Lantau Road Trip

"Cows!" we exclaimed at the first sight of wild cows wandering on the road along the southern coast of Lantau. And we felt the urge to stop the car and take hundreds of pictures of them enjoying their lunch on the curb-side pasture. Of course, our enthusiasm soon died down as roving cows became a more common scene than say, taxis passing by.

Tai O Staycation

Even I myself felt we had too much of vacation time in March and April - not that I am complaining. After the Easter long weekend, we headed off to Tai O on Lantau for an overnight "staycation" in this quiet fishing village on quite literally the western end of Hong Kong.

I made room reservation at the Tai O Heritage Hotel a few months back (it's really hard to book and must book well in advance), which I totally forgot until they called to confirm the booking in early March. Since by then it has passed the cancellation deadline, I figure we might as well take another break even we just had our weeklong vacation to the land of the rising sun. Anyway, the hotel, which opened in 2012, used to be the old Tai O police station built in 1902 and have been in use until a few years ago. Since then the building, now recognized as a heritage site, was completely renovated and converted into a boutique hotel as part of the government preservation effort, with 9 guest rooms plus a restaurant. They tried to preserve the original structure as much as possible, and any additional construction (for example, the elevators) was actually removable so the overall architecture was not altered - that included the restaurant, which was built above the original building with the sun-roof providing lighting from natural source during day time. We had dessert after dinner and then breakfast the next day at this lovely restaurant and we enjoyed it much.