track our trek

it’s nice to have a good stretch of time here, so we’re not so rushed to get from one place to the next…2 weeks in hong kong gives us enough time to poke around the city, see some of the outlying islands & maybe head to macau and taiwan.
we took a day trip to lamma island….40 mins on a ferry from central hk. it’s a beautiful little island w/ 2 towns – one in the south, one in the north. we landed in the southern port and walked a leisurely 3 hours through the mountains to the northern port. the scenery was incredible, and we came across our first beaches of the trip! for some unkown reason we hadn’t packed our suits, but went in up to our knees & spent a  couple hours relaxing.
psyched up after our first visit to one of the islands, we set out for lantau island the next day. we booked a night at a hostel there & put our bathing suits close to the top of the packs! we had visions of dropping our bags, visiting the tian tan big buddha and crashing on the beach for a couple days.
alas…it turned out our hostel was a 15 minute rugged walk uphill through the woods near the buddha…he sits on top of a peak, so nowhere near the beach! (not to worry…we decided we’d get up early, check out & hop the bus down to one of the beaches we’d passed on the way…packs ‘n all.) we climbed the 200+ steps to see the big buddha (really beautiful views) and paid a little extra to have a vegetarian meal at the temple (quite tasty!) then we went back to officially check in to the hostel around 5. when the receptionist casually mentioned the market would close at 6, we weren’t worried…our bellies were full and we planned to take a bus down into town to hang out for a bit…little did we know EVERYTHING shuts down on the mountain at 6pm! i mean lights out in the little fake tourist town… (even the 7-eleven, which apparently didn’t get the memo about what 7-eleven means!) and the buses all stopped running by 7!! if we took a bus down, there’d be no way to get back! so we strolled through the little village in disbelief and watched shopkeepers lock up, then turned around to head back to our hostel at 6:35pm…by this point it was pitch dark enough on the trail to need our high intensity flashlight. (thanks debbi!) we thought it was hilarious that the woman at the hostel had warned us she’d be locking the gat at 11pm. ha! we were practically sprinting through the woods dodging lizards at 6:30! and where the heck could we possible be until 11pm out there?!
uncertain as to how on earth we’d pass the evening (since we never did pick up those playing cards or the hackey sack we talked about) we met up with a motley crew of other travelers who’d been similarly duped into booking this place without knowing how remote it was. we kicked back on the balcony and chatted the hours away & watched the group of nurses from hk barbecuing down below. (they obviously knew what to expect when they booked their stay!) mark from ireland, pete from the uk, evan from nz, and david from shanghai were a lot of fun! in the morning we had to wait for the town to open up again at 10, then catch the bus to the beach…only to discover the waves were too choppy for swimming. ah well…back to civilization then, in search of a chinese laundry and some internet service! we’ll try the beach again tomorrow!

ps - happy happy birthday, dad!