Rain, rain go away, I wanna shop

A heavy drizzle threatened to turn the Discovery Bay flea market into a washout. 

But luckily it dissipated after a bit and everyone could display their goods again.

PALS was doing quite a brisk trade in antique silver. I must admit, I was sorely tempted by the King George VI silver medallion.

Finally, the flea market...

Perfect weather for the Discovery Bay flea market this time. Ok, a bit too hot but better than last week.

Next one's in about two months' time.

Some days, the bear gets you...

China Bear's refurbished kitchen and toilets look nice.

But...

The food prices have also gone up.

We went there for our usual breakfast and found that most items were about 50 percent more expensive than before. Ouch!

Going by the crowd, I doubt it will matter much to the Discovery Bay exiles and the pilot families.

Not for us poor villagers, though.

I think I'm going to have to persuade Buffalo Wilbur to go for yum cha more often instead.

The case of the disappearing trail

We thought we'd try out the Discovery Bay Golf Course to Mui Wo walk, which we found on our Countryside Series map. Picking up the trail was easy. It starts from the last flyover approaching the golf club. 

Then it petered off. Fifteen minutes or so into the walk, the trail came to a dead end, right smack against a huge construction site (I think it was for the Discovery Bay super luxury homes, as reported in the SCMP). I didn't take any photos because we were busy trying to find the path again.

Finally we ended up walking along the fence to end up... ON the golf course, dodging flying balls and puzzled golfers. We thought we'd be able to pick up the trail again somewhere down the road but the course went on and on.

Thankfully a golf course operative came along on his buggy and offered (more like ordered) us into the buggy and off the course. Thankfully... because as he later told us, the course was a 27-hole one. We would have been walking for hours without finding either the clubhouse or the trail.

After a good 10 minutes on the buggy, he took us to the edge of the course, showed us Mui Wo and helped us make our way though the bushes.

It was scary having no trail to follow. I had mental images of us getting hopelessly lost and having to call for a rescue helicopter.

Then Buffalo Wilbur spotted what looked like a path and we scrabbled down the hill to meet it. And wow, a distance marker!

Tung Chung in the distance.

We walked and walked. I was getting worried because it was getting dark and we had no idea which trail we were on. Then we met one guy walking the other way, radio blaring. Civilisation!

Turned out we were on the Lok Fu Tau trail.

Phew! A familiar marker!

 
Usually my posts are about what to do but this is about what NOT to do. The Discovery Bay folks appear to have killed this popular trail. I hope they revive it once the construction is complete but I wouldn't hold my breath.

Another successful day at the flea market

 To paraphrase Apocalypse Now, I love the sound of the washing machine in the afternoon. Smells like victory.

As the weather was miserable, many sellers were disposing of their stuff cheap to try and get off before the rain came. So I got plenty of clothes for HK$5 a piece. Jacqui and her volunteers from PALS were doing a roaring trade in books -- a steal at HK$5 for two.

 The next flea market is on February 17.

New Discovery Bay kaido times

Discovering D Bay

Once in a while, Buffalo Wilbur and I like to slum it and go to Discovery Bay, even if there's no flea market to tempt us.

I know I often talk about how soulless D Bay can be but it has its positive points – chief among which is a ferry pier that looks like a proper pier with nice shops and clean wide walkways instead of a graveyard of dead bicycles and tattered banners.

Time for a spring clean

Buffalo Wibur and I are still living among boxes close to a year after moving in. So we took the poster from PALS (Protection of Animals Lantau South) as a wake-up call to reduce the junk. By the way, that photo is from our friendly community website, Lantau Link.

So we have decluttered, got one box of stuff which Jacqui very kindly drove up to collect.

Now we am feeling very virtuous. As the wankmeisters would say, it's a win-win situation: Your home gets cleared and the animals get food and shelter.

I highly recommend this as a cleansing exercise. You'll feel really refreshed afterwards.

Only thing is, we are planning to drop by the flea market this Sunday (Noon to 5pm at the DBay Piazza). The clutter may just come back...

Discovery Bay ferry

We met our project manager, who had more hard questions for us, in Mui Wo over the weekend. Which colour laminate for the kitchen cabinet? What about the bathroom? How about the floor tiles, black or grey? Ceramic or stone? You want non-slip?

After one hour of brain-numbing selecting (especially considering that we both go into option paralysis after about 10 minutes), we were knackered. If we had to choose another bathroom tile or ponder the merits of glossy finish versus non-slip, we were going to scream.

So we decided to give ourself a pseudo-holiday and take the kaido (ferry) to Discovery Bay, that Disneyland-meets-Singapore Housing Board development one bay along. We've seen the kaido arrive often enough, disgorging passengers, dogs the size of a small calf and bicycles, but we've never taken it before.

Thank goodness we did because the half-hour ride is lovely. There is a closed compartment below but the open-air deck upstairs is the place to be. You may have to sit on hard plastic seats but there's no beating the breeze and the views. On a good day, you can see Cheung Chau, Lamma, Aberdeen, Disneyland and Peng Chau. All that for a mere HK$12 per person.

Discovery Bay itself is not that great. Purpose built with expats in mind, it has a soulless piazza (which turns into a heat trap in summer), a half-empty shopping centre called DB Plaza, and a beach that is not a patch on Mui Wo beach... but it also has some good restaurants like Zaks, Moorings and Hemingway's By The Bay.

After wandering around aimlessly for a bit and paying homage to The Bookshop, the sister to the Mui Wo branch, we ended up at Caramba, where we had the chimichangas and chili con carne. Hubby polished off his share and mine too.

Satisfied, we got our freebie ferry tickets (which you get if you spend above HK$100 per person at one of 14 selected restaurants) and were back in Central in half an hour. A nice tranquil end to a potentially-stressful day.