HITCH-HIKING HOME FROM HONG KONG WITH NO CASH
AWELSH woman who has been travelling the world for seven months is trying to get home from Hong Kong without spending any money. Rhinal Patel is hitch-hiking her way across Asia and Europe, asking restaurants for leftovers and going through bins searching for food.
The 34-year-old, from Tonteg, near Pontypridd, was travelling with a budget of between £40 and £80 per month but when she arrived in Hong Kong she decided to donate her money to a charity called Goa Outreach, which supports children who live in the streets and slums of India.
Rhinal said: “I decided to travel with no money upon arriving in Hong Kong because I met a girl in Taiwan who was very sad because she was adopted and felt that her adopted mother did not love her.
“I could feel her sadness bubbling out of her, and I told her to travel as a therapy to get some perspective.”
The girl travelled with only $US 500 (£400) and later wrote to Rhinal to thank her for inspiring her to find happiness.
Rhinal added: “I decided after this to travel using no money to show the world you can do anything if you want it enough, and money is not important but your mental health is.”
With no money to pay for even basic necessities, Rhinal has had to hitch-hike all the way from Hong Kong, and is currently in Norway.
Eating has also been a challenge, and she has often had to go dumpster diving – rummaging through waste – and asking people for food.
“In terms of hitch-hiking I feel it is more dangerous in European countries than other places because people are more closed,” she explained.
“We are raised with a more selfsufficient mentality and to treat a stranger as a possible threat.
“This makes hitch-hiking harder, and the main people that have taken me have been immigrants.”
She has been asking restaurants for left-over food – not only as one of her few ways of being able to eat, but also to show how waste for one person can be a resource for another.
Rhinal said some people have also bought her food when they hear her story, and a train manager in Norway let her board the train free of charge after he learned what she was doing in the Scandinavian sub-zero temperatures and heavy snow.
“I expected my journey to be much easier in European first world coun- tries in comparison to Asian developing countries but it’s not.
“The rules make it impossible to ask for left-over food in a dignified way, which means you have to literally put your hand in a bin to get it.”
Rhinal said the people who have inspired her the most during her travels across India, Nepal, Japan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Macau, the Philippines, Indonesia and into Europe are the indigenous tribes who still live as hunter-gatherers without using money.
Rhinal will be making the final leg of her journey from Cardiff to Tonteg at the end of the month.