Your latest book opens in Hong Kong. Was it based on experience?
About 10 years ago I spent a year in Hong Kong. I'd just left college after I'd flunked finals and had no idea what I was going to do with my life. I wanted to travel so I just got on a plane and flew to Hong Kong. Looking back I must have been nuts, but it worked out. I worked as a waitress for a while, taught English and I even worked on a computer magazine which was a bit ridiculous as I'd never used a computer. I was also the world's worst cycle courier. I lasted two days before they sacked me.
What was it like?
Hong Kong is very different to its reputation. Only a tiny part is skyscrapers and city, most of the land is actually very wild. There are some beautiful beaches and mountains and a large outlying island called Lantau which is a nature reserve. Apparently they're opening Disneyland Hong Kong there. Horrific.
Where did you travel after Hong Kong?
I decided I'd come back home overland. It took about four months in all. I travelled through south-west China for about three months. The landscape around Kunming is stunning. They've got those ridiculous, mad mountains that just rear up like towers of limestone. I then got the Trans-Siberian railway from Beijing and stopped in Ulan Bator which is a very strange place. As a vegetarian, it was difficult because everything seemed to be made of mutton. I remember lying down in a hostel and realising that even the pillows smelt of mutton. I came back via Moscow, then through Poland and the last stage of the journey was a grim 36-hour bus ride from Prague.
How did you find travelling through China?
It wasn't the easiest place, but travelling there as a woman on my own was actually a lot easier than many other places I've been. People were really nice to me and I didn't get any sexual harassment, maybe because I'm so tall. There are these invisible portcullises that do come down though. When I was up near the Tibetan border there was a real sense that I wasn't going any further.
I wanted to get a bus to a village further up and was simply told 'no'. There is an amazing word in Mandarin - 'méiyou' - which means 'no', 'go away' or 'no, we don't have any'. It's one of those words you can't argue with. Sometimes you'd ask for a room and they'd say 'méiyou' and you'd wonder why, because there were 20 room keys hanging up.
How did you cope with the language barrier?
I learned Cantonese while I was in Hong Kong and I can still speak it a bit. Of course in China they speak Mandarin and no one spoke English so I was completely useless. I've got very curly hair - people would come up and yank it. At one point it was quite cold and I was wearing black tights and then it warmed up so I just took them off. That almost caused a riot. I think they thought that was the colour of my skin and then I just peeled it off.
Have you taken any other long trips?
I did a three-month-long trip through South America about three years ago. We started in Chile and travelled down to Patagonia, then into Argentina. Eventually we went to Bolivia which I loved. We visited the Salar de Uyuni, the salt desert up beyond the Atacama. We travelled in the back of a truck for about four days - it's one of the most uncomfortable trips I've ever made - but once you're there it's worth it. The desert is extraordinary and the world is split in two with one half white and the other half blue. Incredible.
· The Distance Between Us by Maggie O'Farrell is published by Review.
