Dirty (This week's Photo Hunt theme)

On first glance, the village of Pui O on Lantau Island can appear unremarkable or even on the too dirty side to be a good place to visit. I personally reckon it's quite the charming and interesting place -- and unusual on account of two of it being a place where feral water buffaloes roam in now abandoned paddy fields and whose beach has a striped look on account of its sand being a mix of yellow and black.

Re the water buffaloes: they have both their defenders and detractors within the village and beyond. For my part, I like the novelty of seeing them but also recognize that their color contributes to their coming across as dirty. And then there's the difficult-to-overlook matter of their having to defecate seemingly all over the place. (For those who want proof, click on the photo with the water buffaloes in them in this Photo Hunt entry to get a larger look at what the piles on the ground are -- though it's also true that some of the black blobs also are small birds!)

Re the landscape shots: the top most photo is a shot of the place where the sea merges with a river during high tide but on the afternoon of my most recent visit, fresh and salt water was not meeting up and mixing on account of it being low tide at that point during the day. And on a previous visit, much of the ground in the bottom photo was covered with water.

This last time, however, copious amounts of mud and what looks like a green sludge were on view -- and while it can indeed make for a dirty looking sight, I have to admit to also thinking that the green added some color to my photos -- taken as they were on a gray sky (though not actually generally unpleasant!) day out in a quieter, more nature-filled part of Hong Kong than many other populated places in the territory! ;b