Happy Mid-Autumn!

We took a walk at night to check out the beach activities and it was great fun. Lots of children – and some adults – parading with lanterns, plenty of glowstick jewellery, and everyone having a good time. 

My cheap cameraphone is crap at capturing night pictures but I think you get the idea.

Mui Wo restaurants up their game

Lately, there have been quite a number of new eateries popping up. And that is great news for diners because it means that the existing ones have had to upgrade their offerings to keep the clientele coming. 

The Kitchen seems to have gotten over their patchy hump with a new chef. Pedro looks like he knows what he's doing... although service is still a bit hit and miss. That's Pedro's special: beef cubes in wine. Quite yummy but I'm not sure it's value for money at HK$78,

China Bear has added a whole new juice menu. You can have freshly squeezed juice with your breakfast too.

Other changes:

• Gordon's has a new TV screen showing what he has to offer (the lamb briyani's always good). 
• Deerhorn has included more stuff in their menu. The prawn curry (HK$95) is to die for!
• Village Bakery is now serving coffee, along with deli stuff such as olives, prosciutto, feta-stuffed peppers (Buffalo Wilbur's favourite) and sundried tomatoes.

September flea market

This is the first time the flea market is being held on a Saturday -- which was good news for me because the kaido to Discovery Bay is only HK$12 instead of HK$15 (hey, a savings of HK$3 x 2 can get me a CD of Best Driving Hits so don't knock it).

 

The organisers also combined it with the equally popular Homemade Fair so it made the trip twice as worthwhile.

For those who think that this looks good, there's still time to head on down. The flea market only closes at 6pm and some vendors usually linger on till later.

This time, Buffalo Wilbur was smart. Instead of trudging from stall to stall with me in the heat, he holed himself up in Il Bel Paese with a nice meatball spaghetti. I used him as a pit stop so I could shop, dump goods at his feet, go shop some more... talk about a win-win situation!

No seats on board

Our lives revolve round ferry times so it is really irritating to rush for one only to be told you can't get on board because it is full. Yup, poor Buffalo Wilbur had to wait for 40 minutes for the next ferry today because the 9.10am one was completely packed with tourists. They promised him an extra ferry but what they really meant was "wait for the next ferry".

Autumn is peak tourist season for Mui Wo and a bit of forward planning could have solved the problem. 

It would have helped if the ferry people had communicated with each other and let the big ferry stay on when they saw the crowds at the pier. Instead, they replaced it with the small one -- which was barely enough to contain the tourists, let alone regular commuters.

Village Bakery's grand opening

Kit's shop is open! The opening ceremony was so sweet, it felt like you were invited to a family gathering.

They're selling only white sliced bread today but the full variety will be up on Monday. So don't forget to stop by for a loaf.

Weekend happenings

Really looking forward to the next few weeks. The Village Bakery's grand opening is this Sunday. I walked past there and saw they are already starting to blow up the balloons and put up buntings so don't forget to check out the party at 11am.

The Discovery Bay flea market is on September 22... a Saturday for once. But if you miss that, there's the Chapel Flea Market on October 1 and 2. This flea market is my absolute favourite. I can spend a while day there shifting through the clothes and knick knacks.

The new school term's here

So why isn't the Mui Wo school open yet? Last we heard, the kuk has agreed to reopening the school for residents and not ex-drug addicts. But seems like nothing has moved since.

 Pity because it is a proper, fully equipped school. Why aren't there any school operators taking it up?

Mui Wo has a Base Camp

That stretch of road where the Hong Kong Jockey Club is used to be a bit of a dead zone but seems to have gotten exciting recently. Village Bakery is opening soon (looks like yesterday was only a trial run). And now we have Lantau Base Camp, one of those "why didn't we think of it earlier" shops catering to mountain bikers and hikers.

Shopowner Jeremy is really nice and chatty and he lives in Pui O, so he's familiar with most of the trails around Lantau South.

Non-residents can leave their bags in the shop (for a HK$15 fee) and go hiking without having to hump the extra baggage around. After they're done, they can just pick it up and head for the ferry.

Village Bakery is open... for trial runs!

Buffalo Wilbur has been taking to peering into the glass doors of Village Bakery for the past month, willing it to open. So when we saw the sign, can you guess who was in there like a flash?

I must say I didn't think it would be that big. It takes up two shops, one for the bakery cafe and the other for the kitchen.

As this was a trial, it wasn't fully stocked. But what they had was so impressive we wanted to buy up the whole shop. In the end, we settled for a date and walnut loaf, minced beef bun, sausage roll and mango pudding.

They open at 7am so leave yourself some time to pop into the place for freshly baked breakfast before hopping on the ferry.

The Village Bakery is opposite the Hong Kong Jockey Club.