Ahaah. Finally sitting down after a long day of rushing around, getting hold of a booster typhoid vaccination. But now seated in a comfortable chair, a visa for China in my passport, so ready to move on tomorrow.

I think there are few happier days than when one is recovering from an illness.

In this case, due to attempting to ignore the deep winter, I picked up a rather nasty, but fortunately all too human hit of the flu. I've spent the last few days producing dark yellow mess from my throat and nose, and to draw in breath sounded like an anchor dragging along a rocky ocean bottom. But after being issued with a plethora of pills, I am swiftly recovering. Today was the first day I had been able to smell anything for a while, and frankly I wasn't very impressed. Perhaps as the city warms up, stinks are coming out of their hibernation, but this was really data I could have done without, it has felt quite an unsettling invasion of my autonomy. I kept asking my nose, "Did you really need to tell me about that particular street odour?"

But enough on smells. More than ready to leave Hong Kong, have spent almost two weeks here (if including time in Macao), and they have been rather expensive. But a pause to restock equipment, make plans was very needed. In my first day of real flu, I realised that I needed a break from being a traveller, and that break had more to do with money than motion. I had been long associating a "rest" with "staying in one place", but that wasn't what I needed. It hit me that I wanted a break from weighing options and bartering - a break from always wondering what this next alien purchase would cost - a break from the weight of my ever diminishing budget. It was hard to do, but I gave myself two days where I wouldn't track money and could just spend what I wanted. Maybe boringly, I didn't go on some Jennifer Lopez shopping spree, but it was the releasing myself from pressure that was a balm.

Speaking of balms and J Lo, I've just bought some facial moisturiser for the first time in my life. Perhaps too late, but I sense that unless I soon started protecting my skin from sun and wind, my face will end up with more lines than the Lonely Planet omnibus edition. Wandering the shelves of pharmacies, I quickly learnt I had no idea what I needed and learnt rather embarrassingly that I felt quite awkward. I took refuge in the Body Shop, and they spoilt my exploration somewhat by immediately directing me to the "For Men" range. It felt immensely crap to be buying into the idea that men are so insecure we need our own range of products - as if the "For Men" moisturiser is in some more "Grrr!" than using a standard one. But sometimes it's good fun to revel in one's own crapness, so hopefully the village in Ghana named on the back of my Bodyshop tube will be a little richer.

But enough about moisturisers. Feeling actually rather scared about heading off into South East Asia. Everyone I've met who knows the region says how easy and backpackery it is, and I seem to have a lot of kudos here for making it through Central America, but I keep reading about strange diseases and explosions and worrying. I guess it's all about the comfort of familiarity - I've been to Guatemala and so now seems an old stomping ground. An impression I'm building up from listening to people is that the influence of tourism will be a lot stronger in SE Asia than it was in Central America / Mexico. Those countries had pockets of tourism, but Thailand and friends sounds almost as though whole countries have been given over to servicing backpackers. Not sure how I'm going to deal with this.
Something I've already noticed, there is much more awareness of "backpackers" or "travellers" as a separate collective noun to general "tourists". Touts shout out "recommended in the Lonely Planet"; my hostel has a near perfect photocopy of the LP China, complete with colour cover and photographs. I read that at least in one city, all the hostels change their name each year to the ones recommended in the guide books. This is a quantum leap from C America. In most places, even the word backpacker was unknown - everyone foreign was a "turista". I toyed with trying to introduce the word "mochilador" to Latin American Spanish, but really, few people in rural Guatemala or urban Honduras cared why you'd come to visit.

But enough ramblings, what was Chinese New Year like?

Hong Kong's fireworks were I think the most impressive ones I'd ever seen, multicoloured and varied shaped explosions. What remains in my memory, was the noise of that night. The fireworks spasmed into light with a BOOM like a pistol shot from God, again and again. And each boom was answered by the wall of skyscrapers behind us, echoing man made thunder until I thought the glass in their windows would shatter. I was like nothing I have yet experienced.

In contrast, the dragon parade the next night was disappointing for me. It was largely a combination of corporate advertising (floats by Cathay Pacific, Disney (fantastically odious), other airlines) and various ex pat British old boys' associations playing brass. Nice and all, but I had come for Chinese magic, and this kind of corporate Asia wasn't exactly it.

Portugal's Hong Kong

I spent a couple of days in Macao, an ex colony of Portugal's, an hour by ferry from HK. Macao was an odd combination of quiet streets and mad hawking of strange strips of meat. It is certainly less developed, more grotty and less population pressured than Hong Kong, and so many Hong Kongers come for holidays, for a few days of relative calm. I had been looking forward to using my Spanish, but although every street sign and shop name was in both Chinese and Portugeese, I didn't meet anyone who would admit to speaking it.

I had a bit of a one day crisis in Macao. The now very familiar of combination of Problems Today and Problems Tomorrow made my outlook sink, and though I knew it was silly, when one is alone it's hard to regulate this kind of thing. Problem today: I knew HK was too expensive and cold for me to stay there. Problem tomorrow: bird flu was spreading everywhere I wanted to go, so I couldn't see a way out of the island.
This bird flu problem is incidentally a puzzle I still haven't properly solved today, but at the time I ordered my emotional department to pull its socks up and went exploring.
I've since heard other travellers vocalise this "I'm trapped!" crisis, and this has made me realise how absurd it is. Dwelling on how today's bus has been cancelled makes one forget how utterly free the traveller is. There are interesting destinations in every compass direction, and if any of those are blocked, one can always take a short plane ride over them. Is not the mood killer simply building up expectations? Why is it so depressing that tonight's bus to the border is cancelled - if in all probability there will be one the day after tomorrow? One builds up an expectation (by Feb I must be in Hanoi) and self made foot irons that keep you on some self made train track. But there is no train track, there is no "must do list" beyond what we make for ourselves.

So, pulling my emotional socks up, I went exploring the winter's winds of Macao. I had my first really delicious Chinese meal: beef and asparagus in oyster sauce, each flavour sharp and pungent; I ate a beef satay in fried noodles so gooey I was sure my mouth was seeping lovely grease; found a beautiful sculpted Chinese garden among dreary tower blocks and sat by the minature lake and surroundig rocks, reflecting how amazing it was to be able to sit here in China among the lush bamboo trees; in a park watched an old man spin and weave the stances of Tai Chi, the whirling red fan in his right hand suddenly martial; watched a traditional dance performance, the dancers had big black swastikas on their leggings, again something which means something different in Asia; I found a warm welcoming coffee shop called Honolulu, with beans from around the planet, and so I toured the coffee producing world sheltered from China's cold. I think Macao was where my sense of the incredible allure and exoticness of China started to build in my heart. There is something otherworldly about China, something never conquered, even when (or especially when) it seems to be at its most Western. In Central America, it felt like American culture and businesses where coming in like a conquest, like a wrecking ball erasing and replacing. Here in China, it feels like the West is sending things in and they are being taken up and reshaped, reshaped to some strange system that I don't grasp at all yet. Suspect this will be a recurring topic in later writings in China.

Best wishes

Daniel, 4 February, Yangshao