A Weekend in the Great Outdoors

Since our nerves couldn’t take another Mong Kok-like experience, we headed to The Peak and a couple of beaches last weekend. The weather was positively spectacular – it was warm on Saturday and turned hot on Sunday – perfect days to get outside!

On Saturday afternoon, we headed across Hong Kong Island, up to The Peak. We went there as a family this summer and took in the beautiful panoramic view of the city. This time we went on a walk around the mountain that gives The Peak its name. The path was shaded by the canopy of tall trees.


We were walking along when all of a sudden, we saw a car going in reverse along the path in front of us. What a crazy driver to be driving on a trail! We thought he'd certainly made a mistake. Then we saw why the driver was going in reverse – another car was driving toward him. The narrow trail we were walking on wasn’t just a path after all – it is a road! Here are Dave and Lydia on the "road."


It took quite a while for the cars to reach a place that was wide enough to pass each other. It was a tight fit!

Come to find out, people live along Lugard Road - in mansions with elaborate gates and very noticeable security systems (electrified fences with razor wire)! I did some research and learned that in the 1900s very wealthy Europeans built summer homes on The Peak to escape the sweltering summer heat of Hong Kong. Because they didn’t have motorized vehicles and The Peak tram hadn’t been built, these early residents reached their homes by sedan chair.


Seems to me that the sedan chair may still be a better transportation option for those with a Lugard Road address!

(An interesting bit of history, The Peak was inhabited exclusively by wealthy expatriates until the 1930s. In fact, there was a zoning ordinance that expressly prohibited Chinese from living there. Some say that the prohibition was for health purposes – to protect against the spread of the bubonic plague; others speculate that the law’s goal was to segregate by race and social status.)

On Sunday, we spent time in nearby Repulse Bay. When we came to look at housing in Hong Kong, I was really put off by the name “Repulse Bay” – repulsed, repulsive come to mind. But Repulse Bay is none of those things. In fact, the housing and beach are quite nice.

Some of the architecture is distinct and unusual - the "hole" in the building below is to allow the "force of the dragon" to pass through.

We took a stroll on the Seaview Promenade - a nice walkway that extends from Repulse Bay to another beach, Deep Water Bay.

One of the great things about the promenade is that it is flat – a rarity in mountainous Hong Kong. Lydia was happy to get out on her scooter.

It appeared that other people were happy to be out in their boats. We saw quite a variety of sea vessels:

On our way back, we stopped for a snack in the outdoor courtyard of The Repulse Bay shopping center. The center was once The Repulse Bay Hotel, a popular get away for the rich and famous in earlier times (the movies Love is a Many Splendored Thing was filmed there in the 1950s) and was recently beautifully restored.

In contrast to the previous weekend, the only strange thing that happened to us was that Dave and I wound up with sunburns! While next time I will use sunscreen, that's the kind of strange I like!