Slowing down in Hong Kong | Are you a traveller or a tourist?
There are a few fundamental differences between being a traveller and being a tourist. Nothing is wrong with either. In fact, different stages of our lives will call for either one or the other. While being a tourist can be a lot of fun in the moment, I’ve noticed being a traveller is more eye opening, more expansive and often more restorative for the spirit over the long term.
So what’s the difference between the two? Gilbert K. Chesterton has penned it this way; “the traveler sees what he sees, the tourist sees what he has come to see.”
I like that. While a tourist may come with an itinerary, a traveller will come with curiosity and questions in their heart.
In my experience, a subtle change in pace and awareness is all it takes to go from bucket list to metamorphosis.
These are my 3 insights after slowing it down in Hong Kong on how to shift from tourist to traveller mindset.
1. Go slow to notice somewhere else’s normal
Many cities now offer E-bikes, scooters and all manner of wheeled transportation so you can see more as you zoot through your destination, often in a hurry to tick off the sights. But, to me, by foot is the only way to feel the grit of a city in your bones and to see what was meant for you. Yes, you’ll have to forego a few ‘noteworthy sights’, but isn’t more interesting when you’re later asked, “So, how was X?”, if your answer isn’t a covering of a well-known landmarks? I lean heavy yes on this front.
GOING SLOW LETS YOU MAKE YOUR OWN LANDMARKS!
Nights out or lazy afternoon walks are some of the best times for me to be open to the unexpected spectacular. My walk through Seoul with a friend in the humid afternoon heat brought many beautiful scenes into focus. Down one side street, our lazy pace awoke life imitating art.
Everything about this moment was spectacular – the light, her dress, the vivacious colours on the walls, our collective laughter at how much my friend resembled the mural behind her, both she and the painting with their sweeping chestnut waves. They say life is so much about timing. Sometimes that timing is a period of receptiveness, transition, or change. But other times, it’s just a slice of a second. And it’s those seconds that you miss when you’re following Google maps instead of just looking up. Going slow gives you the luxury of unpredictable ‘the stop and stare’.
GOING SLOW LET’S YOU SIT BESIDE THE ORDINARY
It’s the things I never went looking for that are always my greatest delights – gutter flowers and paper lanterns, swaying in the evening breeze. I often opt for street food eaten in courtyards instead of cafés. To be near children laughing and squealing with joy in the plaza, an old granny’s dog yapping as she hangs her laundry, bike messengers stopping for a casual chat.
The traveller will be interested in the rise and fall of those in-between moments, when your sight-seeing is neither at a crescendo or a lull, when everything just ticks on, and you, the passerby in a city not your own, get to see a different sight, to be witness to what normal looks like on the other side of the the world.
2. Find familiarity when you feel far away
This was perhaps not the most common beach scene, but these water buffalo crossing the slick sands of Pui O beach on Lantau island reminded me of the Transkei back home in South Africa, where water buffalo also grace the white sands. I was feeling a bit homesick that day and these buffalo on the beach mixed with the humidity, warm waters and smell of imminent rain stirred familiarity in me.
After most of the heard had crossed, an old straggler with a deformed hoof joined up the very rear. He stopped. It seemed to me he was in pain, the way he craned his head and called for the others.
One of them came back and stood beside him for sometime, the heavy head of the older one resting on younger shoulders. Then, slowly they began to make their way down the beach together. I just stood there transfixed, watching it all play out, tears saltier than the ocean spilling down my cheek.
When you focus on what you have in common you will feel seen everywhere
Their compassion somehow soothed my own loneliness.
You will certainly experience different mountains, new food, unfamiliar culture and customs, but compassion is the same everywhere, with every species. And you don’t need to understand the language to feel its impact.
Staying open to how you are alike rather than how you are different can also shift you from tourist to traveller.
3. Discover your space in amongst another’s crowd
The last days in Hong Kong were largely reserved for wandering deep into her parks and jungles, looking for the city’s lungs, somewhere to catch my breath again. Hong Kong can be a busy and full city and I’d struggled a fair bit in its teeming streets.
Even the jungles were abundant and encroaching in every single way. The wilder parts seemed to envelop you completely, tendrils cloying at your face. After all the throngs of people and the miasma of heat always on you, the dense ferns felt eager, too eager to eek into your space. It was all too much and finally I just stopped in the middle of the path. Stopped trying to push forward through the walls to find space. I turned around. And there it was – all the space I had been searching for lying quietly behind me.
When you go looking for your own space you also find your own clarity.
Sometimes looking back to where we’ve come from, reminds us that we’ll always have that space to fall back into. The path we have carved up until this point – that is your own personal burrow and when what lies ahead feels dense, I made a note to my future self to lean into the lessons of Hong Kong and retreat a little until there’s more room to move forward, gently, without always elbowing something out the way.
I hope these short tales from travells through Hong Kong help you see how a shift in your perspective can bring a bit more traveller into your moments of tourist. Your adventures don’t just have to be a collection of what the world says is worth seeing. Every city in the world has the ability to answer the questions in your heart, to show you what only you need to see so you can go home with your own sense of self restored.
Go slow, notice their normal and make moments to find space to just breathe it all in.
If you liked this read, I’d love to know your own experiences of being a traveller rather than simply a tourist and what brought that shift about for you.
And if you’d like to, go ahead and share it with a fellow adventurer.