It "had seemed exactly the sort of thing an experienced solo world traveler would so," to quote Ayun Halliday, and it wasn't a bad idea, just poorly executed. Today's travel lesson is that just because somewhere is warmer than Chicago does not mean you can sleep out on the beach without a sleeping bag. It could have been worse. I could have been attacked by wild dogs or beach bandits or the bike cops roaming the streets of Mui Wo in search of mischevious local teenagers and dirty, beach-sleeping backpackers.

The secluded beach I'd found twenty minutes outside town seemed safe enough to me, and I feel asleep quickly. I woke up chilly and damp about 1:30 am, acutely aware that I was not falling back asleep. Across Silvermine Bay, a bus trundled off towards the airport. Somewhere back on the island, a forward-thinking rooster heralded the far-off morning. My romantic hopes of waking up well-rested to watch the sun rise over Hong Kong Island were dashed, so I packed up my things and hiked back to town to wait for the next bus to the airport. Tired and dirty is not exactly how I'd hoped to pass through customs at Beijing, but it will have to do.

My plan had seemed so solid. I abandoned my hostel in Kowloon yesterday morning and headed over to Lantau Island to see the Big Buddha there. I could crash at a hostel near the attached monastery and take the bus from there to the airport in the morning. Not until I got to the island did I discover that the buses from the Buddha didn't start running until far too late. Confident that things would work themselves out somehow, I napped on the beach and then caught a bus out to Buddha, which is touted as the world's largest outdoor, seated, bronze Buddha. It's a qualified distinction, perhaps, but let's see you build a 23-meter-tall, 202-ton bronze Buddha on a mountaintop in the middle of an obscure island off the coast of China. It was actually quite impressive, and the monastery boasted a tasty vegetarian restaurant to boot. (Buddha's belly was a bit hard to reach, Katy.) I befriended an ethnically-Chinese Fijian from New Zealand (traveling on a Canadian passport) named Sarah on the way, and we spent the afternoon together on the beach after returning from the Buddha.

As night fell over Silvermine Bay, I discovered that the hotels there all charged more for one night than I had paid for three days beforehand. Refusing on principle to spend an entire day's budget on a bed that I would only occupy for a few hours, I decided that the beach was a perfectly good place to sleep. A bit concerned that the Authorities wouldn't agree with me, I decided to seek out a secluded beach nearby that I had seen from the ferry. I followed the path along the beach past the town, hoping it led somewhere I wanted to go. At the last house along the bay, I encountered an ominous but faded warning sign and a watch dog, who promptly began barking, communicating quite clearly that I was not the seasoned beach-sleeping traveler that I was pretending to be and that I should just go home. So I did. But by the time I got back to town, it was late enough that I resented the idea of paying for a hotel room even more. So I turned back to the trail and decided that watch dog or no, I was going to the beach. So I stalked past my barking nemesis, past the sign warning "Landslide Ahead. Road Temporarily Closed" and on into the night. The landslide proved to be as old and insubstantial as the faded sign, and I had no trouble crossing it and finding my way to the just the beach I had hoped for. Perfect. So I threw my pack down, wrapped myself in some warm clothes, set my alarm clock on the beach and went to sleep, quite proud of myself for my backpacking finesse.

I was a bit less pleased with myself on the long, winding bus trip to the airport at 3:30 in the morning, but it was worth a shot. Now, boarding pass in hand, it's on to Beijing.