Tai O

I wanted to visit Tai O to wander around in this unique village and also take a boat trip to see the famous pink dolphins.   

We did this twice:  on an overcast Sunday afternoon at low-tide and on a sunny Monday morning at high-tide with a guide from the hotel.  Most of the info here is from that tour.

Tai O (source)

Tai O is fishing village on the banks of a river that separates the Tai O island from Lantau island (wiki link).  It currently has about 1,800 inhabitants, 80% of them elderly, but once had as many as 30,000.

The original inhabitants were Tanka boat-dwellers (wiki link),  augmented in in the 20th Century by waves of immigrants from mainland China.

Tai O from harbour

The Tanka people were historically considered outcasts ('sea gypsies').  They lived on boats, or in boat-like huts on the shore, and were apparent traditionally forbidden from owning land or land-based commerce.

Tai O Main Bridge

The distinctive feature of Tai O is stilt houses - houses built over the tidal river-bank and estuary.  The story is that the boat-dwellers were forced to moor their boats on-shore as an anti-piracy measure, and the stilt houses evolved from there into one and then two-story dwellings.

Tai 0 2nd Bridge

Stilt house residents don't own the land but have been granted customary rights to occupation which they can pass-down to their children,  but they cannot sell or rent outside their family.   They can refurbish or rebuild but officially cannot extend the houses beyond the original registered size.

Stilt house

Because of these restrictions there remains a strict separation in Tai O between the land-people and water people, although apparently the social discrimination has gone and everyone mixes happily.   Ironically these days the land-people envy the water-people because their stilt houses are considered more comfortable to live in.

Stilt House

These days almost all young people move into town for work, and many stilt houses have become empty or are used as holiday cottages.   Of the remaining population is 80% elderly, so the town is liveliest at 5am as the old people prefer shopping at the coolest time of day, and the Tai O market is finished by 8-9am!  

Main Street

Based on the shops, I'd say the staple diet is dried fish with shrimp sauce.   A major recreation is apparently chinese opera, and indeed we passed well-attended performance in the village hall as we were walking to our hotel.  

There are a number of old temples, such as the Kwan Tai Temple.  It was built in 1741, although apparently dates back to 1488 (link).

Kwan Tai Temple (c 1741)

I was a worried Hannah would find it boring to walk around Tai O.

Tai O International Gnome Museum

But it turned out there were cats everywhere and Hannah was quite happy playing 'count the cats'

Once she found the Japanese-style cat-cafe, 'Meow', she was delighted with Tai O.

Neco Cafe 'Meow'

Meow is a very popular little cafe run by a nice family  and Hannah was happy to hang out and play with the little kittens until closing time.

Cat Cafe

On Sunday we came back into town with a knowledgable and personable guide arranged by the hotel as part of our package.

Tai O suburb from path to Hotel

He explained that Tai O is famous for shrimp sauce, traditionally made with local shrimp.  We passed one maker mixing up the sauce in big blue plastic barrels.   It has a very strong smell which apparently used to blanket the whole town.    Now there are only a couple of manufacturers remaining, and they mainly use imported shrimp as trawling is now restricted in local waters.  

Drying Fish

A traditional activity is drying fish.  Historically so it will keep for long fishing voyages.  We passed many houses had fish hanging-up to dry with their heads covered in paper to prevent the flies from getting into the eyes.

Drying Fish

Another traditional product of Tai O is salted egg-yolks.  It turns-out that egg-white was used to maintain the traditional rope nets, so the practice of salting the yolks was to find a use for the by-product.

Making salted egg-yolk

Apparently most of the old people rely for income on their children or small jobs rather than the state pension.   We certainly saw a lot of small industry as we walked around.

There is quite a lot of building going-on.  Apparently many of the young people who left to work in the city have made their fortunes and are now able to upgrade granny's house.   So there are big contrasts.  Some stilt houses have become quite grand, like the one below (perhaps their son became a trader at an investment bank)....

...while other stilt-houses, like the one to the right above, are slowly falling-apart (perhaps their son is just a back-office clerk).

Old land house

The guide showed us different areas of stilt-houses and land-houses.   The land-house streets seemed to bake in the hot sun, while out above the river the stilt house street felt relatively cool.  

Apparently some decades back the government built some new social-housing blocks on the edge of town.  Surprisingly (to the government), the water-people didn't want to move out of their stilt-houses - for reasons that were soon to become clear to us.  

Inside stilt house

The highlight of the tour was being able to hang-out for 30min in a stilt house on the main 'canal'.   The area between 3 houses had been decked-over and roofed-over to form a spacious communal 'living-room' area.

We were able to sit-out on the deck and enjoy the breeze with a nice cup of tea.   It was very relaxing and remarkably cool.  We could certainly appreciate why the land-people envy the water-people's life-style.

Inside Stilt House

The residents here still cook using a wood-burning stove, because they believe food cooked this way tastes better.   There is an obvious fire risk, and indeed periodically there are devastating fires (link, link).  As a precaution many of the houses are now finished with a skin of tin.

Open fire cooking

The view from the deck was very peaceful in the afternoon sun with boats gliding past - much quieter than cars.   The downside of this quiet is a lack of privacy and abundance of gossip.   Living so close together it is impossible to have an argument without the neighbors knowing!

View from stilt house

This is the view from the house we visited, looking particularly nice at high-tide.

After the walking tour we took a second boat-trip.  

Boat trip

The first part was a tour of Tai O waterways.  We glided right-past the stilt-house where we had been sitting earlier.

We had the same boat driver-on both trips.  He hoiked overboard regularly and with enthusiastically, rather to Hannah's disgust.

Hoiking boat-skipper

Next the boat took us out past the harbour entrance to look for pink dolphins (link).    The pink dolphins live in waters around Lantau Island and the Pearl river delta, and were chosen as a symbol of Hong Kong for the hand-over celebrations.

Dolphin Tours

It was nice to get out onto the sea, and see Tai O and out hotel from the harbour.  We didn't see any dolphins on either trip, which isn't unusual.   We did however get a good look at the factors degrading their habitat and causing the population to fall to just 60 individuals.

Dolphin Watching

The dolphins are under-pressure from depletion of fish stocks by overfishing,  habitat destruction and noise from land reclamation and construction on the sea-bed, danger of collision with shipping and ferries, and harassment form tourist speedboats like ours.   Also infections and poisoning from pollution causes high infant mortality (link).

Taking the Dolphins Lunch

The government 'conservation plan' is quite informative (link).  It tries to be as positive as they can, pointing out that the species isn't yet endangered as there are other populations in the Pearl River and elsewhere.  But they concede that pressures will only intensify.  So it seems likely that the dolphin population around Lantau will be gone not far in the future (simp link, and scmp link).  Which makes 'dolphin watching' a rather sad experience.

Cafe Solo

After we check-out of our hotel we spent the early afternoon in town.  Hannah managed to go back to the cat cafe, even though the were officially closed.   On our guide's recommendation, I dropped into Cafe Solo, 25m down the road.   It is a very attractive cafe with a cool shady deck on the canal.    A great place to hang-out on a hot day.

Cafe Solo view

Cade Solo is particularly tasteful and sophisticated - they have a good selection of traditional music CDs for sale including some recordings of Dong Xiao recordings, the Chinese vertical flute which is a relative of Japanese shakhachi.  So I happily bought one.

Bridge Construction

We departed at 2pm by Fortune Ferry to Tung Chung.   This is a nice way to travel and gave us another good look at Lantau Island and the Hong Kong Macau bridge construction -  but  we didn't see any dolphins!