Goodbye Asia. After four months travelling across this massive continent we’re finally leaving, catching a ride across the Pacific, to another great landmass - North America.I have to admit I feel rather deflated. We’ve grown used to our exotic, exciting, enchanting surroundings. It’s going to be a wrench to leave.
Entering through the low mountains of the Urals, exciting via the warm waters of the South China Sea, we’ve experienced a continent of great variety, a rich panoply of all that life has to offer.
We’ve passed through the towns and villages, the cities and regions that make up this vast continent, dawdling where we can, trying to take it all in and make sense of the world changing gradually around us.
Some of these changes have been subtle, others dramatic, but at the end of them we‘ve experienced the extremes.
We’ve walked amongst millions, in some of the most crowded places on earth, Hong Kong and Tokyo, Beijing and Saigon.
And wandered alone in the wilds of Siberia, and the mountains of Yunnan.
We’ve travelled through amazing scenery, from the immense taiga of Siberia to the the dense jungles of Laos, from the great peaks of Yunnan to the karst islands of Vietnam.
And seen fantastic creatures, from Gibbons to Whales, Giant Hornbills to Nerpa seals.
We’ve crossed some of the planet’s mightiest rivers, the Yangtze and the Mekong, the Volga and the Ob.
And swum in tropical seas and icy Siberian lakes; bathed in jungle-clad waterfalls and volcanic springs.
We’ve feasted on delicious curries and dumplings, drunk Vodka and Bia Hoi.
And sampled strange food, from pomelos, dragon fruit and rambutan to grasshoppers, sea urchins and raw horse meat
We’ve choked in the smog of Shanghai, bartered in the markets of Saigon.
And sweated in Cambodian jungles and shivered in the guesthouses of Guangxi.
We’ve travelled between these places in memorable ways: on the Trans-Siberian Railway and the Japanese Shinkansen; on the back of motorbikes through Saigon and in bouncing sleeper buses through China.
And stayed in a wide range of places: from slick business hotels to leaking tents; from sandy beach huts to grim youth hostels; from couch surfing to disused buses.
But most of all we’ve witnessed humanity in all its forms, fellow humans at their best and their worst, their most familiar and their most bizarre.
We’ve met a million new people, made a thousand new friends. Hokkaido farmers, Siberian environmentalists, Hue hoteliers, Finnish climatologists, Laotian monks, Japanese salaryman, Cambodian moto drivers, Hanoi bread sellers, Russian fighter pilots, Saigon swindlers, Naxi matriarchs,Beijing dumpling vendors, Chinese soldiers...Buryat, Naxi, Cantonese or Khymer. Mongolian, Beijinger, Korean or Viet.
They’ve mocked and exploited us, they’ve frustrated, irritated. Malicious, swindling, ignorant or desperate.
They’ve welcomed, invited, they’ve shared and delighted. Curious, genuine, sensitive, shy.
We’ve marvelled at their enterprise, from the skyscrapers of Shinjuku to the Old Quarter of Hanoi, selling tuna at dawn in Tokyo's Tsukiji fish market to late night lamb kebabs in Xi’an’s muslim quarter.
And we’ve wondered at their religions, from gilded Kyoto temples to alms-seeking Laotian monks, from mysterious Buryat shamans to the Khymer's hindu temples.
We’ve been awed by mankind’s boundless capacity for creation, from the Great Wall(s) of China to the harbourfront of Hong Kong, from the temples of Angkor to Xi’an’s Terracotta Army.And horrified by his capacity for destruction - from gulags in Siberia to an atom bomb on Hiroshima, from ‘Cultural Revolution‘ in China to genocide in Cambodia.
We’ve seen where Asia’s collided with the west, and witnessed its consequences, violent and benevolent, questionable and malevolent. From the Bund of Shanghai and the French colonial towns of Indo-China, to the baseball stadiums of Japan and the omnipresent English Premier League.
And we’ve seen the effect that Asia has had on our fellow Westerners, enticing and enchanting, beguiling and bewitching. Tour parties and travellers, businessmen and bankers.
They seek the food and the climate, the ancient ideas and the modern gizmos, priceless antiquity and cheap mass-produced.
They leave with reluctance, or don’t leave at all. Suntans, bags bulging, a thousand memories.
I can’t wash these away, unlike the dirt and the sweat. The smells of the markets, the sight of the landscapes; the taste of the street food, the sound of the jungles.
We’ve taken thousands of photos and visited enough temples and street markets to last a lifetime.
We’re developed a hundred new interests and acquired enough hats to supply a hundred pantomimes.
Now we’ll no longer be big-noses, uncouth and clumsy; ignorant people with no god or spirituality.
We won’t face the hassle, we’ll drink the tap water; we’ll sleep in clean rooms and won’t get the staring.
I’ll return to the West a witness to the changes taking place, enthralled by the huge possibilities offered by the lands to the East. These countries are rising, perhaps one day overtaking us.
We hear of the shifts taking place in the tectonic plates of the world‘s economy. We're told that whilst the 20th century was Europe and America’s the 21st belongs to Asia.
Here, around the Pacific Rim, the world’s future will be determined.
On disembarking in the US, the Captain and crew of the Hugo will present us with a map, charting our voyage across the Pacific.
It differs from the orthodox, Atlantic-centric maps we have back home, the globe in my childhood bedroom, the old Michelin in my bag. On these Europe and the North America predominate, the centre of the world.
Instead, this map centres on the Pacific and the nations around it.
In the East it shows countries we have visited - China, Japan, Vietnam and Thailand, thrusting economies.
In the West it shows our destination - the US - so long the leader of the pack, but now nervously looking over its shoulder in the direction from which we have travelled.
Are we moving from the future to the past? Is it time to redraw the map?
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