Ridiculous reservation!

Mui Wo public pool has only four lanes, with no separate training or babies' pools. 

In most places, this would mean a ban on private swimming lessons but in Mui Wo, they close half the pool instead – during peak hours (Saturday morning).

So 30 members of the paying public have to squeeze into one half of the pool while eight privileged learners have the other half to themselves. 

To make matters worse, the lifeguards spend all their time enforcing the "reserved" rule by chasing swimmers over to the other side. These are the same lifeguards who turn a blind eye to the numerous soakers, cannonball divers, splashers and even water pistol users on the hoi polloi half annoying the lap swimmers.

Up to a couple of weeks ago, they followed the usual rule of closing one lane for lap swimmers only. That was really good as the lap swimmers are a generally well-behaved bunch, swimming in the prescribed clockwise direction and giving way to stronger swimmers.

But this ridiculous way of dividing the pool, the place is now totally chaotic.

I wonder how much it would cost to reserve a lane to myself. It should be value for money, seeing as it comes with at least four lifeguards to enforce my reservation. Anyone wants to chip in?

Making a splash

I got up with a enormous urge to plunge and submerge myself in cool, cool water so I roused Buffalo Wilbur and persuaded him to brave the Mui Wo public swimming pool.

We keep passing the pool and saying we'd go there one day but have been put off by reports about how packed it is all the time and how dirty the water is as a result.

The days of hot weather, however, made the prospect of a swim so inviting.

We were in luck (or out of it, depending on how you see it). It's free entry day today so we saved ourselves HK$20 each.

But that also meant a really crowded pool with kids zig zagging all over the place and adults hogging the lap lane to just soak and catch up with village gossip.

The pool was nice enough – nowhere near Olympic size though – and it had the one requirement I always ask of a pool: it was 1.25m at the deepest end so the water was never over my head.

If the temperature continues to climb, I'd probably go there again. But never on a free-entry day.

Toilet talk

The first few times we came to Mui Wo on day trips we were rather put off by the fact that, if you needed to use the loo after eating at one of the nice restaurants, you either borrowed a key to go to the rather whiffy and toilet paperless toilet at the end of the block or you used the wet and whiffy public toiletnext to the seafood centre.

On Sundays and public holidays (when the crowd of day trippers are at its peak), it can be quite a nasty experience... which had made Buffalo Wilbur upchuck his expensive meal a couple of times.

What I don't understand is, why don't the nice restaurants have their own toilets so as to extend the pleasant experience? Is it because they are not allowed to or because they want to maximise the profitable areas?

And why don't the restaurants which can boast of their own private loos make more of them?

Some of the mums who drop off their kids at the Little Owls kindergarten have said they would be happy to stay longer if they had access to nappy-changing facilities.

I'm just glad I now have my own loo to run home to after my nice meal. Or maybe I should be grateful we don't have to use ancient outhouses like the one below?