Tom
From Kuala Lumpur we flew to Macao (using Asia’s equivalent of Ryanair and Easyjet) then took
a ferry to Hong Kong where we met Laure’s mother: Marie (previously introduced in the China, India and Burma chapters)
in a hotel lobby. She was very excited - and probably relieved to see Laure in one piece after so many months on the road!
Marie treated us to a delicious meal in an Italian restaurant; Laure and I were more than happy to eat European food for a
change. We slept well in a nice hotel room and ran on a few errands the next morning in Hong Kong before making our way to
the Chinese border. We made our way from the border city of Shenzhen to the home of Marie and Henri in Daya Bay and our travels
around Asia stopped there.
All said and done, we’ve both had the year of our lives. In Beijing last year, when I lamented
that even in one year in Asia we could only scratch the surface of each country, an Australian responded “yeah, well
that’s a hell of a lot of surface scratching you’re doing!” That put an end to any further lamentations.
Now that we’ve finished, I can say we’ve seen and experienced many things in a lot of places in Asia - the good,
the bad, the ugly and the beautiful. We’ve learnt things that aren’t possible to learn about in any formal lesson,
lecture, documentary or magazine article and have built upon previous life experiences.
In the ‘Why we are doing it’ section of this website we expressed several reasons and
some informal objectives of this journey: “enjoy it, face hardship and enlightenment…getting stronger mentally,
opening our eyes to new cultures and landscapes, magical memories and stories to tell…” Have we achieved any of
this? (Laure will speak for herself below and in the ‘cahier francais’ - the latter in French).
I’ve thoroughly enjoyed this year, faced plenty of hardship along the way and am still working
on enlightenment! I believe I am stronger mentally after a year in Asia with all the amazing examples of human endurance,
spirituality and compassion to fellow man and woman. I must remember them in times of my and our own times of hardship. I
have experienced my own highs and lows during the year: from getting engaged to Laure to the death of my grandfather while
I was away. Happy or sad I feel these experiences have been character building.
“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new landscapes but in having new eyes”
This quote of Proust is written on my travel diary and couldn’t be truer. Opening our minds as well as our eyes has
been more important than ticking off a list of sights seen. Indeed, one thing I discovered was that Laure and I derived more
pleasure and learning from watching how people live in their various environments than from reading a historical plaque in
front of a temple or monument. As for magical memories and stories to tell- well there’s a bag full of those, and for
those who’ve found the time to read all of our travelogue, there’re many more that haven’t been written
about!
