I’m almost done with my “recruitment” trip to Asia. I am back in Hong Kong for the last leg of the trip and I have slowed down my pace. My colleague and I (luckily she is originally from Hong Kong and even though our goals and tastes are quite different, we have managed to find a healthy common ground) are staying in a small but clean hotel in the Wanchai district of Hong Kong Island. In the past few days I have been sensing that I might get sick. My throat has been sore and my energy level is not as high as I am used to. Might have to do with the extreme change in temperature between Vietnam and Korea (oh the weather in Korea was SO perfect!) and then back to hot Hong Kong. That is fine though. It forces me to slow down and do what I am doing right now. I found a nice cafe called “the perfect cup”, sort of reminds me of the starbucks theme, except it’s not starbucks. As Western as it can get with very pleasant Diana Krall-type jazz music giving it this cool feel. At 8am it is a mix of “natives” and mostly white middle aged business men.
As I look out my window I see: 7 Eleven and Outback Steakhouse right next to each other. Yeah, did you know that every place I have been to (and that probably means every city in Asia) is bombarded with your classic: Starbucks, Mc Donald’s, 7 Eleven, Outback Steakhouse, Pizza Hut, Dunkin Donuts (in Seoul Korea…all over the place!), oh, and KFC…I know I should not be surprised, but I am. I guess seeing it with my own eyes just confirms that reality. I know it is not anything that can be stopped or avoided, so I don’t even try to think about it further.
My question is to myself: how can I possibly write down all the impressions I have experienced during this trip. Remember, this was not a pleasure trip. It was for work. But I managed to find time to wander the streets sometimes aimlessly, sometimes with a specific goal. When my sister in law recently told me that I still have the intense curiosity she saw in my eyes when she first met me (I was about 10 years old), I find that this trip confirms this fact. I am like a sponge. I look at everything around me. I watch the people, I watch the way things are done, I observe people’s interactions and the unspoked rules, or lack of rules (such as transportation in Indonesia and Vietnam). I sometimes think I will explode with all the senses that are stimulated while my eyes are open.
There is absolutely no way I can write it all down. I don’t think I have the vocabulary and ability to describe it so that you, the reader, can truly relate or understand what I am looking at. It would be my goal. And so I have learned something else about myself. I LOVE to take photos and I am thrilled to have fould out about myself that my lense has indeed become my choice of language to convey what I see. All I need to do is SNAP and there you have it:
- The traffic guard on the busy Seoul street who wears a microphone so that everyone hears him as he controls the pedestrian and vehicular crowd.
- The tiny Vietnamese old woman with her cigarette hanging from the corner of her mouth. I would not want to run into her in a dark alley!
- The adorable high school children in their uniforms in Vietnam who answer questions in unison and give me peace signs as I walk past their classrooms and snap at them trying to avoid the wrath of their teacher.
- The other little elementary schoolchildren who sit down to watch the impressive changing of the guards ceremony at the entrance of a palace park in Seoul. There are groups wearing yellow t-shirts, blue t-shirts with “happy smiles” written on them, red t-shirts…and they clap and roar and show me the same innocense and purity that I see in every child of the world.
- The remnants of British rule in Hong Kong. Street names such as Lockhart, Hennessey, Fenwick… double decker buses and streetcars passing right by the open food market with fish. beef, duck…
- The homeless people who sleep in cardboard boxes at the underground station in Seoul. A part of this society that my Korean friend tells me is very sad. I agree. He explains to me that many of these men have lost their jobs and that shame prevents them from returning home to their families. I see an old man who looks like an ordinary grandfather. I take a photo of him hoping he doesn’t wake up. I do not want to add to his shame, but I want to document the intense sadness I feel when hear this story.
- The orderliness all over Seoul. The excellent customer service. The wealth. The addiction to brand names. The tradition. The fashion conscious youth. The generally bland look on people’s faces. No, Koreans in general would not rank at the top of my list of warm-hearted people. I have met very warm individuals, but as a whole, when you walk down the streets I find them to be a bit robotic.
- The beautiful face of the young and strong Indonesia man I meet at Kaliandra. The pleasurable feeling of looking at a warm and kind smile.
- The amazing ability to pretty much transport anything on motorscooters in Indonesia and Vietnam.
- And then, in the background of all this, the occasional news reports I see regarding the presidential debates, the vice-presidential debate, the downfall of the financial markets…as I sit here I glance over to my neighbor’s newspaper and see titles such as: “give me back the money I made”, “it is only going to get worse”…no one seems to be immune to it. But I must confess that I am not really connected to this reality right now.
…and there is so much more. And I will share my photos with you as soon as I have uploaded and sorted through them (all 2000+ of them). I look forward to sharing what I saw with you. I look forward to reliving every moment. I look forward to returning home and sitting in my favorite cafe Trieste and looking back to understand what I have learned from this trip to a corner of the world I have never been to before.
…and so now I have a few other books I am reading at the same time, but none of them that are really capturing my attention.
