Shenzhen Adventures, Week 10: Hiking at Lamma Island, Hong Kong, and Halloween

Hello and welcome to this weekly update from the UCHU team! This post will be covering things Dan and I have been up to over the past two and a half weeks. Since we returned from Japan work has been extra busy, but we have still been making time to have fun and explore new things on the weekends.

Over the last two and a half weeks we celebrated Halloween, visited Hong Kong twice, moved to a brand new office with the rest of the HAX teams, and went hiking on Lamma Island.

It turns out that Halloween is a popular holiday around China and lots of people go out to have fun while wearing costumes. We went with our friends from Backbar Solutions to the Tsim Sha Tsui and Central neighborhoods. Everyone wore costumes, and as you can see in the right most picture above, Dan dressed as a shark while I dressed as a hippie.

We also treated ourselves to dinner at a nice steak restaurant, which was a very nice change from all of the noodles we usually eat in Shenzhen.

Something very exciting that happened is that the entirety of the HAX office in Shenzhen moved into a new building! The new building is just across the street, still right on Huaqiangbei, but is much larger and more recently constructed than the previous office. The whole building is 8 floors tall, and the left most image above is what one of the entrances looks like from the outside. The external architecture design is very modern, and the inside is very spacious and much larger than our previous space. While the previous HAX office took up two whole floors, the new office uses just one floor but is substantially bigger than both prior floors combined.

Unfortunately we can't show any more pictures of the interior due to super secret startup work going on between all of the teams here. However, it feels refreshing to move into a new updated office and lab space, and also feels awesome to be involved with HAX upgrading to a new space.

Last weekend we went to Hong Kong again with the Backbar team to visit Lamma Island and go on a day hike. Lamma Island is the third biggest island in Hong Kong, and is about a two to three hour trip from Shenzhen in total (including customs between Hong Kong and Shenzhen). Once you get to the right port in Hong Kong, you take a 30 minute ferry right to the island. The ferry is really cool to ride, as you get to see all of the mountains, islands and different areas around Hong Kong.

Once we got off the ferry at Lamma Island, the first thing we did was walk around the fishing port the ferry pulls in to. There were tons of tasty looking seafood restaurants, shops, and lots of people taking their dogs for walk. We found the map showing all the trails, decided which way we wanted to go, and started on the hike. We chose a path that led to a beach because we all brought swimsuits to go swimming.

The total hike to the beach was just about an hour worth of walking, and the entire path was paved so it was not a difficult or strenuous trek. We passed several small island villages on our way, where many locals were enjoying the fresh air and gardening. When we arrived to the beach, we were the only ones there and had the whole beach to ourselves.

We heard that temperatures in Boston are dropping to be almost negative and way beyond freezing. This is the kind of weather Dan and I are used to, so it is pretty weird to be swimming on a beach in 80 degree weather - but we aren't complaining!

We ended the night by having dinner at one of the island restaurants, then took the ferry back to Hong Kong. The ferry was really awesome to ride at night, because you get to see all the city lights and skyline light up from the middle of the bay.

Overall, this was an incredible way to spend the day and see new parts of the country. We also learned there are lots of great places to hike around Hong Kong, so look out for more updates with hiking trip updates in the future. That's all for this week's update!