Hiking Trip!!

Friday morning, my alarm decided to not go off. I was supposed to leave my hostel at 8:15 to go meet Megan downtown. Luckily I woke up at 8:17 and managed to only be 10 minutes late in meeting her. We met at Prince Edward station and then went from there to Diamond Hill station where we transferred to bus 92 towards Sai Kung. Sai Kung is a coastel town in the eastern New Territories. I went there for lunch in September with the sister of a friend. Once we got to Sai Kung we transfered to bus 94 and took that to Pak Tam Au.

We were over in the right half of the map. My university is near Tuen Mun on the left side.

We started at Pak Tam Au and did half of the trail on this map

There were a lot of people there. A lotttt of people. It turns out there was some hiking event/marathon called Oxfam Trailwalkers so Megan and I passed probably 200-300 people on the trail. The trail was called Maclehose Trail and we only did section 2 of it. We hiked towards Hoi Ham, which is a section of the beach called Tai Long Wan (or at least that's the impression I got). The scenery was gorgeous and the weather perfecttttt for hiking. There was a little breeze to cool us down when we got hot. We stopped on the side of the trail to eat our picnic lunch perched on rocks. We had peanut butter sandwiches, apples, and cheese balls. There was some weird animal poop on the trail and we're pretty sure it was from monkeys because we saw a sign that said "don't feed the monkeys." We saw some birds and a random cow on the side of the trail. We hiked a total of 12 km (7.5-8 miles) and climbed two mountains. I can't believe we did it and I am still very very sore from it because I haven't gotten my normal amount of exercise while here.

Waiting for bus 94 at Sai Kung

The entire part of the trail we went on is paved.

We took a little detour

What looked like an abandoned village

 

Tai Long village (we bought Gatorade here on the way back)

Almost there!

We made it!

 

Finally back to Pak Tam Au to catch the bus

Exhausted we took the buses back to Diamond Hill MTR station and then went all the way back to my university on the other side of the New Territories. We took much needed showers and then went to Yuen Long to meet Trace for dinner at an Italian restaurant. The waiter was a bit weird, but nice. One time while we were eating he seemed to think I needed a new napkin so he came over and unfolded on for me to put in my lap. It was creepy in any way, just a bit weird. After our delicious meal, we did a tiny bit of shopping. We stopped at Bonjour, which is a make up/tolietries discount store, so Megan could buy some mascara.

Then Megan and I headed back into the city to her hostel. I was planning to sleep at the hostel with her but it turns out they moved her to a different room. It was really annoying because they moved her to a triple room. The people she was staying with weren't there but we could tell one of them was a guy. Since it was Friday night and they weren't there and it was late and we were exhausted, I decided it would be best if Megan just came and slept at my hostel. I was nervous about leaving here there because she would have had no way to contact me if something went wrong and we didn't know what the people were like who she was staying with. I'm sure it would've been fine, but since I am a cautious person, we headed back to my university. We were so tired and our feet/legs hurt SO much. Needless to say, we weren't in the best of moods.

Trace, luckily, had an extra mattress type thing so we put that on top of my bamboo mat and used some of her extra sheets to make a bed on the floor for Megan. It was a tight squeeze but I think both Megan and I slept much better than we would have at the hostel. Thank goodness for Trace having the extra bedding. It really made our lives a lot easier. As soon as the lights went off, we were all fast asleep.