Exploring Half of Lamma Island

We went to Lamma Island today. No, there are no llamas there. That’s a completely different hemisphere.

Lamma Island, the third largest island in Hong Kong, is a 30 minute ferry ride from Central. Our plan was to eat lunch at one of the seafood restaurants near the ferry landing in Sok Kwu Wan, walk the paved path across the island (the island is pretty narrow), stop at Hung Shing Yeh Beach and then end up at Yung Shue Wan and take the ferry home from there. Let me tell you what we really did.

There are about 10 seafood restaurants in Suk Kwu Wan, all in a row, right next to each other. All have huge tanks filled with fish, crustaceans, mollusks and arthropods. Yummy! So we picked “Rainbow Restaurant” because it had the most people at it and we figured if that’s the one everyone was at, it had to be good.

It was kind of a tourist-y place, which was great because we didn’t feel like we were standing out of the crowd. The people at the table next to us were speaking French and German, (see photo below of inappropriately dressed Frenchman) and the folks on the other side were from Australia.

When the food came we realized that we had picked the right place. Everything was delicious. I even got the girls to try squid (but they didn’t like it).

So after lunch we set out on our “trek” across the island. There are no cars on the island, so it was very peaceful change walking along next to the water with only the sound of the ocean. We walked for about a half and hour. There were beautiful butterflies, spooky caves, small village neighborhoods, cool ocean breezes, oh yea, and the things that stopped us in our tracks and freaked out the kids . . . spiders. GIANT spiders. REALLY GIANT SPIDERS. They were about six inches across and seven inches long. Maggie started to scream and wriggle. Katie was all, “I’m outta here.” And Tom and I thought they were awesome, as long as they stayed where they were, about five feet away from us and the path.

The girls decided they no longer wanted to hike around the island, go to the beach or see Yung Shue Wan, so we turned around and headed back to Sok Kwu Wan. The next ferry was about to leave when we got to the dock, which, I think, was fine with the girls.

All in all it was a nice change of pace from Hong Kong Island. It was very peaceful and rural and it put any spiders I may ever see in my house into perspective.