Hong Kong Small Islands Enchant

Two offshore typhoons were dumping midsummer torrents of rain on Hong Kong Island and Kowloon. Peering out through gigantic sheets of glass that protected the cavernous lobby of the Regent Hotel, I could only make out a dismal and melancholy platoon of high-rises.

Five days later things were the same, although my vista had changed. I had a bird’s-eye view of the umbrellas streaming along Connaught Road from my room on the 22nd floor of the Mandarin Hotel.

Then the clouds parted, flooding the bay with silvery light and washing Kowloon in gold. In the harbor, ferries and sampans threaded their way through the olive-drab water.

The Star Ferries, those little green-and-white boats that seem to appear on every Hong Kong travel poster, flitted lazily across the bay like corks, while sleek jetfoils and hydrofoils cut between them on their way to the outlying isles. I hopped aboard a ferry and made for Cheung Chau (Long Island).

Few visitors go to any of Hong Kong’s 235 outlying isles where one can escape the crowded metropolis. You find the enchantment of unspoiled countryside and fishing villages with life styles that are much as they were under the China of the emperors.

Three of Hong Kong’s most popular and charming islands--Lamma, Lantau and Cheung Chau--are no more than an hour from the heart of the city, close enough to spend the day and return to enjoy the night life of Kowloon and Wanchai.

The outlying islands have another attraction: They are often sunny while Hong Kong proper is covered by soggy clouds.

October through March are the best months for a visit, cooler and enjoyable for hiking and exploring.

Sleepy Pace

Cheung Chau, 7 1/2 miles southwest of Hong Kong, is a perfect introduction to the sleepy pace of the outlying isles. With its pastel houses and pine-studded hills, tiny Cheung Chau looks much like a Mediterranean isle but for the sampans and fishing junks that crowd the harbor.

The one-square-mile island was once a hangout for pirates. Cheung Po Chai, the most renowned pirate, used to hide out with his English mistress in a cave on the island’s southern tip.

Children will guide you to it and to the cliff-side Bronze Age rock paintings that mark a legacy of the original island settlers, Hakka and Yueh fishermen who lived on the island more than 2,500 years ago.

Chinese clan associations are still strong. So, too, is the feeling of isolation from most of 20th-Century life.

Cars are banned. The only motorized vehicle is a battery-driven fire engine that occasionally runs through the narrow alleyways that lead away from the harbor toward the two headlands that entrap the slender isthmus on which Cheung Chau village is built.

A five-minute walk is all it takes to thread the passageways from the harbor to Tung Wan beach on the eastern fringe of the island.

En route, you pass through tightly packed market stalls catering less to tourist trade than to local consumer needs. Bolster yourself for the pungent smell of fish and other sea life hanging to dry in the sun.

Boat building is a thriving industry performed without blueprints by master craftsmen whose designs evoke memories of ancient days.

Islanders’ Handicrafts

The island is renowned for its traditional handicrafts too: silken butterflies, jade polishing and handmade paper models for use in festivals and religious ceremonies. One is the Ching Chiu Festival, late April and early May, when giant bamboo towers covered in edible buns are erected outside the Pak Tai Temple to placate malicious ghosts thought to be responsible for a plague that swept the island at the end of the 18th Century.

Cheung Chau is blessed with several temples. Pak Tai Temple, built in 1783, is dedicated to the patron god of seafarers. Among the intriguing items inside is a sword dating to the Sung Dynasty (AD 960-1279). It was hauled from the sea by a fisherman.

A visit to Tin Hau Temple at the southern end of the waterfront will leave you well-placed to take a sampan ride to Sai Wan pier for a look at Cheung Po Tsai’s cave.

By now you’ll probably be ready to take a dip in the sea at one of the pleasant protected beaches along Cheung Chau’s southern shores before a short stroll back to town in time to catch the ferry to Hong Kong.

Lantau, a few miles west of Cheung Chau, is a rugged island, wild and dramatic, dominated by ragged, mist-shrouded peaks. Valleys webbed with dusty trails lead hikers to temples, monasteries and fishing villages that offer charm and character in sheltered serenity. Lantau has only 16,000 inhabitants.

For a weekday escape from crowds, visit the Buddhist Po Lin (Precious Lotus) Monastery atop the Ngong Ping plateau. Better still, spend a night as a guest of the monks.

There, light winds ripple the lotus ponds and the silence is broken only by early morning chants that flow through the temples, quickening rhythmically to the beat of a small drum and clacking sticks. Within the gilded temples are three magnificent bronze statues of Buddha.

Film Crew’s Paradise

Don’t be surprised to find a film crew at work, with the monks happily working as extras.

