As time gathers pace, we race headlong towards our departure date and our days are packed. There are last visits to old haunts and first visits to new ones.
Whilst I should have much to write about I’ve hardly the heart to blog. I want to be out there living it, doing it all. I am gathering the harvest of our year, drinking it all in and in considerable danger of overdoing it, bingeing on last experiences.
We’ve been by junk to a fish restaurant on the tiny island of Po Toi. Arriving windswept and starving, the only guests, we ate our fill of crab, prawns and deep fried squid with garlic and butter running down our chins as the mosquitoes gorged themselves in turn on our legs and ankles.
We’ve enjoyed a late night foot massage with friends sitting in a row in huge cinema-style armchairs with the four masseurs before us in intimate consultation with our feet. The other three relaxed so much they drifted off to sleep while I grew more and more animated and wanted to chat and comment on the news items appearing on the big plasma screen above us.
I’ve been to the Mandarin Oriental Spa with the gift voucher I was given by girlfriends as I left London last year. Their idea was for me to be pampered in Hong Kong after the stress of moving. Little did they or I know I’d use it just as the stress of moving back starts to bite.
We’ve been to our favourite shabby Chinese and Thai restaurant at Shek’O and afterwards lay on the beach in the sun with friends while the children boogie boarded in the surf and our youngest built sandcastles at our feet. I swam out to the diving platform and beyond to the shark net which arches around the bay and then grew nervous as I neared my target for fear of meeting a shark nosing up at me on the other side of the net.
Our daughter has started ballet lessons with her Friend. She calls it bally and wants to go every day. It is a rite of passage for her and for me. As my youngest child and only daughter she brings leotards and gossamer skirts to our male dominated family for the first and last time. She skips about plucking stars from the sky and shows me how she makes happy feet and sad feet. Will her feet be sad to leave? I wonder. Will she miss the first friend she’s ever had?
We joined a team for the school Quiz Night and managed not to disgrace ourselves. A raffle was held and my husband threw in his HK$100 note in disdain announcing he’d never won anything in a raffle, ever. He won the only prize: two bottles of Absolut Vodka, a box set of Luxe city guides, a Coach handbag and a handful of gift vouchers for Hong Kong stores and spas which I am now charging about trying to use up before we go.
And yet the words are drying up. My eyes no longer see with the curiosity of the newcomer. My observations are neither fresh nor witty.
As I move through Hong Kong I stare wide-eyed about me, trying to burn the image onto my retina, hold it for always, as we have known it. For, should we ever return, Hong Kong will have changed, moved on and renewed itself several times over. That is its very nature and our Hong Kong will be a place of the past.
Whilst I should have much to write about I’ve hardly the heart to blog. I want to be out there living it, doing it all. I am gathering the harvest of our year, drinking it all in and in considerable danger of overdoing it, bingeing on last experiences.
We’ve been by junk to a fish restaurant on the tiny island of Po Toi. Arriving windswept and starving, the only guests, we ate our fill of crab, prawns and deep fried squid with garlic and butter running down our chins as the mosquitoes gorged themselves in turn on our legs and ankles.We’ve enjoyed a late night foot massage with friends sitting in a row in huge cinema-style armchairs with the four masseurs before us in intimate consultation with our feet. The other three relaxed so much they drifted off to sleep while I grew more and more animated and wanted to chat and comment on the news items appearing on the big plasma screen above us.
I’ve been to the Mandarin Oriental Spa with the gift voucher I was given by girlfriends as I left London last year. Their idea was for me to be pampered in Hong Kong after the stress of moving. Little did they or I know I’d use it just as the stress of moving back starts to bite.
We’ve been to our favourite shabby Chinese and Thai restaurant at Shek’O and afterwards lay on the beach in the sun with friends while the children boogie boarded in the surf and our youngest built sandcastles at our feet. I swam out to the diving platform and beyond to the shark net which arches around the bay and then grew nervous as I neared my target for fear of meeting a shark nosing up at me on the other side of the net.
Our daughter has started ballet lessons with her Friend. She calls it bally and wants to go every day. It is a rite of passage for her and for me. As my youngest child and only daughter she brings leotards and gossamer skirts to our male dominated family for the first and last time. She skips about plucking stars from the sky and shows me how she makes happy feet and sad feet. Will her feet be sad to leave? I wonder. Will she miss the first friend she’s ever had?
We joined a team for the school Quiz Night and managed not to disgrace ourselves. A raffle was held and my husband threw in his HK$100 note in disdain announcing he’d never won anything in a raffle, ever. He won the only prize: two bottles of Absolut Vodka, a box set of Luxe city guides, a Coach handbag and a handful of gift vouchers for Hong Kong stores and spas which I am now charging about trying to use up before we go.
And yet the words are drying up. My eyes no longer see with the curiosity of the newcomer. My observations are neither fresh nor witty.
As I move through Hong Kong I stare wide-eyed about me, trying to burn the image onto my retina, hold it for always, as we have known it. For, should we ever return, Hong Kong will have changed, moved on and renewed itself several times over. That is its very nature and our Hong Kong will be a place of the past.
8 comments:
I do get what you are saying and Hong Kong sounds amazing. I wish I was having a wonderful experience like you are. I can't wait to go home, maybe it's still to soon been here 10 months or is it because it's Germany. I hope your next adventure is as great as this one.
HK will have changed, because that's what it does, but some things about it will always be the same. Whenever I go back it seems familiar - and some things are institutions, for example I think I know exactly the Shek O restaurant you are talking about......
Enjoy your last few days there. I can't believe I am leaving just as you arrive back in the UK, as it would have been lovely to meet you!
Best of luck with the move home - and so sorry it has to come to an end just as you are all getting settled and finding, what was a strange new world, so familiar and 'normal'.
Days of poignant moments I guess now. Glad you'r ehavign fun amidst all the emotions & frenzied activity.
"My observations are neither fresh nor witty."
That doesn't seem to stop most of us bloggers from carrying on...
It sounds very bitter-sweet. You're saying goodbye when you haven't really arrived. But it also sounds like you're having fun and making the best of it.
One consolation is that it is always better to leave a place on a high note than when you're bitter and fatigued and can't wait to leave.
Well, I don't know about anyone else but I'm really looking forward to your observations on that rather odd city called London. Best of British!
Glad you are enjoying your last few days. And I'm looking forward to reading your observations on London, you'll have fresh eyes and see it in a whole new light.
Good luck with the move.
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