the Kowloon Peninsula. There had been a fairly major change of personnel between the semesters, with maybe three-quarters of the last exchange cohort returning to their homelands and being replaced by new people. As I suppose was always going to happen, the “two-semester” gang immediately gravitated towards each other, but we headed down to the parade with a good mix of 'new and old’. The crowds were, understandably, enormous and we struggled to get any kind of vantage point. Surprisingly (and somewhat amusingly) the 'family festival’ of Chinese New Year turned out to be quite a tense affair for locals and we experienced a whole lot of pushing, shouting and general vitriol in the crowds between people straining to get a view. The normally polite and respectful atmosphere became something like being in a crowd outside a football match - at least, we argued, watching the parade appeared to be worth fighting for. This logic was misplaced however and the parade turned out to be a bit of a flop, with the highlight (and I use that term loosely) being an octopus made from balloons, so in true expat form when faced with a confusing local custom, we decided to make a tactical retreat to a rooftop bar from which we could observe from afar.

Escaping the crowds

Crowds in Tamar Park for the fireworks

The following evening we made our way back into the city to watch the Chinese New Year fireworks in Victoria Harbour. If there was one segment of the celebrations that were going to be good, we figured that it would be the fireworks and they did not disappoint with a long display that was made more epic by the way that the noise of the explosions reverberated around the harbour basin. We chose to base ourselves in Tamar Park in Admiralty on Hong Kong Island which was thankfully not particularly crowded - I don’t think that my ribcage could have taken another evening of being jabbed at by elderly Chinese women. The view would probably have been even more impressive from the Kowloon side of the bay (with Hong Kong Island in the background), but we had no intention of spending a whole day queuing. After the fireworks we made our way to Lan Kwai Fong for our first night out of the semester. That roughly marked the end of actual New Year celebrations, though I did receive a 'red envelope’ from one my very kind local friends. These envelopes contain a small amount of money and giving these to unmarried people is a Chinese New Year tradition. While the amount in an individual package is relatively small - about 20 HKD (£1.50), an individual can give out dozens of these in an act of supreme cumulative kindness.

Dinner at Mr Wong’s

The remaining days of the New Year holiday were spent meeting new people and making preparations for the start of the term. One highlight was a hike along the Dragon’s Back (see previous posts) on the island. Myself and Jake had hiked the trail last semester on a weekday morning and only saw a handful of people and this second attempt was quite a different atmosphere as it was a Sunday afternoon and almost the whole exchange came. It was a good social activity, but I have never before had to queue on a hike… The term started slowly, with a few weeks of boring overview lectures, though the workload on my research project has ramped up significantly and with the deadline sitting a mere three weeks away I am going to have to bust a gut to complete the fifty pages of writing required. That said, having achieved a surprisingly okay set of grades from last semester I have felt able to take it a little easier and have been far more social than usual - even visiting the fabled 'Wan Chai’ district for the first time and then using it as a base for late night Six Nations viewing. Another first was a visit to “Mr Wong’s”, an unbelievable (if slightly shady) restaurant in Mongkok that offers all you can eat and drink (beer included) for a mere £5. The owner is one of the most interesting characters you are likely to meet in Hong Kong - on my last visit he insisted that myself and a friend spent a while listening to the Beethoven playlist on his iPod and on another he told us how he had purchased over fifty copies of the “Les Miserables” DVD to distribute to his customers from around the world to extol values of values of comradeship and international unity. What a guy.

February is a month that always flies by and in its wake it leaves March with a trail of midterm exams, assignments and late nights in the library. That said, I remain motivated to enjoy and make the most of my time in Hong Kong and (don’t tell my supervisor) I’m willing to let my grades slip just a little to achieve this end. Those born in the Year of the Horse are thought, according to the Chinese Zodiac, to be cheerful, friendly and social, so hopefully that will be my maxim for the rest of the year. I perhaps worked TOO hard for the first half of the year abroad, and if I can’t repeat the past semester you can be certain I will be striving to make the future one even better.

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