Day 3: Hong Kong in retrospect

I loved the anonymity (sic) of travelling alone, i love making all the decisions myself, taking the MTR to some god forsaken place that i have no idea where i am going. I love that i can end up getting so frickin lost and i dont have to explain to anyone why the hell did i choose this route.

No black faces, no struggles to tell ur companion ' you go this way, i go that way, no hard feelings'.

Most people dont understand why in the world would i want to travel alone. Obviously because i can live with myself? I came back to my hotel on saturday night and received smses from my friends " where did you go", "why did u go?" and the umbiquitous " WHO did you go with?"

Desdragon swears that i took a lusty trip to HK, like dirty old men going to Batam. hahaha... i like the way he put it. =)
But... my response is ... "whatever."

I am, afterall, an INFJ.

I like it that i can sit at my dinner or lunch and i dont have to talk to anyone at all and can take out the Hong Kong Daily newspapers and read it. Or if i am in the mood, make conversation with the person next to me.

Ironically, i find that when one travels alone, you get to experience the locals more than if u were travelling in a pair or group. Locals tend to be more friendly to someone travelling alone, particularly to a girl!

Dress nicely, put on a properly made up face and smile alot, you'd have lots of people to talk to. If that fails, just buy a good book! I like Lonely Planet, even though i have serious doubts about the food choices it recommends (Like Delifrance in Mongkok!!!! Huh!!!!) because there is lots to read about the history of a place.

I like it that i am able to sit at Victoria Harbour's Avenue of Stars and stare at the scenery for 30 minutes without having some companion to insist that we take photos of the Bruce Lee statue that would eventually lie in some silly photo album. I like it that i am able to take that 30 minutes and reflect on how i got to this point in my life, how i got here etc. To clear my mind and breathe (though not too deeply cos of the smog) and just absorb in the moment that at 1908 hrs on 27th Oct, i was here at Victoria Harbour.

I like it that i can go all the way to some outskirts to watch a movie without having to explain to anyone why.

I had travelled alone in Europe previously due to unforseen circumstances and after surviving having only 5 minutes to run to a upper deck in Hamburg to catch the 1 and only train back to Amsterdam otherwise spend the night in Hamburg without any accomodation, i think that 3 days in a cosmopolitan city like Hong Kong is not really a big deal afterall though everyone seems to make it out to be some unthinkable thing to do!

I really liked HK very much and am planning to go back soon... but after HK, what's next? Shanghai? Taipei? Tokyo? I will be looking forward to doing so with me, myself and i.