Today we took a bus across the island to the tiny coastal village of Tai O. Very scenic journey across the hills/mountains along windy roads.( Greg managed to sleep the whole way!) Bus travel is really cheap ,a journey of 40 minutes only cost one pound. The village itself was like stepping back in time.Lots of Chinese sitting on their pdoorsteps or even in their sitting rooms - for some inexplicable reason many of the houses seemed to open directly onto the lanes. Most of the houses were tiny wooden ( or metal sheet!) shacks balanced percariously on thin wooden stilts above the water . The whole place was very smelly ( shrimp paste), dirty and run down but it was also incredibly attractive in a strange way and very worth visiting . The locals depend on the tourists for income either through the restaurant or short boat rides along the estuary. The stalls also seemed to do good business selling a variety of souvenirs as well as more interesting things such as live and dried fish. We ate lunch in a tiny eatery off one of the walkways - opted for dumpling soup but none of us particularly enjoyed it - when i went to pay ,the woman was sat at a table making the dumplings and the stuff she put inside them didn 't look disimilar to something that a dog might have sicked up !!!!! Not the best introduction to local cuisine for the boys!! Went on a short boat ride then stopped for tea at the converted police station where in the sixties they use to keep a watch out for illegal immigrants and pirates . All in all a good day and a great contrast to the city that we will be exploring later on in the week.Tomorrow it is Jie's birthday and we're off to Disney World -Hong Kong style!!!