After three wonderful months living and travelling through France, we weren’t quite ready to head straight back to Australia and plunge immediately into reality.

So, after a final week in Paris, we broke up the journey home with four nights in Hong Kong, partly to ease ourselves gently through the time zones, but mostly because it seemed like the perfect excuse to revisit a city we had both experienced many years earlier.

Neither of us was new to Hong Kong. We’d both been before, and long before we ever knew each other. But returning together, Hong Kong felt like an entirely different place.

Or perhaps we were entirely different people.

Gone were any memories of rushing around trying to see everything. This time we were happy simply wandering, eating, catching ferries, looking up at the extraordinary skyline and allowing ourselves to absorb the energy of a city that seemed to have changed and modernised, while somehow remaining unmistakably Hong Kong.

Hong Kong Harbour from every angle

If there’s one thing that dominates your first impression of Hong Kong, it has to be the harbour. We were able to view it from everywhere this trip – from high above the city as a storm rolled in, from The Peak looking across the extraordinary sweep of Victoria Harbour, and from the ferries that carried us back and forth across the water.

And each perspective seemed to tell a different story. Sometimes dramatic, sometimes atmospheric, sometimes simply beautiful.

Hong Kong at street level

Of course, Hong Kong has its skyscrapers, spectacular harbour and all the energy of a city that never seems to stop. But one of the things we enjoyed most was getting away from the obvious sights and simply walking.

This is the sort of exploring we love in all cities – no particular destination, no need to tick anything off a list. Just walking, stopping to look, observing the locals, taking photographs and wondering what we’d find around the next corner.

We came across a row of figures standing patiently in front of a building, apparently waiting for something. Naturally, we joined the queue.

Mostly, though, we watched people. On their way somewhere. Eating lunch. Waiting for buses. Talking, working, resting. Going about the ordinary business of life.

In Wan Chai, we wandered uphill through streets where colourful old buildings sat alongside restaurants, small businesses and everyday residences. The Blue House, Yellow House, Orange House and Green House added a splash of colour to an otherwise very urban landscape. Some of my favourite photographs ended up being of these wonderfully colourful old buildings in Wan Chai.

Between the skyscrapers and the high density of this city, we discovered everyday life.

The Chinese apothecary

Always on the lookout for an apothecary, I was fascinated with the exotic herbs, the jars of unfamilar ingredients, the unusual smells. And of course the cat, completely unconcerned by the goings on around it.

Hong Kong through street food

The day Hong Kong changed

And then, on our final day in Hong Kong, we found ourselves caught on the edge of something much bigger.

We were staying in Wan Chai on the day of what would become the first of the enormous protest marches against the proposed changes to Hong Kong’s relationship with mainland China.

When I look back through our photographs now, it’s not just the extraordinary skyline or the famous harbour that bring Hong Kong flooding back.

It’s the apothecary cat. The strangers practising Tai Chi between skyscrapers. The people on buses and ferries. The mysterious queue of figures we couldn’t resist joining. Street food. Colourful buildings. Faces in a crowd.

Four nights wasn’t long.

Catherine & Jeff