Back from the wilderness...

Or at least a small island just off HK anyway.


Lamma Lamma Lamma! Let me hear you say "weeeeeee like seafood!" Ooh yeah.


Just a half hour ferry ride from the insane bustle of Central Hong Kong a mildly sleepy little island sits watching the constant flow of visitors pouring off the boats at 20 minute intervals intent on a good ol' fashion bushwalk over fully paved footpaths followed by the emptying of the region's breweries & oceans straight into their mildly wearied & massively famished bodies. In short: Good, clean fun.


Someone from my work organised for a big group of us to meet up on Sunday morning (yes, it took me a week to write this. What?) & catch the ferry across to Lamma Island for a walk from one side to the other where we would finish up with a big seafood lunch. Great plan. Tops. But as it turns out, no matter how upwardly mobile someone might be in the workplace, it means absolutely bugger all when their trying to drag their arses out of bed on the Sunday of a long weekend. So from an expected group of around 10 people, eventually I managed to find the other 3 guys who'd decided to make the oh-so-early time of 10:30am & we set off on our odyssey. Oh, actually, while I was waiting I saw some awesome fashion crimes. I swear the minute a guy gets married on in this city they cease to give any shit whatsoever about what they wear. Their criteria becomes a) Is it branded & b) Is my wife not angry. If there's two ticks, then they're off. Check this picture of a guy wearing two individually horrendous articles of clothing together as one barf-friendly ensemble, flanked at equal distance in the background by a grown man in a Spiderman shirt & some chick who has evidently pinched Michale Jackson's pants from the Thriller filmclip:

People...

So reconciling the fact that I'd have to spend the day on a somewhat remote island with people like this, I gave a little sigh & started looking around to see if anyone else had arrived. They hadn't. Oh well, more waiting. Eventually however, the four of us found each other, cursed & ridiculed the lame-os that had chickened out of a light walk on a Sunday morning, & then hopped onto the ferry.


As one of the deckhands closed the door/gangplank thing, the ferrymaster evidently received some sort of telepathic message & started backing, not just out, but the hell out of that peir mooring. And as soon as we were pointed towards sort-of-not-land, BOOOOOOONT! We were effing off! Goddamn that man likes his job. We basically wakeboarded in a thirty tonne boat for about twenty minutes among light chatter & a many comments about the number of people who were streaming to & from the "Vomit Bag" dispenser as we alternately looked each other in the chins & foreheads. I think the trip was around half an hour, but honestly after getting locked in a decent conversation & losing all concept of time by having my brain jostled up & down in the same way that you buy a bag of chips from the supermarket but realise only the bottom fifth is full & so everything in there has been turned into salt & vinegar flavoured chalk, I really can't say for sure. Also I forgot to check my watch. I'm details focussed during the week, the weekend is my coma time. Anyway, moral of the story is we made it in one piece after a journey that was as comfortable as the devil-worshipping nautical methhead behind the wheel could have made it.


Then this happened:

HAHAHAHAHA! Oooooh. Engrish.

So, I guess the message was that they didn't want any loaded guns on their island. That puerile humour distraction aside, I can say that I was actually a little surprised with Lamma when I first stepped off. I think I've said this before on this blog, but when you live & work in the little bubble that is Hong Kong city you can tend to actually forget that this is still China. Still, it was plenty quaint & all that. Observe my software using skills as I stitch these photos together in a way that lets me take credit for it:

Oooooooooooooooooooooooh

And the other side of the arrival pier:

Can't remember the name of the town we arrived at, but it was a small little place speckled with an equal third each of gwai low visitors, HK locals getting away from it all (well, getting away from some of it at least), & true locals who looked pretty much like they'd all been especially helicoptered in that morning from Koh Samui with daggy old t-shirts & everyone either sitting on their doorsteps languidly fanning themselves or winding their way through the narrow streets on bicycles. It was kind of a cool little town & I'm definitely going back for some outdoor barbeque & beer action, but for some reason it happened to host one of the cheapest fine cheese shops in the whole country. I have NO idea why French brie & English ash cheddar would be cheaper on that little dot of nowhere, but there it was. Cheap cheese. Freakin' odd.

Streets

And streets 

a THIRD street 

And nope, that's pretty much it. This unbelievably ugly thing de-marks the end of town & the beach.

Ahhh, fun in the (smog filtered) sun at the (power station) beach.

The start of the trail to the other side of Lamma was a little more crowded than I'd anticipated...

This next photo needs a special introduction for two reasons. Firstly, I need to post this as it's one of only two (bad) photos of me with me actually in it that I got all day no matter the fact that I look like someone who was hit really, really hard on the head as a child & has been extremely happy ever since. Secondly, It's the best shot of one of Lamma's defining characteristics. Yes, it has nature & (real) birds (actually) singing, & yes it has half decent beaches, & yes yes yes, it has awesomely fresh & abundant seafood, but what it has more than anything else is a whopping great bloody coal-fired power station hanging all zabbly right off the side of it's most popular swimming beach. I mean I don't know about the people back home, but if I was going to crank out a 70 metre tall poisonous eyesore the size of a city block I would SO dump it right on Brighton Beach. BOOM. Enjoy the vista of your plummeting property value, locals. You're welcome.

Me posing with the power station. I call him Gareth.

Anyway, the poor photographical skills of my coworkers aside, this was an uuber pleasant walk through what was - by Hong Kong standards - an uncrowded & very green island. With few slopes & a gentle breeze, this was more of a meander than a proper walk but it got us out of the house, reminded us that there are birds in the world & gave us all a case of the squelching megatropical mondo-sweats. Actually that last part wasn't so great, but hey, it's the tropics. Whatarayagonnado, right?

Check that humidity. 

And it was all of course, followed up by the real reason that we were there: A million ice cold glasses of beer & a pile of seafood that would make one of those killer octopus things think twice about it's love handles. Mo' photos for y'all. This time it's all about the food. Thanks for coming. Talk again soon. Nom nom nom...

Decent view. Nice. Quaint. 

Wasn't busy when we arrived.

Then it got real busy all of a sudden...

A few of my coworkers, their partners, etc.

Gigantic mess caused entirely by me. It was really yum. 

LOBSTERS! *SQUEEEEEAL!*

Almost best fish ever. OMGsotastylol.

And what lunch would be complete without me getting boozed & acting like a twat whenever a camera is pointed at me. I was happier than I look here. Also, I think there's a lot of food in my mouth by the look of things.

In conclusion:

Everyone should go to Lamma island. It tastes good.