About skillful French-Indian friendly guys.

January 7, 2011. Written in Hong Kong.

About skillful French-Indian friendly guys.

My Japanese friend Keiko, whom I met in mainland China, arrived in Hong Kong on the 25th to take her plane back to Japan from here. On this day, I was supposed to go hiking with my French friends, but decided to pick her up from the train station first, and meet up with my friends later. That morning, they left the house 1 hour before me to take the ferry to one of Hong Kong's nature rich islands. I borrowed Nicolas's phone so that I could call him via his girlfriend to meet up later.

After having picked up Keiko, we together went to the island where Nicolas told me to go, by train and bus. It was a pretty long ride, but still we somehow arrived earlier than them.
 Now, this was a mysterious case. They left the apartment and headed straight to the island. I left 1 hour later, went to pick up Keiko at the train station and then finally went to the island. How in hell could I be faster!?

Believe me, there is a very good reason for this.
This reason is called "Siddart".
Siddart is a friendly French-Indian guy, who likes to laugh a lot. Laughing, he does better than anyone else in the world, even when there is nothing funny. That being said, laughing is not his only skill. There is this other thing he is very, very skilled in. What is this skill, you ask? Let me tell you.
It is being LATE!! Yes, L-A-T-E!! And by late I mean really late! It can easily take him two hours to walk 100 meters, no joke. On Christmas eve, he managed to be 8 hours late on the appointment.
But! ...He is a very nice guy, really.

So, me and Keiko had some time to kill. We walked around on the island. There were many shops and restaurants selling seafood. Everywhere, you could smell the sea and good fish. There were many people walking the small streets of the town, but that didn't make it any less beautiful.  Being confronted by all this seafood, we got hungry and decided to have lunch. We had some squid and shrimps that were really good. Especially Keiko appreciated the good food after 3 months of all the oily mainland food.

Nearly 40 minutes after our arrival at the island, my fellow friends finally arrived. But, no harm done! I was glad to introduce them to Keiko. We started to hike, and had some conversations on the way. I don't think that our pace was very fast, but Siddart and his girlfriend didn't seem to be able to keep up with us anyway.
The distance between us and them became more and more, and after a while we couldn't see them anymore.

Hong Kong really has some beautiful nature landscapes, something that you would not expect from such a huge, vibrant city. Especially the sea is very clear if you consider all of the pollution such a huge city must produce.

Do you believe that this is all Hong Kong?

When we arrived back in the little town of the island, we decided what to do next. Would we go to the great Buddha by bus, walk a bit more or take a speed-boat tour? While debating about this we wandered through town. The sun was just about to set.

 We bumped into Siddart and his girlfriend. It was already getting too late to go somewhere else, so we decided to go on a speed boat-tour instead. There are supposed to be pink dolphins in the sea surrounding Hong Kong, and the story goes that if you are lucky you might be able to see one. However, Nicolas told me that he had read a story that it is so uncommon these days that even the captains of these speed-boats have never seen any themselves.

It was a nice tour anyway, especially because the speed and the high waves created some excitement. The captain of the boat was a very nice smiling old man. Much better than all those people that look as if they are bored to hell while providing their services.

After this exciting tour, it was time for us to go back to the city. In the end, we didn't do so much hiking, but it was a pleasant day non the less!