31/01/2024
游泳 Freestyle: Cold water swimming in Hong Kong (with just one backpack!)
My last memory of Hong Kong is preserved on a chilly Christmas Eve back in 2017. It was a page-turner of sorts; both meaningful and painfully disconnected from my life now. The faces and names have since disappeared, but my connection to Hong Kong’s shores run deep. The salt on my hair and skin is a constant reminder; and the jellyfish scar across my stomach, faded over the years, is a compelling evidence of its benevolent seas. The pandemic cunningly blurred the time that had passed.
Last December, luck brought me back to Hong Kong’s Shek-O Village.
The best thing about Hong Kong is that it is a compact environment – an economic Tamagotchi you can keep in your pocket. Everything is a metro station away and every soul, homegrown and visiting, seem to have found some level of cadence to navigate its surroundings without much elaboration. The truth is that Hong Kong is getting to be more unattainable by the day. Beyond the impossibly tiny micro apartments, there is a vast space of land and water in between the many uninhabited islands of Hong Kong. And we could only hope it stays that way for a long time.
Shek-O is not one of those charming fishing towns. It cradles an exclusive golf club, and its shoreline boasts of whitewashed villas overlooking the water. But here is where our economic Tamagotchi wins. The community is an amalgamation of all the efforts from its constituents, both common and affluent. For the most part, they all enjoy the same waters and soft powdery sand. The public facilities are equipped with working showers, clean toilets, safe locker rooms and parking spaces. The frequented hiking trails offer free and camping sites with a commanding panoramic view.
Small shop owners are resilient to have weathered many economic blunders of the past. The ubiquitous souvenir shops, the corner breakfast nooks, and the small cafes serving instant coffee are delightfully stuck in a time loop. Maybe the menus have been revamped a bit but the peanut butter margarine toast tastes exactly the same from fifteen years back.
Hassle-free travelling in Hong Kong is possible. Everything I needed was inside the tow-float that doubled as my travel bag. It was freeing to be finally travel with just a knapsack on me. I am glad to have invested in a sturdy tow float from Taobao. While there are lockers available, I took on the challenge of stuffing all my dry clothes into the tow float and made sure to keep it as air tight as I possibly could before jumping into the water.
Shek-O, like any other public beach in Hong Kong, has no active life guards during winter. This is a welcome reality as much as it is a warning sign. There is always that grumbling gut sensation I have every time I do a solo swim. This is heightened when there are no other swimmers or lifeguards at bay.
I had planned this swim many nights prior. Swimming in my 20’s was a draw of luck with youthful bravado. I had never used a tow float until recently. Nowadays, swimming close to my 40’s is like a well-choreographed dance number that I rehearse many times over.
The fun starts with a swim parallel to beach, leading to a narrow path in between the Ng Fan Chau islet and the mainland. The passage gets very choppy during low tide. If I had to do the swim over, I would maintain a good five to ten meters away from the islet. The waves crashing into the underwater rock boulders made my navigation a bit tricky – my camera flipped under a couple of times at this stage of the swim.
The tide revealed a sea bed and the lush marine life surrounding the islet. I made sure to swim “slow” and absorb the momentary sights. I saw schools of fish, and sea urchins nefariously moving through the current. The sea bed was reassuring. Every novice open swimmer knows this feeling. The sight of the floor beneath you after a seemingly bottomless deep blue is a relief.
Every now and then, I would catch a glimpse of a fisherman situated in a low cliff, with a confused look on his face, perhaps unsure of whether I needed some form of assistance. Beyond his silhouette were the whitewash houses and lifeguard tower. I was eager to finish my swim.
I finished the swim before lunch time. The town bus comes every 30 minutes and I figured I had the entire afternoon to eat a light lunch and walk around. It was my first time to actually go up and down the rolling hills and corridors of Shek-O village. I can see how living in this idyllic setting could be seductive. Every nook and corner had a remnant of the past. Dilapidated wicker cottages , dingy surfboards, and corroded fishing boats served as a reminder of a time much simpler, before unbridled wealth changed the way of living in the peninsula. Shek-O is a time capsule and I hope to enjoy it for another fifteen years.
As I wrap up this diary from my hotel room in Tin Hau, I notice new tiny lacerations on my nape that looked and felt like another jellyfish sting. The adrenalin waned off and it is starting to throb and cause some discomfort.
