After a mind- and bum- numbing twelve hours in transit - the highlight being, meeting the Snean family below and watching an old man shave himself while in the boarding lounge - I am sitting in my Hong Kong hotel at 5:30 am in the morning. Jet lag, much? Damn these disrupted circadian rhythms.

As the plane spat me out at the airport in Hong Kong, I instantly had to start navigating the subway and train systems with its persistent signs, electronic ticket machines, and circutuous winding paths. The flood of people and the frenetic pace of life in a big urban city instantly put me on automatic - marching my way through line changes, rolling my suitcase over people's feet and not bothering to look back, rushing for doors as soon as they closed or opened. Hong Kong feels like a bastard mix of Tokyo and Bangkok - at certain times, beloved and familiar to me (Bangkok) and simultaenously alienating and clinically urban (Tokyo).