Camping on Wai Ling Ding Island

Almost two months into the spring semester, we had our much needed first break this week. The Qing Ming or tomb sweeping festival （清明节） is a national holiday of three days, allowing people to travel to their hometown to sweep the tombs of their ancestors and put some fresh flowers on the graves. I'm not sure how many people will actually take the trouble, but in any case it's a good excuse to take some days off.
In our case, two of the three lost days were compensated for with extra classes during the preceding weekend, so it was really just one extra day free. Still, just enough time to hop on the night bus to Zhuhai again to spend some time with Ling Ling, this time in the form of a camping trip to Wai Ling Ding Dao （外伶仃岛）, a small island some 35 km southeast of Zhuhai in the South-China Sea, and actually closer to Hong Kong than to mainland China.



The catamaran ferry took an hour and 45 minutes to bring us from Zhuhai to the island, stopping at Gui Shan Dao on the way. Most people got off there, leaving about 50 passengers for Wai Ling Ding Dao. We were not the only campers, but everyone chose the small beach as their camping spot, which was a bit too crowded to our taste (about twelve tents huddled around a large boulder), so we opted for a flat grassy patch just off the walkway along the rocky coast, with big sand-coloured boulders partly blocking our view of the sea. A nice spot, except for the fishy stench that came and went in whiffs, and seemed to be prevalent all around the coast, and was even stronger near the beach. Perhaps this was the reason the island never really developed a flourishing tourist industry, despite the nice scenery and clear waters. The small town near the port looked rather dilapidated, with neglected apartment blocks, and piles of rubbish. There was some construction going on to extend the coastal promenade, but it did not look very promising. Shabby-looking hotels and over-priced seafood restaurants also don't help to keep people coming back for more. It might have been more grand in the past, who knows.
The weather was fine. Slightly overcast, but balmy and dry, and good for hiking. It was however quite windy at night, which added some more excitement to the camping experience, our tent shaking violently at times, interrupting our sleep more than once. It has been almost three years since my last camping trip, and memories of the sometimes violent nightly weather in Iceland came to mind. According to Ling Ling's previous experience her tent was not waterproof, which I did not doubt after noticing the single-layer construction and unsealed seams, but luckily for us it was not a requirement on this trip.

Having only a mediocre phone camera at hand, I did not take any serious photos, but this heavily LOMO-fied Ling Ling in her tent is a more contemporary turn on photography, akin to the enormously popular Instagram and Hipstamatic trends. After the unfortunate encounter with sea water that rendered my LX-3 useless, I'm still not sure what to buy as a replacement. The abundance of choices doesn't really make it easier, and rather than just replacing it with its natural successor, the LX-5, which makes perfect sense, I am inclined to spend a bit more and upgrade to the next level in image quality and versatility, which is offered by the micro four-thirds format. I don't feel tempted to buy a DSLR though. Too big to always bring along. It's hard to imagine that I spent many years traveling with a heavy Canon A-1 with three lenses covering the entire focal range of 24 to 210 mm, and even including a small tripod, which I took to destinations around the world to shoot thousands of colour slides, all tucked away now in storage trays, maybe never being fortunate enough to see the light of day again.