Travelling Light

"The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page."

As I look around my "Superior Double Room with Preferred View" on the 23rd floor of the luxurious Park Lane Hotel in Hong Kong, I am looking around my 'home' for the next 3 weeks. It's a large, plush and relaxing room, filled with soft striped sofas and chairs, muted colour tones, a large flat TV, and a luxurious black and gold marble bathroom with spa bath. Room service is fast and efficient (tonight's grilled salmon salad was truly delicious), and the crisp, white, King-sized bed with 4 oversized pillows is enough for me and two friends. And of course the view is amazing…

I am in Hong Kong, unexpectedly, working on a confidential bid for the duration, coincidently giving me some well needed distance from the relentless heat and humidity of Singapore, and from my own attempts to coerce logic from my recently trampled feelings...

As many of you have pointed out, I've been way too sad of late, all wrapped up in a cheerless cocoon from the disasters affecting those around me; the sad passing of friends and family; the burnt and buried lives of Australian and Italian loved ones; and the newly exposed wounds from falling heavily into unrequited love, blinded by great beauty. But I have decided to go on an emotional diet, leave a lot of baggage behind and smile a lot more. Walter, travelling ‘Light’…

Reasons to be Cheerful Part III

Taxi:

When I called the Comfort Taxi Company on Monday morning to get me to the airport, I wasn’t expecting to wait twenty five minutes, sweating profusely in my steamy basement car park. I also wasn’t expecting to hear the continuous braking and revving of a taxi, rabbit-hopping its way down a wide, gentle ramp towards me. I also wasn’t expecting my 73 year old driver ‘Wu’ to tell me he was too scared to come into the car park because he was Blind: “Sorry, blind, too old!” I was also not expecting Wu to not understand the words “Airport. Terminal 3.” telling me he was Deaf: “Sorry, deaf, too old!” So obviously I wasn’t expecting to have to keep shouting “AIRPORT!!! TERMINAL THREEEEE!” until he nodded and smiled into the rear view mirror. I also wasn’t expecting for us to take 15 minutes to turn around in the spacious car park – Wu being too scared that he might hit something. I also wasn’t expecting to take 40 minutes to get to the airport, crawling along the freeway as the whole of Singapore seemed to pass us by. But Wu was a lovely old man, smiling all the time, loving life and cheating death as Singapore’s only deaf and blind taxi driver.

7-Eleven:

Against all logical reason, 7-Elevens are very popular here. Unlike London and Melbourne where they are staffed by quiet, polite Indian men, the one near me is like a Japanese soup kitchen, young girls nasaly screaming "welcomesevenelevennnnn!" at you when you enter, nasaly screaming "thankyousevenelevennnnn!" when you leave. At lunch time with a continuous throng of people coming in and out, the cat-like din is fantastic. My particular branch is a little different than most, with a very masculine, darkly tanned, deep-voiced woman, obviously of recent male origins. Her very 'male-in-a-dress' features took some getting used to (the pink lipstick clashing with her blue eyeliner), but we have an 'understanding' now, and I can get a can of diet coke without being overly bothered by such terrible make-up. People hang around outside my 7-Eleven, milling around like fans after a concert. Mostly groups of smoking men, or texting teens, but sometimes i have to tip-toe through sitting daisy chains of pretty Chinese Goths, or giggling circles of Little Bo-Peeps with long socks and frilly mini skirts.

Supermarkets:

These are also a little different here. In London the cashiers sit down, moan about the weather and you have to pack your own goods (although see Julie at Checkout 13 at Pimlico Sainsburys and she'll pack for you). But here they stand up, pack like their life depended on it (re-arranging things in each bag to almost Porsche-like aerodynamic efficiency), insisting on a plastic bag for almost every item. And unlike most places in the world, the very pretty checkout ladies are almost painfully polite; smiling sincerely, apologising to you for the delay, the lack of exactly the right bag, and for taking so long to run to the other side of the building to weigh and price the banana and plums you were meant to weigh back in the fruit section. Wonderful.

Toilets:

Japanese electronic toilets to be exact. These large white, nuclear-powered contraptions usually have a control panel on one side, with a confusing array of pictogram buttons and displays. I have never been game to actually push anything while using one, and certainly never tried any of the advanced options- the alarming arrangement of hoses focussed on my ass is a little too 'personal' to be inviting. But then I’ll spent about 25 minutes standing safely to one side, pressing all the buttons in every combination - warm seat, wash seat, wash male parts (two hoses), wash female parts (three hoses), steady stream, machine-gun pulse, and so on. The last time I encountered one of these babies, I was about to try the “warm water, random pulse flow, cold blow dry” combination when the thing froze up on me and all the lights started blinking. I hope it was under warranty.

Olives:

In a land where people eat Durian, (that spiky fruit with the horrible drain-like smell that evokes reactions of intense disgust, banned from hotels and public transport), or Laksa (thick, hot sour coconut milk soup full of paprika, cumin, turmeric, chilli, garlic, ginger, lemongrass, shrimp paste, and coriander), and every form of crunchy dried fish, buried black ‘century’ eggs and pig organs stew on rice, if you try and feed my lovely friend BB a small green olive, she will spit it out and turn up her nose! :)

Bits of Time
My mate Champak loves watches – he knows the inside and outside of every important timepiece since the 50’s and takes me around the exclusive watch houses of Singapore, cooing over every new arrival, drooling over a “Rare 1960'S Breitling Cosmonaute 809 model, hand wound mechanical, 3 register chronograph with 24 hour dial” as he describes it :)

But I prefer the moments when the watches are all in pieces, with every cog and spring and wheel laid out carefully on smooth black velvet. It is like looking at time, dismantled and controlled. I wish my life was more like this; being able to reduce it to all its bits, spread them all out, clean and oil them properly, then put them back together so that my life can spin on as it was supposed to. But I am an incompetent craftsman, and I seem to end up with left-over parts after each major event or heart-crush, after each major rebuild.

Life can make me lose sight of things, but when I travel, everything seems to balance out for me. I am hoping that sailing in Greece with Nina, Andre, the crew and little Isabelle will balance me out, help me put back all my parts, getting me running smoothly again. So Greek Islands for 2 weeks, here I come :)

“Travel is the frivolous part of serious lives, and the serious part of frivolous ones.”

Taking my travel very seriously...

Walter x