Sunrise over the Shwedagon Pagoda

Young female monks in Mandalay ready to splash our  van during the water festival

I fell in love with Burma in a way that I had never fallen in love with anywhere else before.  Three months after leaving Yangon, and a month after returning to Europe, it is the memories of my ten days in Burma that are etched most vividly in my mind.  It was during my time there that I really came to terms with why I had dedicated such a large proportion of the last-decade to travelling abroad - a country that rewarded the curious adventurer with the company of warm multi-cultured people, the photographs of astonishingly beautiful landscapes and the stories that one day I will sit down and tell my grandchildren.  Since being back, my time in the country has also gained an added degree of poignancy as I found out that myself and my younger brother (who had visited Burma a year before) were not the first members of our family to have visited the country, as we might have assumed.  It turned out that just under 70 years ago my Grandad’s recently deceased elder brother was amongst the first British troops to enter Rangoon as it was liberated from the Japanese in World War Two - though his experiences in the Burma Campaign affected him so deeply that he never spoke of it.  I have no doubt that we inadvertently visited the graves of some of his friends on our first day in Yangon at the Commonwealth Cemetery.

The street book sellers of Yangon - now free to sell novels that were banned only five years ago

“it is not easy for a people conditioned by fear under the iron rule of the principle that might is right to free themselves from the enervating miasma of fear.  Yet even under the most crushing state machinery courage rises up again and again, for fear is not the natural state of civilized man”

The house where William Shakespeare was born

Hamlet in the park

There may be few towns in England that are as inextricably linked to one person as Stratford-upon-Avon is to William Shakespeare.  As the town where he was born, fell in love and is buried, the small midland town of 25,000 people plays host to as many as 800,000 tourists a year from all over the world.  A 40 minute train journey from Birmingham (and a two hour drive from London), the town is reasonably well placed as a location for day trips.  For fans of the bard, there are plenty of things to see - the house where he was born, the house where Anne Hathaway lived and the houses of other notable people in his life who where deemed important enough for the buildings to be preserved.  All of these locations can be visited on a single ticket (which was too expensive for us as poor student visitors).  In addition, the newly constructed Royal Shakespeare Company building on the banks of the River Avon is always putting on performances and as we happened to be there for the River Festival we were able to see a free contemporary performance of Hamlet in the park.

The grave of William Shakespeare

Even for people who are not so interested in Shakespeare, the town is a pleasant enough place to visit, set around the River Avon and the associated canal network and with lots of great examples of Tudor architecture.

Inside the church where Shakespeare is buried

Tudor styled Housing

Canal boats

Inside the RSC auditorium

The Leavers Tram Party

Of all of the blogs that I write, I hope that this is the one that I get right.  So often I read back through what I have written about a place and been frustrated about how I haven’t been able to convey what it was really like to be there - not just the cliché sights and smells, but the elusive essence of a place that makes travelling so worthwhile.  In addition to describing what it was like to live in Hong Kong, there is also the even more complex goal of describing the changes in my outlook that nine formative months have inspired, so I hope that I can do it some kind of justice.  I took part in the year abroad because it seemed like a bit of an adventure, but it morphed into something far more profound and unexpected - beyond the narrow scope of the third year of a degree to influencing my perception of the world, my position in it and my plans going forward.

The iconic junk in Victoria Harbour

It is now approaching over a month since I left Hong Kong.  That may not seem like a particularly long time, but over the period I have backpacked through China, said my farewells to Hong Kong, briefly visited my family in my home town of Hitchin and started a new job back in Bristol where I have been reunited with friends I haven’t seen for a year.  It has been a whirlwind, but I am now back into the routine of a normal life - a position from which I believe I can best look back and summarise.  In quieter moments I find myself experiencing flashbacks of particular places or moments.  Whether its the sounds - the door closing on the Hong Kong MTR, the gentle ringing of bells on the top of a Burmese pagoda, the roar of the Yangtze River running through Tiger Leaping Gorge, the smells - street food in Taipei, incense in Chinese temples, the streets of Mumbai, or the sights - dawn over Bagan, sunset over Hampi, the lights of Victoria Harbour, they are forever etched vividly in my mind. I wonder whether I have developed some kind of reverse-trauma - having experienced such an abundance of powerfully positive memories, I wonder if will now always find them lurking on the edge of my consciousness.

Eight different nationalities at HK’s largest waterfall

To declare a year as ‘the best of my life’ at the age of 22 seems rather defeatist, but I will state (and I know that this is a big claim) that this was as close to an 'perfect year’ as it may be possible to get.  For one year, anything seemed possible and I wanted for nothing - the company was like-minded, my education appeared successful and, most importantly, adventures were regular.  I find myself totally unable to put how wonderful it was into words, both on here and when speaking to friends and family asking “how was it?”.  I felt a little like I was wrenched away in the middle of having a wonderful time and more than any other period in my life, coming home from Hong Kong has been an exercise in mentally accepting that all good things come to an end - but it has also served as a motivation to develop further happy periods (as I am a firm believer in these things being cyclical) in the near future.

