Tai O Fishing Village

The final thing I hoped we could do during our spring break was head to an area of Hong Kong that we hadn't yet ventured out to. Tai O is known as a "village on stilts" and is a little fishing village on the west part of Lantau Island. The houses are all built on stilts, and so it's also called "Venice of the East". Apparently. The other thing you can do at Tai O is go on a boat ride on search of pink dolphins.

All I really know about pink dolphins, I know from Annika. She was the one who first told me about them, and I thought maybe she was referring to a cartoon or something that she'd heard about. But no, she really was on to something and she knew about it because someone in her class had actually seen these rare pink dolphins. Later she learned more about them at the science fair and told us that they are pink because they are living in water that isn't good for them. They should actually be white. So you can take a boat ride, but there's no guarantee that you'll actually see them.
On our boat ride we passed through all the houses on stilts. Leila slept through the whole thing.

It was scenic and fun (and hot and windy), but we didn't see any dolphins, and the driver didn't seem to concerned with making sure we did. Maybe they're only out at a certain time but they don't tell you that because they want your business. Who knows. It was a really inexpensive boat ride, and it was cool to see the stilt houses up close.
After we were in a little museum display and these people asked to have their picture taken with us. We obliged and then we gave them our camera, because why not have a picture of ourselves standing with strangers for our own records?!

Yum?

Always a temple to check out.

The girls don't really care what we do, as long as there's a playground involved. When we told them that this is what we planned on doing for the day, the first thing Annika said was "will there be a playground?". Amazingly we always stumble upon them without even trying. Hong Kong does have a lot of playgrounds, and I'm a big fan of the rubber surface instead of sand or gravel.
This playground had a great view of the water, but then Mike took a picture from the other way, because the mountains in the background were pretty too.

This sweaty girl needed a bit of a break!

Our day trips all seem to have the same elements... there is always ice cream at some point! We seem to be back to the hot Hong Kong weather!

It can be a bit disheartening that when we get ourselves out to these places (this one was a taxi to the train, followed by a 45 minute bus ride), it seems we barely even scratch the surface of all there is to see and do when you're doing it with two young children. We always debate whether or not to bring the stroller. If we do, it means lugging it through all the public transportation, and looking for elevators and trying to squeeze through crowds and terrain that isn't stroller friendly. It's much easier to leave it at home, like we did yesterday. But then the girls get tired of walking, and of course when you have a stroller, there's a place to put all our stuff.

Oh well... it's just the season of life that we're in right now. But for those that are able, there is always lots of hiking and even more things to see at places like in Hong Kong like this one.