The Venice of the SAR?

Apologies for the length of time since my last post. I had trouble getting photos onto this computer which was making me cranky and unable to write!

View down to one of Lamma's many beaches

While many words have been written about Lamma Island, far more eloquent than these will be, I was very excited to visit there on Saturday. Having heard so much about it, and read even more, it was great to be able to form my own impressions of the place.
My own interest was largely about its status as a car-free zone, amongst a small handful of such places in the world. Being a public transport advocate, I have had a fascination with such places ever since I read J.H.Crawford's inspiring book Carfree Cities. This book describes a wonderfully idealistic model of a possible carfree city, which to me seemed like paradise; so much so that all actual cities can never quite match up to this ideal. Hong Kong, with its supremely well-organised public transport, both affordable and ubiquitous, comes close to fulfilling some of this vision. I visited Venice back in 2009 as a result of reading this book, and thrilled at a city organised solely around pedestrians. I think I drove M a little mad pointing out all the ways that Venetians got around the need for motorized vehicles, such as the specialised handcarts designed to be able to go up and down steps while still transporting awkward and heavy items, or the barges that collected garbage from various locations around the city. Having been born in 1969, during the height of the car-centric developments of last century, it is hard for me to imagine life without cars. So places like Venice can be an inspiration, as well as a challenge to reimagine a life beyond the motor vehicle.
Which is all a round-about introduction to my visit to Lamma Island, Hong Kong's third largest island, and a long-established haven for hippy ex-pats and alternative-minded HongKongers. Appropriately enough, archeological digs on the island have found pottery stretching back around 5000 years, so perhaps Lamma can match Venice as an ancient centre of habitation, as well as a car-free zone.
The first observation is that the place is a good size. Walking from one end of the island to the other might take at most three hours, and the walk between the two main villages, which we did, takes only an hour. This more-human scale perhaps made cars unnecessary, though I have been unable to discover how and why it evolved without cars. It is not as if human beings are particularly smart or strategic about these things normally - the usual thinking seems to me no more complicated than a Homer Simpson, 'Mmmmm, cars'.
Without cars, people find other ways to do things. Though bicycles (my favourite form of transportation) were not big in Venice, there were certainly plenty of them on Lamma. Though given the alarming gradient of some of the paths(quite normal in Hong Kong), it does not exactly scream 'bicycle-friendly'. The good thing about a bike, I suppose, is that even if you have to push it up the odd hill, it still makes good sense for all the rest of the journey, particularly if you can load it up with other things you might want to transport, such as a child. I have been loving the sustainable materials that some of the bicycle child seats are made from here, and I finally got a close-up of an unoccupied one, while at Lamma.

Rattan child bike seat

 If you add up the lack of cars and ability to have a garden - we walked past a number of flourishing vegetable gardens, and more banana and papaya trees than you could poke a stick at - then this place could really start to seem like heaven. Certainly it got immediately added to our mental list of 'great places to retire to'. The probable two and a half hour commute to work for M. would make this not a practical option right now, I'm sad to say.
In terms of liveability for us it certainly seemed to have everything we needed. The long time 'hippy' population has meant that it is very well supplied with vegetarian and organic foods, which was good news for us. We ate at a cute place at lunch called 'The Bookworm' which is a vegetarian cafe, with a large library of secondhand books that can be browsed or even borrowed, apparently. The food was okay, though not exceptional, but we are not going to complain about actually having choices on a menu. It is certainly popular as we had to give our name and wait for a table to become available, which took about twenty minutes.

Lamma's fire engine (compact size)

I was very happy to catch a glimpse of Lamma's fire department, which consists of this one small red minivan, as far as I understand it. This is the scale of all the very few vehicles on the island, the majority of which are like glorified open go-karts, mostly used for carting building materials on the island.
The size of the vehicles matches the size of most of the shops and other facilities, with the result that it reminded me very much of some of the Cornish fishing villages I used to visit as a child. The same reliance on fishing as an industry in both places, of course, but mostly the similarities in narrow lanes, odd-shaped houses, steep hills, and shops that are a mix of the practical (a tiny hardware store), the touristy, and the beach-oriented (plastic bucket and spade, anyone?). One of the guidebooks described the main street (actually a fairly narrow alleyway) as 'endearingly ramshackle' and that I think conjures up the whole Lamma experience. We'll certainly be coming back, probably for a weekend away from the hustle and bustle of Hong Kong proper.