It’s hit the doldrums point, when each week of lesson planning looms angrily.  The weather is heating up, and my aircon has been running far, far more the past week than at any time prior.  The mosquito net is up in my room, lending an enchanted castle vibe that was sorely lacking.  All in all, we are nearing the rundown to the end of the term.  You see it on the kids’ faces as they stare blankly at you, unaware or unwilling to proffer that ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer you have asked for five times.  What then does one do in China at this point?  You leave!  Sort of.  You go to Hong Kong.

The May 1st holiday gave me a chance to get away for a little bit, offering a break from teaching for a day that I used to visit HK.  This time however it was not to explore the urban jungle of Kowloon or traipse up and down the hilly streets of Hong Kong Island, but rather to take a ferry to Lamma Island, one of the outlying bits of Hong Kong.  Pleasantly enough, it is nearly devoid of auto traffic and has only a few settlements clinging to its shores.  The only downside is that on a holiday, it is jam-packed of slow-moving Chinese folks ‘hiking’.  Chinese hiking means walking slowly, talking loudly, and half the time blasting bad music from your hip-mounted phone.  I did succeed in escaping this by climbing one of the island’s peaks and enjoying an expansive view over the sea and surrounding specks of land.

The following weekend brought a return to Hong Kong.  This time I was part of a group of fellow teachers and we set out for Tai Long Wan, Big Wave Bay.  It is situated on the fringes of a peninsula inside a large park on the eastern edge of the New Territories.  Put simply, it is remote, at least, as remote as this region gets.  After taking the train from the border, we were only 2 bus rides and an hour and a half hike away.  We made it in late after the sun had gone down, setting our bags and tired bodies on the sandy beach.  Our path that night was lit by a bright full moon, unobscured by any clouds.

A footnote to add to the relatively quiet hike in was the ‘small cow’ we saw around a bend in the road.  Or so we thought.  Upon further inspection we spied a baby boar charging up a hill, scared by our presence.  Peering around the corner I saw that indeed, there was no cow.  Simply a large mother boar, staring at me.  Perhaps past my waist in height doubtlessly heavier than myself.  Now she tore down the hillside.  Meaning we had effectively cut the mother off from her baby.  Not good.  We waited them out before proceeding and had no further peril on our hike.  I should say that I have read in many a guidebook to be wary of wild boars and scoffed at the notion.  Now that I have seen one, it makes a lot of sense.  They make for quite the burly presence.

Camping was a pleasure.  A mosquito net substituted as a tent for me and we gathered firewood enough to warm our bodies at night when the winds rolled in from the sea and a chill fell.  We took to jumping into the waters to assault the rolling waves that crashed down at us and roared.  All of this under the bright moonlit night sky before huddling back around the fire to dry off and eat and talk.  For two nights we were set in here.  I had the great (mis)fortune of doing a supply run the second day, involving a lot of walking, even more dozing off on buses, and the great tease that is City Super, a grocery with all the Western things we could want but cannot afford on our mainland salaries.

As a whole, it made for a wonderful escape from the grit and bustle of Shenzhen.  After a small to-do over the meticulous but silly new added paperwork at the border, a result of the swine flu scare, we were all off on our respective bus lines back home.  In the coming year I intend to go back to Tai Long Wan and get my fill of the place.  For now, I have set my sights on Lantau Island, another of Hong Kong’s further reaches filled with beautiful hikes and natural scenery.