Here is is Sunday already and I’m left trying to figure out what happened Thursday, Friday and Saturday!  No matter how tired one is, a travel journal should always be kept up daily…

Thursday we had our usual breakfast at the hotel breakfast buffet, nothing very unusual   Then we took a ferry to Lamma Island (no this was not the ferry! The Queen Elizabeth docked there – seriously huge cruise ship).   Here are some ferry boat related photos:  fake sampan…

Once we arrived at  Yung Shue Wan on Lamma Island we hiked,via paved trail (still, up and down and my knees were not yet recovered from the day before, so I was rather grouchy about it…), to the other side of the island, Sok Kwu Wan, where there is pretty much just a waterfront of fresh fish restaurants.

Once we got off the ferry the trail meanders through the town.  The trail is just wide enough for a golf cart and a half and the main mode of vehicle transportation is electric carts that hold everything from produce and building materials to people.  I guess you have to know someone – the only people I saw riding were a woman about my age in animated conversation with the driver as they flew past and later a young woman in giggling conversation with the driver – I think he was trying to scare her a bit with his driving.  Some things are universal all over the world.

         I made the guys all use hand wipes after they obsessively checked the change return for coins… a little sidewalk shrine

this was cool: appeared to be a bed/crib headboard re-purposed into a street grate over a ditch.

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Eventually the trail left the town and then the scenery was either greenery or vegetable gardens.  The houses are typically ramshackle with anything one might need to live or fix something or whatever out in the side yard in a heap – pvc pipe, bicycle tires, cardboard boxes, you name it.   Dogs are everywhere running freely, most with collars and very skittish – they appear as though they have been “trained” to not approach strangers as even looking at them as if you might reach out and pet them (which I wouldn’t anyway, I know the stranger danger dog rules…) causes them to skirt around you and cower ever so slightly.  The trail then took us up and over the higher points (to the creak, creak, creak of my knees) where there were some lovely views – really, anytime you get to a higher point there are fantabulous views of the water and green island mountains.

 approaching the fishing village  one of the man made caves that was apparently built by the Japanese during WWII to house “kamikaze motorboats”- this one was a tunnel that was started and not fiinished when the war ended, but supposedly there are more finished ones around the island.

These are dogs.  I have no idea what it’s all about.  They are all black. At one point when we were eating we could see them all run to one end of the beach (for food?) except for one dog who remained sitting there at attention and eventually other dogs came back to it (with food?)  Then, typical of dogs, they all went back to sleep.

Temple at Sok Kwu Wan:

We had dinner there in Sok Kwue Wan Rainbow Bay, the entire waterfront one fresh seafood restaurant after another.  Some of the fish didn’t look so damn fresh to me, floating as they were in the aquariums, but upon closer inspection they were simply on their way out. Still…it creeped me out a bit. I honestly don’t remember what I have eaten anymore, there is a lot of group ordering as you would a Chinese restaurant at home.  Some of it I enjoy, others not so much.  I eat a lot of rice to settle my stomach as it seems that there is a lot of oil used in the cooking.

After dinner the rest of the group headed off for a poker game with friends but as I was falling asleep in my plate of fried rice Al and I opted to ferry back home.  I have not even been able to take my makeup off on these nights – just falling into bed already asleep before I arrive at the hotel….

The view of Hong Kong, awaiting the ferry home