Getting there is easy: buses ply the route from the ferry pier at Silvermine Bay. The monastery makes an excellent stopover en route to Tai O, a rustic, ramshackle fishing village that is Lantau’s prime attraction.

Tai O is the home of Lantau’s Tanka (boat people), whose tumbledown houses are built on stilts along Tai O creek. Though the sight is not impressive, the odors of fish and shrimp paste processing are. The fascinating and distinctly medieval village is famous for its fabulous seafood.

Adventurous visitors can hike along the coast from Tai O to another fishing village, Tung Chung on the northern shore, where an old Chinese mandarin fort, replete with cannons, guards the harbor from pirates and gweilo (Western) invaders.

Other trails lace the island. One offers an easy circuit of the beautiful Shek Pik reservoir beneath Po Lin Monastery. A route from Tung Chung also skirts the mountain ridges past rushing streams and old Hakka villages to Lantau Mountain Camp near the top of Sunset Peak (876 meters), and on to Silvermine Bay.

To the northeast a one-hour hike leads to Lantau’s Cistercian Trappist Monastery, whose dairy supplies much of the milk for Hong Kong’s good hotels.

Devoted to Silence

You may stay overnight if you wish. But no noise. The order is devoted to silence within the confines of the pine-clad hilltop monastery.

More likely you’ll want to escape to a beach for a snooze in the sun. Try Lamma, third-largest of the outlying islands. Though the nearest to Hong Kong, it is one of the least visited.

Its population is fewer than 9,000. (You can charter a sampan from Aberdeen for about $4.50 U.S.) Lamma is known as the Stone Age Island because of its archeological associations with early settlers.

The isle is replete with beautiful bays, including fiord-like Picnic Bay, where the ferry from Hong Kong Island weaves between the junks to call at the village of Sok Kwu Wan.

This is an excellent place to try the seafood at one of the restaurants lining the harbor. There’s also intriguing Tin Hau Temple, guarded by two austere Chinese lions carved in granite. Stay a while and you’ll undoubtedly see a few residents stopping by to leave small offerings of food to Tin Hau, goddess of the sea.

Mt. Stenhouse (353 meters) stretches in folds of shadowed relief to the south, tempting the would-be hiker to scale its modest heights for a view to rival all views.

Below, scallops of bays and coves are framed in a ripeness of greenery and washed by the opalescent waters of the South China Sea.

Pearly White Beaches

Paths lead the way to the best of the pearly white beaches: Sham Wang, Tum O Wang and Mo Tat Wan in the south and, to the north, Hung Shing Ye, Lo So Shing (where villagers once caught turtles as they came ashore to nest) and Luk Chau Tsuen, which has an old temple on the beach.

After relaxing in the sun and perhaps a leisurely swim, a ferry will be ready to whisk you from Lamma’s main village, Yung Shue Wan (Banyan Tree Bay), back to the neon-driven hurly-burly of Kowloon and Hong Kong Island.

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Visitors reach the islands by ferries operated by the Hong Kong and Yaumati Ferry Co. Air-conditioned ferries operate from the Outlying Districts Services Pier and the Government Pier, Central, a five-minute walk west from the Star Ferry terminal. Round-trip tickets cost $1.50 to $3 U.S.

Hong Kong Watertours offers four-hour and full-day tours of the outlying islands every day. Prices range from $16 for a four-hour tour of Cheung Chau to $33 (including lunch) for a full-day “Outer Islands Escapade.”

Contact Hong Kong Watertours at the Watertours Pontoon between the Star Ferry Pier and Ocean Terminal, Kowloon.

Top Hotels

Two top hotels in Hong Kong are the Regent (Salisbury Road, Kowloon), on the Kowloon side of Hong Kong Harbor and a short walk from the Star Ferry terminal (rates start at $160 a night double) and the Mandarin (5 Connaught Road, Central) in the heart of Central, Hong Kong Island’s premier business and shopping district, and within minutes of both the Star Ferry and Outlying Islands ferry terminals (rates from $167 a night).

The newly renovated Hyatt Regency (67 Nathan Road, Kowloon) is in the heart of Kowloon’s entertainment and shopping center along the Golden Mile. Double rates from $99 to $145. Also in Kowloon, near the Golden Mile, is the Sheraton Hong Kong Hotel & Towers (20 Nathan Road, Tsimshatsui, Kowloon), featuring 10 restaurants and bars. Doubles begin at $103.

For a list of Hong Kong hotels and a free booklet, “Outlying Islands,” contact the Hong Kong Tourist Assn., 421 Powell St., Suite 200, San Francisco 94102, phone (415) 781-4582.