The graffiti says “Welcome to Lamma, please keep clean.”
Lamma Island is the third largest island in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (Hong Kong Island, Lantau Island) and can be reached by a ferry departing from Central MTR Station. You’ll see in the picture below: one power plant provides cooling (almost all places in HK do not have heating) and electricity to this fishing community turned tourist trap.
There are two possible ferry destinations from Central: Yong Shue Wan in the north of Lamma, and Sok Kwo Wan in the middle-south. We got off at Yong Shue Wan and proceeded down the Main Street (the only marked street) to the southern part of the island. The beaches in the northern part were busier here compared to those in Sai Kung because no long hikes were needed to reach them. Yong Shue Wan itself is the biggest village on the island with many small shops and western-style restaurants for foreigners.
Sok Kwo Wan serves as a refueling stop for travelers wishing to hike the southern part of Lamma (mostly wetlands and hills). Continuing from there, I realized why people were moving into the city from these outlying areas - man seemed to be losing a battle with nature here, vegetation grew all over houses and there was no solid land to build on. On one instance, there was a lone old man sitting with his dog in an (almost) abandoned village; he muttered something unintelligible to us (it didn’t sound like Cantonese either) and pointed in a direction with his finger. It seemed like he’d seen many travelers, but knew he wasn’t going anywhere itself, it was a somewhat haunting moment that I still remember.
To end this post, here’s a video I took of a cool little water wheel machine - you can hear elderly women speaking Cantonese in the background too.
Album Link: http://picasaweb.google.com/jasonylu89/LammaIsland?feat=directlink
Next Episode: "Shenzhen Revisited”
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