Beijing: Day 3.

We ended our last day in Beijing touring the Temple of Heaven and the Summer Palace. It was cloudy and a little icy, so much so that even droplets of water on the ground would freeze up. The Summer Palace would be so beautiful (and crowded) during the warmer seasons; you can even kayak or paddle-boat on the lake. The lake was near frozen when we were there.

The intricate details in every structure in China will never cease to amaze me. All the elderly exercising and playing games in public parks was also one of my favourite things—talk about #fitspo.

Beijing: Day 2.

I've been looking forward to sharing this photo story with you: our day at none other than the Great Wall of China. Again, for some reason, The Great Wall was never high on my list of places to visit. Maybe it's because I'm usually drawn to places of extraordinary natural wonder, as opposed to extraordinary feats of man, but now that I've been, I have no regrets. I've always loved mountain ranges—in fact, one of my very first paintings as a kid was of snow-capped mountains in New Zealand—so I guess standing on something impressively man-made amongst something impressively nature-made ticked all the right boxes. I can only imagine how beautiful it would have been had it been snowing, or had it been spring and summertime.

We were there for about 4 hours, but I wish we had time to stay longer so that we could've climbed the 20th & 21st watchtowers, which had quite a steep incline. Perhaps I'll come back and trek the Wall next time (clearly hadn't had enough of trekking in 2014).

Beijing: Day 1.

We didn't arrive in Beijing until about 5:30pm. When we met our guide at the airport, he let us know that he had double-checked our hotel's address and drove past it, only to discover it had been closed for renovations for months. We had trouble accessing our booking confirmations and emails because you can't use public wifi in China unless you have a Chinese phone number. Cue a couple of hours of distress and sitting in some pretty terrible Beijing peak hour traffic before everything got sorted and we got to our hotel (thankfully we booked with one that was part of a small chain of hotels), after which we promptly landed face-first into our beds.

Hong Kong: Day 3.

Our third and final day in Hong Kong was spent travelling to Ngong Ping, the little town on the mountain, via cable car. When we got there, we visited the Po Lin monastery and the Tian Tan Buddha (which was kind of perfect, I thought, as this year I will begin yoga teacher training).

It was so deeply peaceful up in the mountains. There were so many people who swarmed to see the Buddha, rushing about, cameras to faces, phones up, pulling each other this way or that to see the next sight; I just wanted to find a minute to be all there, so I did, hiding myself away in the quietest part of the giant circular altar, admiring the expanse before me and the way the light looked from up here. I pretended I was completely and utterly alone and enjoyed that little second of still, silent bliss all to myself. Our trip had been rushed and chaotic in the days since we arrived (and it would continue to be chaotic for many weeks still), so to find even just a second to be completely present, to appreciate everything I had amongst the mountains, meant everything to me.

Hong Kong: Day 1-2.

Finally, five weeks after coming home, I've finished editing photos from the Hong Kong & Beijing portions of my trip. It seems so long ago now, but once more I am glad that my calling was photography, because I get to remember it all so vividly through this: the art of visual storytelling.

I wrote plenty while I was away but there's not a lot I feel like sharing from this first chapter of the trip, so I'll let the photos do what they do best.