I wonder if I’m the only person who gets cold in the MTR. My goosebumps show and my hair stands up, while everybody is comfortable in the air conditioned train that provides a safe haven away from the humidity. I find the heat pretty tolerable, minus the HEAT RASH that I got on my neck.
One of our friends Alan got invited to DJ for some “Last Minute Beach Party” event hosted by Quiksilver and Roxy on Lantau Island, so we had to wake up early to make it in time for his set. To get there faster, we had to take the ferry, which I was not expecting, and for fear of motion sickness and throwing up before the day even started, I bought some Asian style Dramamine called “Mosion-6.” Isn’t this name pretty clever?
We paid an extra $10 to get the Deluxe seats, which turned out to just have air conditioning. Leanne and Peter took on the jobs of distracting me and talking to me throughout the whole 40 minute ride, and before we knew it we were on Lantau Island, where we took a bus that took us through windy roads all the way into the boonies/forests and dropped us off at some corner of the mountain. All I could hear at the moment was some music booming somewhere, and I was a little skeptical because I didn’t see many people heading in the direction we were going. Nobody really goes to a beach party at noon, right? But of course, we were here early for Alan’s DJ set.
When we got to the ticket booth, we found out that everybody was a little late in setting up the event, and Alan’s set wouldn’t be for another couple of hours. They let us go in to hang out for free, and told us to go back and pay when the event officially started. The first 500 people also get free rentals for kayaks, boogie boards, and other beach materials, so I was pretty excited to find out we were the lucky firsts. Ever since I went to Disneyland with Peter/Shelly/Steph and paddled in the Davey Crockett ride, I’ve wanted to go out on more boat rides to work out my weak arms.
The venue seemed a bit small, but the beach looked beautiful. How often do you get to see mountains in the horizon? Actually, probably at the nice beaches, but in L.A. we usually see factories.
We parked our stuff at some umbrellas to cam-ho a bit with the nice mountainous background. Peter had a very particular way that he wanted me to take his picture, and after half a dozen tries and nearly burning my feet on the sand I finally took one that he was satisfied with.
We also found a random kayak hanging out by us, so we decided to cam-ho IN it instead of taking it out in the water to use. I’ve become a fan of the creepy stalker shots. This one is made even creepier with the half naked Will in the background.
A couple of us decided to wade in the mucky water, where Peter got freaked out by a dead fish floating by him. He ran (naturally). The water was really warm, and I really would have enjoyed playing in it if it wasn’t so polluted. We had our friend Remo take a group picture for us since he had the longest arm, and the final shot came out to look kind of like a sitcom advertisement. Little Asians next to a tall white dude! Except in Hong Kong, we’re pretty big Asians.
Sadly, there wasn’t much to do at the beach except wade in the water (which we quickly got bored of), listen to some techno music, and drink. I was disappointed that the only stall the event had set up was the open bar with free alcohol or cocktail mixes (where a pregnant woman was pouring us our drinks- WTF?), and no food! WHURR IS THE BBQ? All of the cocktails tasted pretty nasty, so I couldn’t stomach much of my one cup, although it didn’t take me very long to get a bit giggly. Peter ended up drinking the rest of my drinks anyways, and before long the rest of the group was a bit tipsy. We were all really starving as well, so we decided that the only thing we could do was to head back to the village where we got off the MTR to eat at the McDonalds, and then go back to the beach party, where the rest of them would drink their moneys worth of alcohol (a goal that I knew I would probably fail).
As we were packing up our stuff, we saw that the sky started to become foggy, the wind started blowing a bit harder, and the workers were running really quickly to bring down all the umbrellas. “Wow, they’re really quick on their feet to take down all of these umbrellas,” I thought. “Don’t they need to keep them up in case it rains?” I underestimate Hong Kong rainy weather. People began to chase after the flying pillows and floaties, and the one blow-up seat Peter couldn’t hold on to ended up hitting a girl in the face.
The rain started to come down really fast as we got to the check-in tents, and I took out the umbrella that I made fun of Leanne for bringing (“We should be like the locals and carry umbrellas around in the sun!” she said. Boy, am I grateful she did that.) Obviously, all of us were incredibly unprepared for rain, so we ran in our beachgear and flip flops up the windy path to the bus stop, where we sat and giggled. I’m not entirely sure if it was the alcohol or just running in the rain, but it felt really liberating to laugh hysterically about how silly the day was and how good the rain felt against our skin. Wow, I didn’t realize that Alan and Will ran with their beer cups.
We finally made it to Mcdonalds, where Peter ordered something in broken Mandarin/Cantonese (sometimes I can’t tell whether or not he’s speaking one or the other), and the cashier started to giggle because she probably knew he was drunk. Asian McDonalds have MCWINGS and Green Bean pie here! The Mcwings were freaking good, but the green bean pie looked a bit like slime and was unappealing to me, but everybody else liked it.
We waited for some other friends to meet up with us before heading back to the beach, where the party still wasn’t booming yet. Some of us mentioned how much we wanted to hear mainstream Top 40 stuff/hip hop, because it would be a lot easier to dance to and to get the party started. I sat on a bean bag holding the same cup of mojito for the rest of the night (and slightly bored), while the guys went back to the bar constantly so that they could drink their moneys worth of alcohol. It wasn’t long before Peter got pretty drunk off those cocktails, and we stayed a bit longer to dance once the music got a bit more interesting.
The three of us decided to take off so that we could meet Chin for dinner, so we left Will and Alan at the beach and got on the bus to the MTR, where we all fell asleep. Luckily, I was kept half awake by this guy sitting in front of us who wouldn’t stop making really loud yawning noises, so I was awake (and sober) enough to get Leanne and Peter when we had to get off the bus.
Peter kept on saying that he had to go to the restroom while we were trying to figure out which train to take, and when one stopped by us, he asked me, “Can I pee in here?” and walked towards the train. I had to drag him away to make sure he wouldn’t get arrested for public indecency, and we all held our pee until we got to the last stop to meet Chin. While there, we finally found a restroom, which did NOT have toilet paper, and since I was the first to use it, I realized that there was leftover pee on the seat. At the time I didn’t think of using the napkins that I had in my backpack, so I decided that I could finally try squatting and hovering over the toilet seat. Unfortunately, I was very bad at it (if yaknow what I mean), but I was so dirty from the beach and the whole day that I didn’t really care about missing. It also didn’t help that Peter and Leanne kept banging on the door, telling me to hurry up and saying “I need to use the bathroom!” in slurred Cantonese.
Chin took us to a Chinese restaurant that was a bit pricey but had delicious stir fried green beans, and we ended the long day with an even more overpriced tiny cup of boba at a Taiwanese restaurant called “Saint’s Alps,” which wasn’t very good, and a NICE LONG HOT SHOWER.
