Hong Kong 2010, Part 2 of 3
It was dinner time. Problem was, we had just left the Pirate’s Cave, and all of the restaurants were on the other end of Cheung Chau Island, a little spot of land of the coast of the main Hong Kong Island. We made our way back to where our first ferry dropped us off. When we came over the rise, we could see that our boat was nowhere around. We approached the only boat at the loading area and the old gent behind the wheel held up 5 fingers, 1/6th the cost of our ride over. That’s just the way it works around here, you never know when you are getting ripped off, so always assume you are.
This time, we were not alone. A small group of older Chinese people were riding also. I made McKenzie go to the front of the boat so I could get a couple of pictures. I guess her blonde hair was too much, because one of the gentlemen gestured to show he wanted to pose with her. McKenzie obliged. Since coming to China, she has handled her near celebrity status very well and it has hardly gone to her head. They posed together for several shots, and the others seemed to really enjoy how graceful McKenzie handled the request.When we got to the landing, we made our way towards the restaurants. Cheung Chau Island is known for its seafood, so I wanted to try it. There were several restaurants where you could choose from a list of creatures, still alive and swimming. They had a whole array of fish, eels, shrimp, turtles and some creatures that looked more like bait to me. One rather popular item reminded me of the little bugs you see crawling around the barnacles on the face of a seawall, except these were about 3 inches long. We decided to eat off of the menu instead.
Aletha ordered shrimp, while McKenzie and I got noodles. Mine was a seafood noodle dish so it came covered with a scoop of seafood parts: a tentacle here, a shrimp there, maybe a few clams and a squid just for good measure. Everything was delicious. The tentacles were a little tough and chewy, but quite good.
We had apparently been on the island long enough for Aletha’s animal charm to float around, because a scrawny cat came up to our table looking for some scraps. They of course fed it little pieces of everything and it seemed very gracious. It hung around until Aletha snatched it up by the nap of its neck to see if it had been nursing. When she put it back down, it left us alone.
We had about an hour before the fast ferry would return. Aletha wanted to visit some of the stores, and I wanted to go to the ocean side of the island, so we spilt up. The walk to the ocean was very short. The ocean side had a long sandy beach surrounded by a shark net. As it was late in the day, no one was swimming. I turned to head back and saw a sign pointing towards the ancient cave drawings. A quick glance at my watch told me I did not have time to see them. I’ll put that on my list should I ever make it back to this small dot in the middle of the ocean.
While I waited around for the fast ferry that would take us back to Hong Kong Island I watched several small fishing boats return with their catches. I saw a couple of rather large grouper hauled in, but nothing more than that. The sun set just behind the mountain peak on the other side of the harbor as the ferry returned. It made for a fantastic end to a great day.
