What to do on Hong Kong’s outlying islands – hiking, camping, seafood – a great stress relief
- Enjoy Lamma’s seafood restaurants and pubs, Po Toi’s hiking trails, the rugged beauty of Ping Chau and lots more
- Hong Kong has 263 islands and many of them can be easily visited via boat from the Central ferry piers
Hong Kong can be a stressful city at the best of times – and the current political upheaval has only added more tension.
But you can feel some of it melt away as soon as you approach Central district’s ferry piers, where boats make regular journeys to Hong Kong’s outlying islands. Ask someone who lives on one of the islands about their daily ferry commute and they turn rhapsodic.
“The commute is one of the most glorious experiences I’ve ever had in Hong Kong,” says Daisann McLane, who runs walking tour company Little Adventures in Hong Kong.
“The ferries all have open areas in the back, and that is where you want to sit,” she says. “I’ve become an avid ship-spotter, noticing the comings and goings of the various container vessels and their ports of call. As the ferry approaches Peng Chau, I always think about this – these waters, and the view, are one of the last unspoilt vistas in the entire city. You are seeing, more or less, what the British sea captains saw in 1850, what the pirates saw in 1800, and what the boat dwellers [the indigenous Tanka people] looked out at in 1750.”