Chapter 101

I woke up around 7am. Then. very quickly, I got to packing. By around 8am, I had finished packing and talked with the hotel manager. After leaving him a 5 star review and saying our goodbyes, he called for a taxi with a meter in it which stated exactly how much to charge the passenger when we reached the destination. Like I said, the hotel manager was a good guy.

The plan for today was to get on my flight, which was set for around 11am and get to Hong Kong by around 3pm in the afternoon. When I got to the airport and checked in, I was very much ahead of schedule. But then, we got the news that our plane was delayed. 

My first instinct went to protesters. I mean, they did stop the HK international airport once already in the last 6 months so I kind of assumed they just did that again. In fact this was one of the fears I had which prompted me to book a flight 1 day after returning to HK. If things went wrong in Vietnam, I could have some wiggle room. I have never been more thankful that my past self decided on that 1 extra day than I was at the airport. 

This was the case for a lot of the other passengers though. I heard a lot of screaming from the other people sitting at the gate waiting for our plane to arrive. I can’t blame them though, any delays in flights were very critical to travel plans. Speaking of plans, during the wait, I decided to look at my finances for the past few days. I kept a journal specifically about this because the prices were pretty unbelievable for today’s standards. Here were all my expenses in CAD (after converting VKD to CAD in 2019):

Round trip flight: $87

Halona Hotel (3 nights): $46

Food: ~$4/day x 3 days = $12

Taxi services: $42

Sun World entry ticket: $12

Grand total: $199

These prices were impressive for today’s standards but back then, it was about the average. This was mainly because HK was a hub for a lot of travelling in Asia and seeing how the city was in civil unrest, travel around to the nearby region got a bit more scarce. With tourism at an all time low, prices for traveling and otherwise were also low. 

A delay of just a half an hour quickly turned into an hour. Then, a few hours. Just when we thought it would be impossible to get on the plane by today, we got on to the flight. By then, it was already beginning to get dark. By my account, we must have been delayed a good 5 hours in total. Why did this happen? Well it wasn’t the protesters, there was no news about that. The only thing I found out when researching whether or not it was the protesters was that my school, PolyU, did in fact get sieged at night the first day I was in Phu Quoc. There were viral videos of armored vehicles traversing the bricked roads near the school and molotov cocktails being thrown left and right. It was a rather shocking development. The conclusion to all of this was that the school was now taken back but classes were not to resume. They were shut down for the rest of the term since most of the campus was unusable. 

We landed in HK around 9pm and by then, I was already way past check in at my hotel but honestly, it could have been much worse. After I got off the plane, I went to my locker at the airport and quickly stuffed some souvenirs I bought in Phu Quoc in it. Then I clicked the locker shut because I was going to need it for one more night. I then rushed to the bus station because I knew the last bus to my hotel was going to be soon. 

My last night in HK was to be on Lantau island. The reasoning for that? Easy. The island is where the airport was and VERY far away from my student residence and the protests. The downside is the hotel was in a somewhat rural place. Therefore, the buses were limited. 

Finally, at around 11:30pm I checked into my hotel next to the Mui Wo Cooked Food Market and got settled in. Since the Mui Wo Cooked Food Market was kind of a small commune on a remote beach area on Lantau island, almost everything was closed near midnight. Unlike the urban crawl that never sleeps that was HK, this area was very small and had very little to offer for midnight snacking. The only restaurant that was open was a small bar-look-alike. Having no choice, I went to it and got some fish and chips. 

The restaurant was closing down at that time so it was not at all crowded. But this also meant that I couldn’t really dine in. Luckily, I thought of a great spot to eat. Between the bar and my hotel, which was located at the edge of the beach area, there were lots of benches and tables adjacent to the sands. I decided to eat there and enjoy the moonlight shining off the waters. I tried to really take in the nice warm night air since, despite how everything worked out, I found myself cherishing the last few days I’m having in Asia. I felt like I saw the world differently. Just that night, I found myself appreciating how the sky was clear and the shadows near me were lit equally from the moon as well as the street lamps. It was a nice scene. 

