Gwalo Law Student Boat Trip

Junk boat trips are always a fun way to spend half of one's weekend in Hong Kong. Although they're really only about 8-10 hour adventures, they have on both occasions exhausted me well into the afternoon of the following day.

This Saturday was the birthday of two American U. law students, so all of the US law students except for the Rogue took to the water on a 50' Chinese pleasure junk. (Not sure if I explained this here before but junk is the name of a traditional type of boat here.)

Despite several setbacks, everyone had fun and we even snuck in a cake and happy birthday song ceremony on the ride back - an overwhelming success. Joe and Alison were thrilled. In case you're curious, the setbacks were (1) the coldest, grayest weather in Hong Kong since I've arrived and (2) a red tide that prevented those hearty few who were on the verge of jumping in despite the air temperature from swimming.

About 2.5 hours in, we improvised and persuaded our captain to take us to Cheung Chau, a small island that houses a fishing village and some beaches. This worked out well. We'd gotten a bit bored with our first destination and the conversation had turned to Joe explaining the Minnesota traditions of ice fishing and ice spearing. In turn, most of the passengers were consuming alcohol almost as fast as ice fisherman.

When we got to Cheung Chau, we dawdled getting off the boat at the public pier for about 10 minutes, causing a passenger ferry captain waiting behind us to get pissed off enough to open up his loudest horn on us. We took a look at a map and decided to head to the North Point Lookout. With only 1.5 hours on the island, we had to move quick so we rented bikes at the low rate of 10 hkd per hour!! A few of us even made up to the top...where the view of town was not only phenomenal, but also afforded me a glimpse of one of the best beaches that I've seen here in HK. At the bottom of the hill, the group linked up again and we went back to town, got on the boat, and headed to port. The cake ceremony was on this leg of the journey.

PS: sorry for the gray in the first photo but the weather was terrible.