Twice baked potato: burned in HK

Saturday night we went camping at a beach.  In order to get to this particular beach we had to do a little quasi hiking. We took the easy path which involved taking a water taxi to drop us off at a path.  This path lead over the least elevated part of these mountains, which took an hour to scale over in the dark.  I say quasi hiking because the path was through beautiful woods, but it was paved.  although paved, i've never scaled a path of such a steep angle.  We arrived at a place where there were two little outdoor shops.  we set up at a table and bbqd the meat we had brought with us and just hung out for a few hours.  Since we arrived in the dark it was hard to see all the surroundings, but it definitely had the feel of sitting out picnicking on an island beach.

Without much difficulty we were able to climb over another steep as crap, this time unpaved path, over to another more secluded beach that was both bigger and had less people on it.  We set up our tents and went to bed for a few hours.  lets just say that a tent in this heat is a shitty place if you like to breath well.  At 5:30 Sam and I were awoken by both the sun as well as some weird noises.  coming out of the tent I got my first real view of this beautiful beach.  As for the noises - turns out those things that looked like rocks in the dark, maybe 20m from our tent, turned out to be a heard of wild cows.  the calf/veal was maybe 8 feet from the front of another group's tent.  whenever they would try to get out of their tent, this several hundered pound cow would start to charge at them, clearly trying to protect his baby.  It's amazing how scary cows can be (yet still delicious looking).

we stayed at this beach until noonish when we had to begin our hour hike and hour transport back to sam's place in order to make our dinner reservations. We were all a little reluctant to leave this beautiful secluded beach but, such is life.  plus, after our night in Maccau and then minimal sleep in a stuffy tent, i wasn't exactly feeling well rested.

For dinner we went to a Hot Pot restaurant.  it seems pretty popular here.  They put a big bowl of flavored broth on a hot plate on the table and bring out lots of uncooked food (for us included chicken, beef, lamb, Ostrich , and ox).  It was a good meal except for the mishap in the middle that is apparently pretty typical of hong kong service.  When given raw food, we had to cook it before eating in the pot full of hot.  unfortunately, for a good half hour or so, our hot pot wasn't hot and thus could not cook.  we went through 5 hotplates.  after the second one sam's friend asked for us to be reseated (she is from hong kong and thus better at chinese than us as english is her second language).  So we're sitting there, very hungry, just staring at a table of raw meat.  it was so annoying that i couldn't stop laughing.  It was the type of thing in the US that would get you the meal comped but they seemed to think it was our fault.  once they moved us to a new table everything went smoothly.

so....heading off to Vietnam in a few hours.  wish me luck!