Visa Trip #1 and Lamma island
The 14th of January : plane in the morning to Shenzhen (400 rmb), then cross the boarder to Kowloon. I directly go to Alvi Travel agency, and lucky me, they do 3 months biz visas again! Price is 650 rmb, one entry allowed. I will pick it up the next day, after 1 pm. Same as usual, same city, clean and with a perfect service, crowded, smiley and rough. Fortunately, this time I’m going to see Patrick, on his Lamma island, yeaaah! Fed up of living in a box at 80 rmb a night! So after some running around with Patrick to get a parcel, we had dinner at…McDonalds. We asked the lady if we could have two big mac without meat:
– Yes.
– One without cheese, but put that cheese in the other Big Mac (Patrick not eating cheese).
– Let me ask plz….(5 seconds later)… Yes, ok, no problem.
Perfect service, I said it! Only problem: we still pay full price, even if the meat isn’t replaced by something else…
Later, we took the ferry at Central Ferry pier 4, to Yung Shue Wan, the main pier on Lamma.
Yung Shue Wan, far view
Yung Shue Wan, close view
You need 14,5 HK$ in change (they make it if you don’t have), 20 on the weekend. Patrick lives in the old village of Tai Peng, you need a good climb to get there! The place is peaceful, tropical trees, cats and doggies are part of the environment. Many foreigners live there. My Brazilian friend chose this place because it has the cleanest water of all the islands, it also has many beaches, and small mountains to hike. Cars are forbidden, people walk or ride bicycles. You buy vegggies from the farmers, it’s all organic, perfect for a guy like him!
Walk to Patrick's house
He lives in a small flat, not bad though, with a balcony, internet, and all. The next day he was out to Guangzhou for biz, and was sorry to leave me alone. I had a good rest though, got my visa. L visa, the baddies, they made a mistake! Hope I won’t need to renew it in China, it’s expensive to change an L visa to an F one. Price: 350 rmb, one entry. I’m good until the 15th of April. I also saw an ad for people leaving the island, wanting to get rid of stuff, hmm… a wireless keyboard and mouse for 50$, and a free cracked LCD screen! I wrote down the phone number. I also realised many cats and dogs were missing, notes with rewards were everywhere, with colored photos of the beasts. Is it the wild snake’s fault, or hungry people on the hunt? Patrick came back near 1 am, but… with a surprise: Wai, his ex Thai gf, who was on a trip to visit HK (and probably him more than the city). Problem is Patrick has a gf, which of course he didn’t say, as he is the kind of nice guy wanting to satisfy 10 girls at a time 😉 . Well, now he’s stuck with her, she’s very kind and has a sweet accent when she speaks English. We spent the next day the three together, visiting the island, climbing to the highest spot, and I even went for a swim in the freezing water.
Patrick and Wai
Me levitating
Wai and I superheroes
Eden's "grande roue"
Wai's writing in Thai
Cool day! I even had time to get the keyboard, mouse and lcd screen in the morning lol! Because he was feeling bad for his gf, when she phoned him to ask him to spend the next day with him and her family, he could only accept, and so couldn’t go swimming with me the next morning, as he had intended to do.
One thing he told me, about my life, is that I should cool down, as my job was changing my spirit, and I was always thinking/speaking too much about sexy girls, and with too much enthusiasm. Bad for my karma. I agree, even though it’s hard for me now to think about anything else, as my life revovlves around it: we have no break time, I have no friends apart from the ones from Newko, and I don’t even have my own private place to isolate and feed my soul with purer thoughts. I long to find a flat to live by myself, and have time to visit the city…
Thanks for the fun Patrick!
Patrick on his island