Tai O Heritage Hotel

Once Hannah and Rika had returned from Japan,  I wanted have a brief family holiday together before H started school.    So I booked holiday and a night at the Tai O Heritage hotel.

The Tai O Heritage Hotel (homepage), is a 9-room boutique hotel in the renovated colonial-era Tai O Marine Police Station.  It is located about 15min walk from Tai O on the headland with a commanding view of the harbor and approaches.      

When I told Hannah I had booked a stay-cation in an old police station she was very dubious.  She hasn't forgiven me for the dire stay-cation 'sleeping under the bridge' (blog post), or the 'hoiking hostel' in Macau (blog post).

Our room was the old PC night duty room, formerly connected to the tower by a ladder

Fortunately it met with Hannah's approval, and she soon got to work adjusting the privacy settings.

Before relaxing and enjoying the comfortable beds.

The renovation of the old building is beautifully done, and they have preserved many features like the cannons and the cells (for disobedient children as I explained to Hannah).

Each room has a copy of a handsome commemorative book with informative chapters about about the history of Tai O, the Tanka people (link), the Police Station, and its restoration.   When Hannah went to sleep I had a great time reading-through the book, assisted by the mini-bar, and it added much to my appreciation of the visit.

Since Tai O was a close-knit law-abiding community there seems to be little actual crime to enliven the history, as you can see form the extract above (click to enlarge).  Apart from occasional pirate activity, misfirings of the station cannon, and theft of police launches.

The hotel has an excellent restaurant, the Tai O Lookout.  The menus is fairly limited (as you'd expect) but very well done, and good value-for-money given the quality.  The chefs really know what they are doing and everything I tasted was excellent.   They even have their own wines ('Produce of Hong Kong', made with Australian grapes), which I liked a lot.

Just below the hotel is the harbour  break-water, which is a well-known spot for watching the sun-set over the Pearl River.   Weather permitting of course.  

We had this view of the sun setting behind an empty oil-tanker moored in-front of the Macau-HK bridge.    But it is indeed a lovely spot for a hotel, beautiful, relaxing and very quiet in the evening.

Hannah was inspired to write this cartoon.   "You can watch the sun going home from here"

So we enjoyed our stay very much.  We are definitely intending to come back for another short-break, and would recommend the hotel to anyone.