A group from UST and HKU at the top of the Lion Rock

As a place, Hong Kong has usurped Istanbul as my favourite city in the world.  The last few years have exposed me to many of the major urban centres that are often quoted as the 'greatest in the world’ - from New York City to Tokyo, Paris to Shanghai, London to Singapore, but of all of these Hong Kong is the one that sticks out as the pick of the bunch.  None of the others have such a dramatic setting - surrounded by jungles, beaches, mountains and with the most spectacular skyline of them all.  In amidst the slightly overawing skyscrapers is a maze representing a cross section of the human race - markets and street food stalls, designer outlets and banks, schools and hospitals, all in the centre of the vertical city.  Having had time to see the lesser known parts of Hong Kong I was privileged to find secluded beaches, challenging hikes, pleasant seaside towns and much more.  It is much, much more than tall buildings and 'east meets west’ - a month of sightseeing would not be enough time to do it all justice.

Dinner in a Turkish restaurant in Hong Kong with a Russian,an American and an Iranian

The best part of it all, looking forward, is the network of friends that I have developed around the world.  We were all brought, from truly diverse backgrounds, into an environment that was new to all of us and the fact that we were able to bond and thrive is a testament to the human race’s fundamentally shared values.  Against a wider backdrop of global strife and conflict, the friendships I have forged with Americans and Russians, Israelis and Iranians, Japanese and Chinese prove that on a human level, nationalities are nothing more than arbitrary - about as consequential as which football team you support.  As the world gets smaller and smaller I look forward to regular visits to and from international friends and I strongly believe that future generations will be brought up as global citizens.  I am sure that the time is nigh for the Little Englanders who I have followed making such noise on the news back in the UK.

The title of this blog is taken from Rudyard Kipling’s “If”, a poem that in my opinion sums up all that a person should aim to be.  It concludes as follows:


To all of you who have read as far as this, I thank you for sticking with me.  This blog has become very important to me - as a way of keeping record of what I have done, of informing friends and families of where I am and (hopefully) of providing a little bit of inspiration for would-be travellers.  I hope that you, the reader, are able to travel and I would urge you to seize every half-opportunity you get to see the world.  There is, in my humble opinion, no better way to spend your own unforgiving minutes.

Until next time, my beloved Hong Kong

A last sunrise at HKUST

10000 Buddha's Monastery

Nine months after landing in Hong Kong for my year abroad, May had come around far too quickly.  Aside from the pressure of finals came a certain nagging need to see all of the Hong Kong sights that I had yet to get around to visiting.  First up, right at the start of the month, was a visit to the 10000 Buddha Monastery near to Sha Tin MTR station, a surreal collection of individualised Buddha statues that have been built up over the last sixty-odd years.  While not being an actual temple, it has become something of a religious theme park and tourist site.  The Buddhas range from those in traditional poses through to surreal ones with massive arms, or multiple faces.  Whether there is any underlying religious symbolism I do not know - but it was certainly an interesting half day out.

Happy Valley Racecourse

Next up on the bucket list was Happy Valley racecourse near to Causeway Bay.  Happy Valley is one of several racecourses that make up the Jockey Club - the largest contributor of taxes in Hong Kong and us one of the real ‘Hong Kong institutions’.  Watching the races (and partaking in the associated gambling) is one of the most popular evenings out for locals, expats and tourists and is held on most Wednesdays of the year.  Surrounded on all sides by skyscrapers, the course has to be one of the most dramatic in the world and with live music and a range of food stalls, I only wish that I had been a few more times while I had been in Hong Kong - definitely something to come back to see and a must for anybody who is in the city on a Wednesday.  Having never bet on racing before, it was easy to put down a few Hong Kong dollars to make things a bit more exciting.

Hong Kong History Museum

I had originally intended to spend all of my final month in Hong Kong, but a nagging desire to see the Great Wall of China got the better of me and I squeezed in a five day visit to Beijing (see elsewhere).  After the trip I was plunged into the exam period, which didn’t go as well as last semester, partly as the research project had eaten into my time so much and partly because I was preoccupied with making the most of my remaining time in Hong Kong.  With a big gap between some of my exams I decided to spend an afternoon looking around two of Hong Kong’s most important museums.  The first of these is an absolute must-see for any visitor to Hong Kong - the History Museum, which is perhaps the most impressive such museum I have ever visited.  Hong Kong is blessed with a fascinating but concise history, and it is possible to view this from prehistoric times through to the modern day at the museum in a series of chronological exhibits.  I spent a good four hours there, but it would be possible to get a good overview in a few hours.  The other museum I visited is a very new addition to Hong Kong - the 4th June Museum, which is dedicated to teaching people about the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, the 25th anniversary of which was imminent.  The museum is very controversial as talk of the protests is still banned on the mainland and Hong Kong is definitely pushing its freedoms by allowing it to open.  It is situated on the fourth floor of an apartment building in Tsim Sha Tsui and is admittedly not very big and is mainly in Chinese, but is worth a look just to see it as an act of defiance by the people of Hong Kong.

The goddess of democracy, 4th June Museum

Myself, Jewel and Sam at the Tram Party

My last exam unfortunately was as the latest possible time slot, which meant that I was thrust immediately into a brief period of leaving celebrations before we all went back to our respective homelands.  The highlight of the farewell gatherings was the tram party, where a group of us hired one of Hong Kong’s iconic trams for the evening and travelled up and down the island on it.  There can be few better ways of rounding off a year in Hong Kong, and as I hope to allude to in my concluding blog (watch this space), there definitely couldn’t have been better people to be joined with.  May wasn’t as hard as the slog of March and April (mainly due to the conclusion of the research project) and it was great to be able to get out into the city again for a range of last hurrahs.  A few days after the tram party it was all over.  A group of us rose to watch the sunrise over the campus as myself and Sergei made our way to the airport to fly to Yunnan province for our last major trip - a most wonderful send off to a most wonderful year.