I have never seen more escalators in my life.  I wonder if there is some sort of statistic regarding escalators per square foot of a city?  Matt, any info to share?  Hong Kong even has the world’s longest outdoor escalator that takes you through tiny streets with tons of shops and popular restaurants.  Interesting.

There is a popular beach called Sai Wan that we had heard about that you could get to through a town called Sai Kung (an awesome town by the sea known for its super fresh seafood).  The beach was supposedly beautiful and fairly secluded.  Our first attempt at getting there was Thursday, and all we got out of it was a $9 ferry ride to a golf course instead.  Whoopsies!

Our second attempt was on Saturday.  We got up fairly early and decided to finally find a dim sum restaurant, so after some research on the internet, we ended up at Ho Choi Seafood Restaurant.  When we reached the hostess stand, the woman says “two?” and then does a double take at us, rolls her eyes, and slowly grabs the english menu then walks off to get us a table.  Great start.  This restaurant is ginormous and Jason is by far the only white person in the entire place.  He takes this as a good sign, but we notice that the english menu is very limited compared to the Chinese menus.  Yes, there were about five menus in Chinese and exactly one piece of paper as the english menu.  Jason, in his neverending quest to eat something crazy at every meal, decides we should just order a couple things in Chinese without knowing what they are.  We ended up ordering fried chicken feet (which I thought was pretty disgusting) and two other types of meat- we have yet to find out what they were.

Once we arrived in Sai Kung after dim sum, we had to take a packed bus to an area where we caught the Maclehose Trail to the beach.  We read that the trail took 40 minutes, but in actuality we hiked for two hours!  It was a gorgeous hike, nothing that I had ever seen before, and was pretty strenuous since we basically had to cross two mountains.  (Note: We were wearing flip flops and noticed that everyone that passed us wore extreme hiking and running gear.  Whoopsies again!).  On the way we passed a couple old and abandoned villages.  I am going to call these villages “Creepville” because of a couple reasons: 1) Though they were abandoned, they were chained and locked up, and all of the windows were barred like a jail.  2) Out of one of the ABANDONED buildings in Creepville, we heard soft Chinese church music coming from the inside.  If it weren’t for all of the other people walking on the trail, I would have wanted to turn around and run back.  We did pass a couple other tiny villages that also looked fairly abandoned, but were not as creepy.  There were two older men who were talking so loudly, almost shouting, to one another that we could hear them far before we saw them on the trail.  By reasonable deduction we guessed that they were discussing which Lady Gaga song was the best; “Poker Face” or “Just Dance”.

When we finally reached the beach it was clear that the strenuous hike, the humidity, and Creepville were all worth it. It might have been the most beautiful beach we had ever seen, complete with fine, white sand and extremely clear blue water that was a perfect temperature.  There was even a couple tiny, outdoor Chinese restaurants that mostly tourists were sitting at.  Though it was a Saturday, there might have only been about 50 people at the beach which made it crowded enough to feel safe yet secluded enough to make you feel like you were really somewhere unique.  There were surfers, French families, other young tourists, and locals alike.  This was probably our best day of the trip so far…

Random Thought of the Day: In restaurants here in Hong Kong, when they hand you the check they hover over you until you give them your payment.  AWKWARD…

Random Quote of the Day: During our first attempt at getting to Sai Wan beach (on Thursday), Jason had a moment of frustration and became stubborn when we couldn’t figure out if we should go to the Sai Wan beach or take a ferry to another island:

Jason:  “There are two choices.  One of them leads to the most fun ever.  The other one goes to hell on earth.  There are no in-betweens.  I want to make the right decision!!!“

Filed under: Travel: China