Lentau Island

Perhaps the best experience I had of Hong Kong was when I visited the island of Lentau for a day visit. During this time I got to see, along with the other Canadians, the rainforest countryside (right), a remote fishing village by the name of Tai-O, and one of the largest bronzed buddha's in the world. To get to this island the lot of us took a fast ferry through Hong Kong harbour for about a half hour before docking in the Mai-O port, or something close to that name. After landing and eyeing the McDonalds restaurant that polluted the view at once, I wasn't sure how great of an experience this would prove to be thinking that a tropical island really shouldn't be scarred by such a sight...but it managed to pull through later in the trip. Our tour included quite a nice bus trip down Lentau's cramped winding street and we got a first-hand view of the mountainous landscape that held some of Hong Kong's most dangerous inmates in the prisons dotted along the hillside. What a juxtaposition I can tell you that (Hoora eng 12). We then visited one of Lentau's receding beaches, which was also a little more violent than usual we heard because of the tropical storms that Taiwan was experiencing at the time and was throwing our weather out of whack as well. I got a good video of some of the waves, but I just can't figure out how to put it on here so... no luck. Then I came across the little village of Tai-O which turned out to be the real eye opener since it was really my first glimpse of something that could give me culture shock. Walking down the streets, it was Bryan who pointed out the guilt we'd felt at taking pictures of these people's poverty. It was a tourist stop, so it was very obvious that they'd seen many more of us before and weren't too abbrasive about us essentially walking into their homes and interrupting their daily lives, but it felt disturbing to realize that these people have birthright into very little potential to do something with their lives other than fish from the same waters that they throw their waste into. Very sad, but also eye-opening.