After the food was done, I pulled my laptop out and decided to just write a bit. At this point journaling was a familiar habit. Born out of procrastination, it has now been a chronicle of all that I have been through. Written and rewritten as I kept going about my days. Having been through a vacation though, my writing felt lighter. It was no longer always about trying to go as deep as I can in order to muster up some form of epiphany. After Phu Quoc, I sort of just wrote about what was happening as opposed to what was happening in my life. I think all in all, the toxins that I had accumulated from the entire fiasco post-psychologist was starting to lose their deadliness. I had exhausted my mental anguish and started to arrive at peace. After I was done writing, I felt relaxed. A feeling that followed me as I got back to my hotel and settled in for the night. 

I woke up at around 6am. It’s likely this was because my sleep schedule was still kind of messed up. Today would be the day I fly back to Toronto but seeing as how my flight was in the afternoon, I wanted to add one last stop before flying home. Around 8am, I left the hotel and got on a bus. This bus had its final destination at the Big Buddha. 

This attraction was on the same island and more importantly, had another cable car that went down to a mall around 20 minutes away from the airport. During my soul searching, I did at some point read some help books. During that deep dive, it was easy to find that Buddhism was often referenced in regards to self help. For me, while I wasn’t Buddhist, I did have certain things about Buddhism that I agreed with. Furthermore, I saw myself reading into Buddhism kind of as a gesture of me seeking help to get better. With that in mind, this end of my time in Asia seemed like an appropriate end to also my soul searching. 

When the bus stopped, I saw it. The big buddha sitting on the mountain side. It overlooked a wide spread of green forest. There was a very long staircase going all the way up and close to the buddha. Each step of which was supposed to mean something. I never really bothered looking into this however because I had something else planned for this area. Furthermore, while I liked the ideas from Buddhism, the religion itself was not something I felt akin to. So for me, the stair cases were just that, some flights of stairs. 

Despite not being really that religious, I did hope that while I was walking up that I would get some vision or message from God or something. It would have been nice. But since that didn’t happen, all I could really do was walk up then enjoy the view from up high. Then, after hanging out with the statue for a bit, I headed for the Path of Wisdom. This was an area with a trail behind the Buddha that led to a rather steep hike. The Path of Wisdom itself was just an area with some large wood planks which had some words carved into it. 

After being completely underwhelmed by all of that, I started the trek up the mountain. This was what I was here for. I had a goal too. I wanted to go high enough that I could see the Buddha again. This was the most realistic goal I could think of because in terms of time management, I only had about two hours on this trail. This is to say, I only had one hour to go as high as I could, then one hour to get back down. With that in mind, I rushed up the trail with the steepest elevation towards the mountainside as quickly as I could. There were lots of trails nearby but since I didn’t really have time to figure out which one was the best, I just chose the one that would get me the highest the quickest.

The trail up was difficult, despite the beautiful weather, I did not find myself feeling comfortable at all. All the jogging from the week prior did nothing since I did it all on flat ground. This was elevated. About 15 minutes in, I was drenched in sweat. It was then that I realized I had made a bit of a mistake. There was no shower availability between now and getting on the plane. Well…that’s going to be really disgusting. 

It was around 40 minutes in when I looked back and saw that the entire body of the Buddha was in view. Phew. Made it. A quick selfie photo just to remind myself I had been there and then off I went back down. Now it was just a rush back to the airport. The trail down was not nearly as difficult as the way up though with this final trek, I did finally exhaust all of the water I had brought with me. 

When I had made it back down, I rushed past the trail and through all of the Ngong Ping area. No time to sightsee around here. A good 20 minutes later, I had made it to the cable car. Then off I went to Tung Chung. It was only when I was inside the cable car did I take a big sigh of relief. While in the cable car, you can see the airport. Tung Chung was just adjacent to it. 

When I had finally arrived at Tung Chung, I was feeling much better. All the gross sweat kind of dried since the cable cars had windows that blew in fresh air. All things considered, I was actually ahead of schedule by a good hour. At that time, I did some light shopping for souvenirs and food and then took a bus to the airport. 

Things went smoothly from that point forward. There were no more delays and the exhaustion from the trail made it so I actually slept on the plane ride back to Toronto, a feat I’m not usually able to pull off. When I got to the airport, my girlfriend was waiting for me. She had access to her car that day and with her presence in my life again, I was dragged straight back into the woes of Toronto. 

All of the messiness of Hong Kong 2019 had concluded, now it was time for the aftermath.