One year ago

A year ago almost exactly I made a work trip which became also a trail run . For reasons, far too complicated to mention, I had to visit Beijing and Shangahai. Unfortunately the Chinese Embasy in Italy, perhaps because it is in Italy and they've taken to laid back Italian ways, but maybe just because they don't like to make it easy to go to China takes like forever to get you a visa. Therefore I decided to pass through Hong Kong where it is possible to pick up a Chinese visa in 36 hours (easily arranged by the hotel)and where I could also visit one of my clients and therefore kill two birds with one stone so to speak. When I am in Hong Kong I always love to call up some friends, get together, have a meal, a glass, or two, or three of good wine. So I did call and Friday evening we did everything mentioned above. At the end of the evening Monica and her husband James asked me if I would like to go for a trek on saturday afternoon. Knowing that they are not really that sporty and rather doubting that there is any good trekking in Hong Kong I was kind of susprised but since I had nothing better to do I said yes. They picked me up at my hotel on Saturday afternoon and we drove off the island of Hong Kong and on to the mainland of Kowloon and then down the coast a bit to a place called Clearwater Bay and a small carpark. On one side was the sea and on the other what looked like a hill. The path lead upwards and so up we went till we reached the crest of the hill and this is the view.


I was pretty amazed to see such a view just twenty minutes from the centre of Hong Kong in one of the most densely populated areas of the world. Monica and James showed me the path we would be taking and seeing the lust in my eyes they suggested I take off and run around a bit, which I did and I ran till I reached the top of the hill which they had told me would be our turnaround point, and then ran back so that I could accompany them. On the top of the hill I got this other great view.





Later we went to a local fishing port where we had a great laidback chinese fish meal and I took this photo of some wierd looking crabs - no really - I know they look like trilobites of prehistoric times but they really are crabs - delicious too.