Only in Mui Wo...

...can you look out of your window to see a galleon sailing past it.

I think that's The Bounty from Discovery Bay.

Sail away...

Water dragons

This year is the Year of the Water Dragon and it certainly looks like it at Mui Wo's Dragonboat Festival. The morning session was a bit of a washout.

But in the afternoon, the sun came out and the party atmosphere picked up.

I may be biased but I think Mui Wo has the best dragonboat races because you can watch the entire race from the shore. In other places, you only just get to see the boats come in.

Check out the action.

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.