I’ve celebrated a lot of birthdays. A lot. If you gave me a candle for every lap I’ve completed around the sun … you’d probably burn down a building before I could blow out all of them. It’s not really possible that I’m as old as, apparently, I am.

Anyway, I decided today that this absolutely is my weirdest birthday. Not because of the number. But because of where I am spending it (Hong Kong) and, to a lesser extent, what I’m doing (working for the International Herald Tribune).

Didn’t see that coming, a year ago. Didn’t see that coming two months ago.

Anyway, we decided to do something vaguely ambitious, for my birthday (or maybe just because it was Saturday), and go to Lamma Island. Which is something like the Catalina Island (if you know the island off the coast of Long Beach) of Hong Kong.

By Hong Kong standards, Lamma Island is rather exotic. For one reason: It is nearly empty. Only 6,000 full-time residents and only one real village. Making it nothing like the sometimes overwhelming crowds of Hong Kong and, especially, of the Wan Chai neighborhood where we’re staying.

Lamma Island isn’t accessible by motor vehicle. Actually, it doesn’t have any cars or buses on the island.

You have to take a ferry to get there, and they seem to leave about every 40 minutes from the main ferry terminals near the Central district of Hong Kong Island. The ride over in the 200-capacity ferry was a little rough, but it affords a great view of the skyscrapers to the right (Kowloon) and the left (Hong Kong).

The ride takes about 25 minutes and costs less than $2. Yeah, $2.

If you know Catalina’s one city, Avalon, you’ve got an idea of the layout of Lamma Island’s one city, Yung Shue Wan. A sort of half-circle development on a thin strip of land before buildings give way to hills.

The ferry lands at what would be the northern tip of the half circle, and you’re put on a promenade that leads into the little town.

It’s touristy, for sure. Lots of restaurants, some knick-knack stores, more than a few bars. But perhaps not as touristy as Avalon can be, on Catalina. More people actually live on Lamma Island, and eventually you walk past the laundry and the grocery store and the post office, etc.

People live in three-story houses built up into the hills. One co-worker actually commutes from Lamma — which is cheaper than Hong Kong, and considered a better place for kids. Or, at least, he did. He was having a yard sale today as he prepares to move to another island, Lantau, here in the harbor.

Lots of expats on Lamma Island. We saw more Westerners today among the 6,000 residents of Lamma Island than we did the rest of the day among 1.3 million in Hong Kong. It is considered something of a hippy community, at least among the foreigners. The Chinese there seem as “regular folks” as the people back on the island of Hong Kong. Just not as harried.

We walked from one end of the town to the other in about, oh, 15 minutes. At the far end is the community recreation area, a sort of oversized basketball court (or undersized soccer field) with 20, 30 local kids and adults knocking around soccer balls, roller skating, running around. We sat and watched them for a bit and wondered if we could live here and commute to work in Hong Kong and decided, well, no, because the one-hour commute, each way, would be an issue. Not to mention some pretty rough ferry rides, during Typhoon season.

But it’s a nice place to visit.

The co-worker who has been living on Lamma, with his wife and two children, recommended the first (and biggest) restauarant on our way into town. So we reversed our course and headed back north (taking a detour up the path that leads to a port on the other side of the island, an 80-minute walk away) … and walked up to the big fish tanks — where you can pick out your own dinner, if you like.

We got a table by the edge of the bay, next to the 30-foot “beach” (too much trash on there to really think about sitting on it) … and actually had a nice view as darkness settled over the bay. I had fried rice (with pork bits, peas and shrimp) and Leah had clams with black beans.

It was well done, and certainly scenic, and not expensive. The whole thing, with hot tea, a veggie dish and a big bottle of Tsing Tao beer, was less than $35.

The key part of it was … feeling away from the masses of people, for the first time since we got here, 17 days ago.

We moseyed back to the ferry, sat in the back in the open air, and looked at the lights of the skyscrapers as we went back, over smoother seas. Far off to the north someone was shooting off fireworks, and we looked at that. Two cruise ships were parked in the channel.

Soon enough, we were back at Pier 4, walking back to Central MTR Station, and then two stops later we were back in busy Wan Chai.

If/when we go back, we’ll leave early enough to get to the city, then take the 80-minute hike across the island to the little fishing village, where they have a couple of nice seafood restaurants and a decent beach, and take the ferry back from there.

Hong Kong has dozens, hundreds of islands. Lamma is one of the more interesting, and one of the most open. It was nice to feel far away when we really weren’t. There was a bit of a breeze and it definitely seemed cooler and less stifling than it feels in the city.

(And no, the wait staff didn’t sing Happy Birthday to me at the restaurant. I’d had a big brownie for “cake” the night before, and Leah knows I would make her swim back to Hong Kong Island if I turned into the center of attention in a restaurant.)

And, hey, it’s still quite warm and quite humid, here on the main island. When is that going to stop? Well, any minute, I keep hearing. Hard to imagine it will, though, given that it’s been like that since we arrived.