Lovin' Lantau

On Sunday, Amanda and I had a fantastic, productive, lovely, wonderful day in southern Lantau.  I love Lantau!  It is so relaxed and chill compared to central Hong Kong.  If it weren't such a long commute to work, I would move there in a heartbeat.  We took the ferry from Central to Mui Wo, where we indulged in a reasonable seafood lunch at the Mui Wo cooked food market.

Old boats by Silvermine Bay

Lots of bicycles with the ferry in the background

A most delicious lunch of fresh, plump, juicy seafood at the Mui Wo Cooked Food Market:

                              

A peaceful, relaxing lunch scene:

Then the real business got started.  We took the bus to Shui Hau (well, first to Tong Fuk, then switched to another bus), a beach that is very well known and popular for clamming.  It was a brutally hot day and we waited for the hottest time of day to start digging, as the tides recede the most in the afternoon.  Hence, here I am, on my stool with my mini rake, water bottle for storing my clams, and a very fashionable UV umbrella.  I quickly abandoned the umbrella because the winds were quite strong.

Staking out my spot

A darling shrimp with robin blue "legs"

A cute yellow and red speckled crab

Lots of people spread out afar, digging

Traces left from a professional rake

Work for your food, people!

I loved clamming.  It was really relaxing to have the hot sun beating down on my neck and arms, the breeze whistling in my ear, and my usual litany of thoughts brought to a stand-still as I clambered greedily through the muddy, sandy silt, my mind and arms solely focused on sifting for the hidden hard nugget.  I felt triumphant every time my rake clinked, and the clam rolled like a large marble in my hand. 

Jaw-droppingly beautiful.  Doesn't it look fake?

After all our hard work, we stumbled back to the house where we had rented the clamming equipment.  The family at the house cleaned off our clams for us and sauteed them in a mildly spicy, lip-smackingly good chili sauce, which we devoured quickly (a lot more quickly than the time it took us to get all of them!).

Yum!

Random:  Lantau has quite a few wild water buffalo and cattle. Kinda cute, but they sure know how to leave big stinky deposits in inconvenient places.