Sunday Hiking in New Territories

I was in a silent kind of mood today, probably from oversocializing this past week:

• Monday: dinner with coworker (v. good, got head on straight from talk)
• Wednesday: favor to a friend (junk trip and dinner in Tsim Sha Tsui with an amazing view of Victoria Harbor, v. nice)
• Thursday: Korea night (much drinkage and bad singing)
• Friday: lunch with hiking club friends (lovely people -- so glad to have met) and a quick celebratory drink for the first year who just passed the bar (lovely person -- so glad to have met)
• Saturday: acupressure massage (painful) and dinner with 2 coworkers (great food, stilted convo)

This is far, far more socializing than I do in New York. For an introvert, it's tiring, even if it's enjoyable. So by today, Sunday, I was talked out and didn't really feel like talking with the hiking club people. But fortunately, it was a pretty hard, very brushy trail, and so easy enough to pace myself between clusters of walkers.

It was my first time hiking in the New Territories, the area of Hong Kong closest to mainland China. Much wilder out there, and correspondingly, cleaner and prettier.

I met up with the lovely French couple with whom I had lunch on Friday (she works at a bank, he's on sabbatical from his job with the national health service) at 8 am this morning, as it took over an hour to get the meeting point. We actually got there a bit early, which was fine. Lots of people were out at the restaurants in Sai Kung having dim sum, and we strolled around.
You can apparently order seafood straight from the fishermen along the quay and they'll toss it up. Some examples of recent catches:
They look rather sad, don't they? I felt a bit sad for them.

I love signs like the one in this next picture.

The next pictures, most frustratingly, do not capture the hazy, mystical feel of the dark mountains interspersed with the waters of the West Bay (Sai Wan).




Hikers at repose:


To give you a sense of where we climbed, look at the tiny little white dots in the center of this picture. Those are 2 stragglers, coming down through the brush on the back side of the mountain we climbed (through the brush).


It was a great hike. The last section was steep and brushy, and we all used vines and trees to stop ourselves from rolling down. We came out on the beautiful beach of Sai Wan, which a pack of wild dogs seemed to also be enjoying immensely.




We had beers nearby this beach, then it was over another steep ass hill or two to catch a taxi to Sai Kung for dinner. On the way over said steep ass hill, though, we caught the sun sidling down and creating a most picturesque reservoir scene.



It's almost enough to make one love Hong Kong, no?