Five frequent travellers in Asia grounded by Covid-19 discover destinations on the doorstep
- Covid-19 has caused us to spend significantly more time at home and encouraged us to see our environments through fresh eyes
- Residents of Hong Kong, Seoul, Tokyo, Bangkok and Singapore are finding ways to satisfy their appetites for travel locally
It started with a waterfall. Not some feeble trickle, but a 30-metre beauty that cascades seemingly out of nowhere into a shallow bay below.
Despite having lived for 15 years on Hong Kong Island, I had never heard of Waterfall Bay, let alone seen it, until the Covid-19 lockdown compelled me, like many others, to explore my own back garden. I’d hiked pretty much every trail and explored every neighbourhood – or so I thought – so it was immensely gratifying to discover somewhere wholly new.
Today, the waterfall is framed, incongruously, by a towering block of the Residence Bel-Air, but 200 years ago, the cascades were much more voluminous. It was a welcome and valuable source of fresh water for mariners such as Clarke Abel, a British surgeon and naturalist who wrote about it in his snappily titled 1818 work Narrative of a Journey in the Interior of China: And of a voyage to and from that country in the years 1816 and 1817.
An illustration in the book makes Waterfall Bay look far more impressive, especially with a towering, verdant Victoria Peak as the backdrop.