Tai Tam

I wish I could tell you I was trying out a new photography style, but in reality I had accidentally changed some camera settings when I last used my camera during my descent at Bukhansan, and I didn't have the time or realization to change them. I had thought it was due to the rain that the photos were so grainy, as my viewfinder got blurry due to the moisture, but that was only part of the reason. The sharper photos from my phone are interspersed throughout.

I arrived back in Hong Kong the night before, and I was absolutely knackered. I enjoy being in new places, but the to-and-fro part is a decidedly less enjoyable part, especially when it involves overseas immigration, customs, lines, and luggage woes.

Maybe I brought the bad luck of the TTC with me, but a historic signal outage issue caused mass delays with the MTR that morning. It took my friend a long time to travel a few stops, and so we, like the rest of Hong Kong, flooded to the streets to take the buses.


I had never experienced a similar amount of crowding in the streets of Hong Kong. It didn't help that it was raining, and at my height, my eyes were on the same level as many of the umbrellas in the air. It took a lot of dodging to make it through the streets.





Our initial plan of hiking Sai Kung had to be scrapped after waiting for an hour for buses that were not coming due to the aforementioned MTR issue. Instead, my friend found a trail leading from the mountains below North Point, and we decided to see where they would lead us.

Soon enough, we found ourselves at the quarries of the aptly named Quarry Bay. There were signs everywhere warning of danger due to detonation and military exercises, so we were careful to stay far away from the fences. We spotted robots that were on patrol detonating devices within the quarry, a sight my friend said he sees a few times a year when an unexploded ordanance, remnant of the war, is found in the city and carefully dismantled by the aforementioned robots.





We definitely took a strange turn somewhere, as we found an unmarked path with a staircase leading up into the mountains - with signs beside the fence that you were entering territory where there were military training exercises and danger from stray bullets or explosions. My friend was apprehensive, but as we were only going along the fence, and not within, we decided to carry on.

This is also where I got eaten alive by mosquitoes due to the pause in the rain and the heavily forested area the path took us through. Suddenly, we found ourselves at the top of the mountain range and looking down a beautiful view.








We continued on through mountain ranges, roads, forest paths, and a pit stop at a rest area before we found ourselves at the bridge towards Stanley. We boarded a minibus to Stanley, about five hours after we started up the mountain. My friend was ravenously hungry, and as were wandered Stanley Market in search of a restaurant that could not be found, we settled on a place where a very unfulfilling cream pasta was ordered. I mentioned the dai pai dong that I had visited on my previous couple of visits to Stanley, and there we ordered Swiss wings with wonton mein, curry fishballs, curry siu mai, and a tall bottle of ice cold Coca Cola. Honourable mention also goes to the convenience store that was selling a certain Time magazine.






Tired and soggy, we decided to head back towards the city centre, and then halfway through, realized we had boarded the wrong bus. We ended up in Cyberport, an area of Hong Kong Island I had never heard of before. A somewhat failed venture of building a technology hub led Cyberport to become somewhat of a ghost town, and that could be clearly seen by the many closed stores that lined the empty malls. My friend mentioned that the architecture and interior design was reminiscent of those old movies about the "future"; very unrealistically futuristic a la Back to the Future.



After walking around a park, which was hard hit by the recent typhoon, we settled down by the harbour among some people who were fishing by the pier. It was here how I realized this was something I really didn't have the option of doing back home; settling by the oceanside and just looking out to the harbour and surrounding islands - it really made me appreciate how different life would be had I grown up anywhere else, and why some of my friends decided to move here.




We finally headed back to our respective places for dinner - I had a quick shower and was finally free of my sogginess after a day of rain and hiking. The first family dinner with my dad's side of the family commenced, and three hours later, we trekked home and I passed out for the night.