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Dave Says:
The nice lady at the Hong Kong tourist board said we should visit a small fishing village called Tai O. The Hong Kong tourist board is pretty well oiled machine so if they say Tai O then we say “Tally Ho”. We hopped a local bus from the giant Buddha and wound down and around for about thirty minutes to the small village. Strangely for Hong Kong there were no tourists or westerners on the bus and once we stepped into the village it was obvious why. This is a town that despite it’s proximity to one of the busiest cities in the world, doesn’t see outsiders very often. Situated in a natural harbor it’s main industry is fishing but industry is putting it grandly. Small boats head out for shrimp and other local seafare but its a subsistence operation. The water is dirty and diesel spills are common yet most of the fishing is done off the bridge or from the window of the stilt houses that sit over the water. Even the fish look sick. Most commerce and most fish preparation is performed on the street.

Dried fish skin is sold everywhere presumably because its cheaper than the fresh fish it came from. We walked around for about an hour, past the squatter huts where everyone shared the local public bathroom and past the school where rows and rows of computers sat in the classroom with the hope of educating the next generation although they’ll end up leaving the village in search of jobs in the city.
Often you read stories of how local people in depressed places have a plucky spirit and a cheerful disposition but I couldn’t detect any here. Tai O was where the original Chinese came to the Hong Kong islands centuries ago but it didn’t appear if things had really improved since then.
Travelling is all about learning and the nice girl in the tourist office must have picked up on that because we learnt that not all the world is a tourist destination yet everywhere has something to show us.
(For a little photo essay go to our photo galleries)

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 21st, 2007 at 3:30 am and is filed under Global Travels, Hong Kong. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.