When I planned my 6-month off, the second destination (the first was Siberia) I wanted to be was Tibet. I concocted a plan how I would spend a month or perhaps two there, roaming the highland, staying with local Tibetans, tended goats or sheep, then trekking to North India. Yeah you can tell this plan has the smell of Brad Pitt’s Seven Years in Tibet all over it. But more than just a pure adventure, I wanted to be in this deeply spiritual and religious land to relearn Buddhism.
I needed to get out of Kowloon and Hong Kong island fast for I couldn’t stand the thought of staying another day swimming in noises, crowds, pollution and turning into a shop worm. The last destination on my list which I hadn’t visited, Lantau Island, was known for the world largest sitting Buddha, Disneyland Resort many beautiful beaches. Given the airport was located on Lantau Island, spending my last days there before flying out was the most logical option. However, I faced the same problem as I had prior to Lamma Island: bad time-management and popular tourist destinations.
I ran away from Kuala Lumpur’s and Singapore’s shopping arena like a contagious disease because I contracted it BIG time during my entire time Hong Kong, a seven-day being a hedonist in a place where people seemed to live, eat and shop.
Kuala Lumpur’s wide array of shopping malls would have been a material bliss if I had not come from Singapore a few days ago, a country where inhabitants are described fondly as educated, ambitious, hard-working and materialistic. They work hard, play hard and like to indulge in material things. Singapore has the largest percentage of mobile phone users in the world. They probably have the biggest expense for cars, paying at least 15000 SGD (~15000 USD) more just to own it. (I knew two people who paid 17000 and 19000 SGD.) No, this is not the cost of a car.
And the materialist crown goes to…
My walkabout accidentally turned into a pilgrimage to 21st-century bazaars during the last three weeks in Asia. There was no way I could prepare myself for a full-blown shopping attack from the countries which strived to be the best of the best providers for all our “needs.”
‘Ghetto’, in the dictionary, is defined as a slum area where a group or groups of minority live. If you ask Asians, it is where they forbid their children to come near let alone stay the night. On the other hand, to ‘white’ people, ‘ghetto’ provokes a sense of anticipation and promises an exhilarating adventure as in the New York Times’ Top-10-things-to-do-in-Hong-Kong.
I did something complete out of my character.
I threw my bag to the side and slept at the beach without having a tent nor a sleeping bag. I brought nothing for a sleep-over except the clothes on my body, a scarf, a thin sheet, tooth paste and tooth brush.
It wasn’t the lack of a comfy pillow, clean linen and a sleeping surface that worried me. Those who knew me well could assure that this act was unlikely for I was afraid of darkness, sometimes to the point that it paralyzed me, preventing me from being out in the open at night by myself.
I ran away from crazy Kowloon to visit Shatin’s 10000 Buddhas Monastery in greener, spacious New Territories.
The monastery is located very close to the metro station, both easy and difficulty to find depend on how keen you are with direction and environment. I followed the instruction from LP, got to the correct road and the correct intersection where I needed to turn and I turned right toward a temple with some Buddhas lining up the stair cases. But this turned out to be a local cemetery. There was a sign leading to the Buddha where I supposed to turn left but it was easy to miss because it wasn’t immediately visible and people tend to see the bigger size to Fuk Shan Tze (temple).
My name is Cindy, also rhymes with travel junkie. A friend said I was probably a gipsy in my previous life. One of my many secret missions in life is to convert you to run off every once in awhile.
