A few weeks ago, I went overland to Hong Kong with 3 other teachers. This meant taking a 15-minute taxi ride to the border crossing and then about an hour riding metro trains and one bus to the starting point for our hike. Before I came to China, I had pictured Hong Kong as a bubbling, crowded mass of humanity and tall buildings on a very small island, but I’ve discovered to my delight that I was wrong. In fact, the Island also has miles of hiking trails, scenic views of the surrounding islands and lovely beaches. We hiked the Dragon Back trail, a windswept ridge with stunning scenery to either side. After a couple of hours we descended to "Big Wave Bay" and felt we could be in a beach town anywhere in the world. Surfboard rental shops, dudes with tanned skin, tattoos, and salt-blown hair, greasy spoon restaurants with upstairs decks where you can sit and drink beer and relax forever in the ocean breezes, the proprietor looking as if he now lived in shorts and sandals after retiring from a stressful life somewhere else. After lunch, we changed into swim suits and I charged straight into the waves with whoops of joy! We spent the rest of the afternoon there until dusk (always around 6 in the tropics) and made our way back home, tired and happy.
Since I didn't write about that trip right away, I'm including two for the price of one in this post. Expanding my horizons recently, I ventured over to Macau for the day. As with the ferry to Hong Kong, this was an easy one-hour trip. I left my house just 20 minutes before sailing time, walked 5 minutes to the terminal, paid $35 round-trip, cleared customs, and got on board. Shekou is on a peninsula; the Hong Kong ferry heads slightly northeast, winding around the New Territories, whereas the Macau ferry travels west across the South China Sea before it meets the huge Pearl River estuary. You can actually see the line in the water where it changes from blue-green to muddy brown. I probably should've copied some information off the internet before I went, but I trusted to the tourist office and traveller's luck to make it an interesting day. As it is, I will definitely go back again to see some of the sights I missed. I refused an offer from a taxi driver in the terminal for a 2-hour tour; instead, I took a bus into the center of town. Macau has an interesting history, some of which I learned at the Maritime Museum. I hadn't realized how pagan parts of China were, but the local people still worship "A-Ma," goddess of seafarers before the Portuguese got there with their Catholic saints; hence, "A-Ma Gao," or home of A-Ma, became "Macau." The Maritime Museum described several festivals celebrated there, including "Festival of the Hungry Ghosts," which built on Buddhism, and the "Drunken Dragon Festival," where men parade through the streets with dragon heads, drinking copious amounts of alcohol and blessing the fishermen.
Across from the museum is A-Ma's temple, which is built against the rocks and doesn't have an inside, just a series of altars alongside the trail where people burned incense and prayed. Outside, I bought mango ice cream from an old man with a cart, and wandered some more. I tried my luck at the slot machines at the garish Hotel Lisboa, but it was all in Chinese and I had trouble knowing what to do. I kept walking, went in and out of restaurants looking at menus until I settled on vegetable curry at the friendly "Now" cafe, and bought a book at a bookstore since there aren't any English language bookstores in Shekou. I didn't find some of the places I was hoping to see, but I loved the colonial architecture and the chance to see such a different place.
When I boarded the 8:45 ferry to go home, it was still warm, though today feels like it has finally cooled off. I hope this brief description gives you some picture of my adventurous day.
