Dragon Boat racing in Cheung Chau

This year was our third opportunity to see the Dragon Boat races - but only the first time we actually dragged ourselves to go and take a peek.

Hearing that Stanley would be a bunfight, with much trepidation, we headed off to the island of Cheung Chau. Trepidation? Because in our third weekend living in HK, we went on a family trip to the island - it was not a success to put it mildly! We were not then used to the heat or humidity (40 degrees/100%) - the kids went in to meltdown. We went for a swim to cool off (on what was billed as a "beautiful" beach) - only to realise we were swimming amongst plastic bags (and worse) ... we now know not to go swimming in the sea immediately following heavy rain.

So trepidation indeed.

But I guess we've got used to it more here -- it was still hot and crowded, but was totally within our (revised!) tolerance levels. So much so that we decided to go for a walk (we got lost and what was meant to be a 40 min stroll morphed into a 3 hour yomp ... a touch of meltdown there!). On the walk we ventured into the cave where the pirate Cheung Po-Tsai is meant to have holed out for a while. Well, when I say "we" I mean "Joss and the boys". I'm not particularly spooked by small places, but having to pull myself along the wet ground snake-like, underneath 300 tonnes of rock and with the loose definitions of safety the Chinese have - I decided to give it a miss. The Chinese pirate in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies is meant to be based on this guy - the cave gets thousands of visitors not just because of this, but also because is treasure trove has yet to be found!

Back to the main reason for going to Cheung Chau - the Dragon Boat racing was fun - and the kids enjoyed it. Although they got distracted by the appearance of a toad on the harbour wall - the toad ended up in a local's pocket no doubt destined for the pot that evening ("field chicken"). You would not catch me in one of those boats: a) it looks like hard work!; b) the boats come complete with little buckets so you can bail out the water as you go and c) the water in the harbour is on the wrong side of clean.

Now we live in the middle of Stanley, we may even embrace the Stanley Dragon Boat bunfight next year. Ironically, Cheung Chau is famous for its bun festival - where locals scramble up a bun pyramid in order to grab the top-most bun. Will try to get to see that too next year.

One sad aspect to this year's Dragon Boat festival was the death of a young guy who (apparently) was jumping from junk boat to junk -- he slipped, banged his head on the way, splashed in to the sea and was never seen again.

M