Tin Hau Festival — Dancing Dragons

On our second morning, thanks to my wonderful cousins and the luck of it being a bank holiday - we popped over to Yau Ma Tei to see the local Tin Hau Festival.

The annual festival is held to honour Tin Hau, Goddess of the Sea and the street festival was brilliant. I was so pleased to be able to showcase that part of my heritage to Moon in all it's lion and dragon dancing glory. My cousin's husband, Boris, being the photography enthusiast he is, threw us right in with the displays as though we were 'official photographers' for the event, it was pretty amazing to get so up close.

Each clan from the area offered up their own dancing style, decoration and costume.



Starting the day with matching mosquito bracelets - I can confirm that they were ineffective.















Baby lion. ♥



There are Tin Hau temples dotted all around Hong Kong, being an island, making sure the sea is on your side is kind of important, the temple sizes range from the huge and ornate to a simple statue and incense holder.

Being the amazing guides that they are, after taking in the local festivities and catching up over some dim sum, my cousins took us to the China border to some of Boris' favourite photography haunts before a tasty Korean hotpot in the evening - probably one of the best meals of our whole holiday! We did briefly get stranded in Castle Peak Bay during a quick typhoon but it was in the Hong Kong McDonald's with the best view so you can't really complain.





China is definitely on my bucket-list, it's strange how it feels so completely foreign to me yet Hong Kong feels part of home.








View from McDonald's.

So HK — Photo Diary.

Last night I actually sat down and blogged, for the first time in coming up to three months. I lit some candles, made myself a cup of tea and I planned out what was going to go down for the next couple of weeks. It sounds a little too structured but I've got to ease myself back in a bit and I feel like I can genuinely say that there's more to come - I'm more hopeful about that at least.

So, here's the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Hong Kong holiday spam, I can't believe it's coming up to 2 months since we got home! We had a great time, Moon had the chance to meet so much of my family that he wouldn't otherwise get to and it was so nice to hear him say that it's made him want to travel more.

Unfortunately the weather was not on our side which meant I still didn't really get the trips to the seaside that I've been dreaming of - in all my years of visiting Hong Kong I've never really been the the beach and after reading our guidebook thoroughly I knew it was something I wanted to do. Dang typhoons! Oh well, if all your complaining about is the weather, you're probably alright (or English).



View from our hotel window, there's a little more to Hong Kong than a concrete jungle.


I am so far from well-travelled, with my main holidays growing up being Brittany or Ireland and the occasional trip to Florida or Hong Kong, it was really nice to see some of the places I've visited through Moon's fresh eyes though. I think Hong Kong will always be somewhere I'll come back to every few years, my sister studying there certainly provided me with an excuse to visit when we did but this won't be my last trip.


Can't wait to tell you more about the 10,000 Buddha Monastery, I think it was one of my favourite places that we visited during the entire trip!