I have friends in Hong Kong. That is the sort of thing that happens when you live there. One of them is a card-carrying member of the Hong Kong Boating Industry Association. He does not actually own a boat, but he is saving up to buy one. Ask him and he will tell you all about it. Parents have pictures of their children on their phones. Pet owners have videos of their cats knocking things off tables. He has pictures of the boat he wants to buy. It is nice, as boats go.
His girlfriend is a card-carrying member of the American Association for Nude Recreation. She literally has a membership card. She is from Canada, where I would not expect a great deal of recreational outdoor nudity most of the year, but she lives in Hong Kong, where there is even less.
They wanted to rent a boat and find a secluded island for their own naked day. They also wanted some people to join them because renting a decent boat is far from cheap. Lily, Kevin, and I were in. Hong Kong has some beautiful islands, and it always intrigues me how you can live in the city for years and never see most of them. Lily and I recruited Amy, the best massage therapist in all of China, as far as I know. We have all known each other for years.
Lily and Kevin met each other in Canada, long before any of us and long before I ever thought about living in Hong Kong. I met Lily and then Kevin more than ten years ago. I met Amy when she started giving me leg massages nine years ago. We started out professionally, but quickly became friends. I met Sofia about six years ago, immediately after which Sofia and Hu Jian met each other on their own. And since it is a small world after all, and Hong Kong is even smaller, Amy and Hu Jian discovered that their brothers went to school together, though they never crossed paths at the time. Their full biographies are not particularly important. What matters is that we have all been friends long enough that the initial idea of a naked boat day did not repel me. Though I always knew there was a 50/50 chance that it would turn into a regular, clothed boat day.
Lily and Kevin dropped out before anyone paid for the boat. They offered to pay their share anyway since it was a last minute cancellation, but that was completely unnecessary. Though we are all on our summer vacations, Kevin also had work to do. And I think he and Lily were looking forward to their own naked day at the big house, as long as I was out to sea.
That left four people on a boat designed to hold six to eight. I think more space is always a good idea whenever people are on a boat, especially if everyone is naked. We were never going to spend the night, so we never needed to adapt to close quarters. I was in it for the wide open islands anyway.
Hu Jian took care of all the boat logistics. He was the boat person in our group and this trip was his idea. Amy and I met at her house and went down to Kwun Tong together, where Sofia, Hu Jian, and the boat were waiting. The boat was moored in the middle of the water with a bunch of other boats, so we took a smaller boat taxi out to our boat. Hong Kong does not have nearly enough spaces to park all the boats, forcing most of them to park in the water without any kind of dock. That is the main reason Hong Kong has so many typhoon shelters.
From Kwun Tong, we sailed out of Kowloon Bay, into the South China Sea, around Hong Kong Island, and headed west. On a map, it makes more sense to go west through Victoria Harbour and then southwest between Hong Kong Island and Lantau, but that area holds something like 90% of all the boat traffic in Hong Kong. The way we went was faster, required less paperwork, and was more scenic. I suppose if you have never been to Hong Kong, sailing from Kowloon Bay through Victoria Harbour would be the bees knees, but anyone who has lived in Hong Kong for more than a month has seen Victoria Harbour from every angle. The islands south of Hong Kong Island are less frequently explored by pretty much everyone.
Our destination was the Soko Islands, less than 35km southwest of Kowloon Bay. I have no idea how many nautical miles that is. It took us about two hours, but we made a few stops and were in no hurry to get there.
Hu Jian chose the Soko Islands for a few reasons. The islands are easy to get to from Kowloon or Hong Kong Island, and even easier from Lantau, assuming you have your own boat. There are no ferries because they are completely uninhabited. North of Lantau is a rather large airport, freeways, and a lot of commercial and private boats going all over the place. South of Lantau is pretty much nothing but wild islands that most people never visit. One of the islands also has Sofia's favorite beach in Hong Kong. It is not especially large, but the sand is soft and white, and the beach is probably always deserted. There is a tiny pier on the island where we could have parked the boat, but getting to the beach from the pier requires a bit of a hike, and there are no trails. It was much easier to park the boat in the cove and swim to the beach.
Hu Jian was the only one wearing clothes by the time we arrived at the Soko Islands. He claimed to be busy driving the boat, but he was clearly the shy one in our group. At Kowloon Bay, we were all fully clothed. Technically, it is illegal to be nude in any public space in Hong Kong. Inside the cabin of a boat is considered private, while out on the deck is public, even on a large body of water with no other people visible to the naked eye. Go nude on the deck of a boat in the middle of Kowloon Bay and you might get a visit from men in uniforms. Go nude south of Lamma Island and no one will ever know or care. Supposedly, Lamma Island has an unofficial nude beach, but I would think it is too populated. Then again, I know Lantau has a nude beach, and it has 15 times as many people.
Amy and I wore bathing suits at the beginning of our boat trip, but Sofia, as the official nudist, shed her clothes as soon as we were clear of the shipping lanes from Stanley. We parked the boat at a little cove on the southern end of Lamma Island. Our goal was to go swimming and maybe explore the island a little. In the clean water between the island and the boat, Amy and I realized that our bathing suits were unnecessary. Though a few thousand people live on Lamma, they all live on the northern half of the island. While Amy, Sofia, and I floated and Hu Jian manned the boat, we pretty much abandoned the idea of exploring inland. The choice between air drying on the boat deck and putting all of our clothes back on to hike toward civilization and overpriced tourist trinkets in the oppressive humidity was an easy one. Lamma Island is a bit of a haven for artists, expats, and alternative types, but even on the most hippie island in Hong Kong, wearing clothes would have been required. Sofia had the right idea, so we carried on to the Soko Islands.
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