disalarming

Well, I arrived in Hong Kong last night and will be spending the next two weeks or so with family before heading back to mainland China to wrap up the last part of my summer. As much as I love Hong Kong, I am a little sad to be here. It’s hard to imagine that my backpacking trip is over. Six weeks of swapping hotels for hostels, buses and trains for flights, hauling around a backpack that was getting progressively more and more full with dirty laundry… it was, to be sure, a once in a lifetime experience. And if I had to do it all over again, I wouldn’t change a single thing.

These are the places I went to, as I feel like I never clarified where, exactly, I was at:

• Yunnan (province in southwestern China): Kunming, Lijiang, Shangri-la, Jinghong
• Laos: Luang Namtha, Luang Prabang, Phonsavanh
• Vietnam: Hanoi, Halong Bay, Hue, Hoi An, Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon)
• Cambodia: Phnom Penh, Siem Reap, Angkor
• Thailand: Bangkok, Phuket

I miss my friends that I was traveling with, I miss the spontaneity of our traveling lifestyle, and I miss the independence that comes with traveling. It’s typical post-travel nostalgia, I guess. But I’ll get over it. After all, I am in Hong Kong, the greatest city in the world. And I get to see my mom and brother in a week! I haven’t seen them since I left the US last August, so I’m really excited!

(I will be posting a much more in depth travel recap for each country with photos, but that won’t be till… well, probably at some point in the very distant future. My track record with these travel recaps leaves a lot to be desired with the rate at which I post them!)

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

I’m not going to Malaysia anymore. Or Singapore. Or Taiwan.

Instead, I’m going to Hong Kong.

Why? To see family.

When I was in Hong Kong over winter break, I saw all of my extended family, but not my immediate family. That was because my mom and brother are going to visit Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Beijing in June. The original plan was that I would go to those cities with them, enabling us to spend one last summer together as a family. My brother starts college in the fall; I graduate next May – the time has come where it’s going to get harder and harder for all of us to get together, considering that we will be in three very different places in the US (DC, Chicago, and Hawaii). However, that plan fell through because of my own plans for the summer, which involved working and not much time to do the whole touristy thing.

I did some thinking and I realized that I could always go back to southeast Asia in the future and travel. But spending time with family right now, this summer? That I can’t always go back to. I haven’t seen my mom or brother since last August; if I didn’t choose to spend some time with them in Hong Kong instead of travel, I wouldn’t be able to spend quality time with them this summer, period. I’ll be alternating between tutoring and teaching English in Beijing and Shanghai; I would only have time to show my family around the two cities during week nights and weekends. That’s a far cry from being able to spend a solid week or two of quality family time in Hong Kong.

The thing is, I want to spend time with my family in Hong Kong more than any other city. To take my brother out to Lan Kwai Fong (蘭桂坊), to go shopping at Ladies’ Market (女人街) with my mother, to have all three of us sit down at a cha chaan teng (茶餐廳) or dim sum (點心) and enjoy delicious Hong Kong food together… These are memories we can’t create anywhere else in the world. Besides, I haven’t seen my family in almost a year. What better place to reunite than the one city we all call home?

There will be plenty of opportunities in the future to travel to explore various nooks and crannies of the world. But this time, I’m choosing family over travel. And I can’t wait.

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

Today I embark on a whirlwind journey throughout the magical, mystical land otherwise known as southeast Asia. Two friends and I will be backpacking throughout Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, and finally, Taiwan. It’s going to be insane and crazy and definitely the adventure of a lifetime.

I can’t wait to share my adventures as they happen (pending Internet access, of course). I’ll try to check in every once in a while to let you know how I’m doing!

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.