City guide · Hong Kong SAR, China
Two hundred-odd islands, half an hour of ferry from the financial district, and not a car on three of them.
Reviewed by our Beijing team Updated 2026-10-10
The short version
City guide
Photographs from the coast, and what other travellers wrote afterwards.
Lamma really is Hong Kong's back garden — everyone who has been wants to go back one day, just to walk around and look at it again. — jacky771129
jacky771129, a traveller's note in the source guide
I think this distance is about right — just a stretch of sea between us, neither one bothering the other. I am an outlying island, an island at the edge of the sea of people. — Hebe Tien, 'Outlying Island'
Hebe Tien, 'Outlying Island'
Everybody talks about Hong Kong as if it were only the harbour and the skyline, and then you take a ferry for half an hour and step off into a fishing village where the loudest thing is a boat engine. There are more than 200 islands out here. Some are uninhabited rock, some hold the airport, and three of the ones you will actually visit — Lamma, Cheung Chau, Tai O's corner of Lantau — ban private cars entirely. The main street is a footpath. That is the whole trick of the place.
Lantau is the big one, nearly twice the size of Hong Kong Island, and it holds almost everything people come for: the airport, the Tian Tan Buddha on its 268 steps at 520 m (1,700 ft), the Ngong Ping 360 cable car that hauls you up in 25 minutes, and Tai O, where the houses stand on stilts over the channels and the smell of salted fish follows you down the street. Lantau Peak at 935 m is the territory's second-highest summit, and the monastery below the Buddha still puts people up for the night so they can climb it for sunrise.
Lamma and Cheung Chau are the weekend islands and they are opposites. Lamma — the third-largest island, about 14 sq km, once just a few fishing hamlets and the home village of the actor Chow Yun-fat — filled up from the 1960s with young locals and expats, so Yung Shue Wan reads as a row of craft shops and Western cafés while Sok Kwu Wan at the other end is a line of seafood restaurants on stilts over the water. Cheung Chau never changed: it is a dumbbell-shaped working fishing port with no cars, dense old lanes off the pier, a pirate cave, and giant fish balls.
Do not over-plan it. The islands are cheap by Hong Kong standards — a bed around HK$300, a bowl of tofu pudding HK$10, seafood fresher and cheaper than anything in town — and the ferries are the attraction as much as the transport. Come in summer if you want to swim, any month if you want to eat, and check the typhoon signal before you commit to a crossing.
Hong Kong Outlying Islands
Seven things that are worth rearranging a day for.
Highlights
Hong Kong keeps more than 200 islands outside its main harbour, and the ferry piers in Central work like a bus terminal to a slower century. Central to Yung Shue Wan is 35 minutes. Central to Cheung Chau is 45 on the slow boat, 30 on the fast one. You can be standing in a fishing village before your coffee has gone cold.
Lamma, Cheung Chau and the Tai O waterfront ban private vehicles, which is why they feel like a different country rather than a different district. The main street is a footpath, the delivery vehicle is a handcart, and the only traffic noise is outboard motors in the harbour.
The Tian Tan Buddha sits at 520 m on Lantau: 26.4 m tall, built from 202 bronze pieces, on top of 268 steps, with a three-tier altar modelled on the Temple of Heaven in Beijing. There is no ticket. Po Lin Monastery beside it has been a monastery since 1924 and still offers simple lodging so people can climb Lantau Peak for sunrise.
Nobody believes Hong Kong still has a place like this until they see it: rows of wooden houses standing on piles above the channels, a village of mostly elderly fishermen, and a salt-curing trade that predates the skyline. The shrimp paste and the upright-salted fish are the best in the territory, and you can only buy them here.
Chilli crab, garlic steamed prawns, deep-fried squid, ginger-and-scallion steamed fish — the standard order at the stilted restaurants of Sok Kwu Wan and the open-air stalls by the Cheung Chau pier. Fresher and cheaper than the same plate in Tsim Sha Tsui, and you eat it with your feet almost in the water.
Cheung Chau's Tai Ping Ching Chiu fills the island: three 16 m bamboo bun towers in front of Pak Tai Temple, the floating-colours parade where children dressed as gods and historical figures are propped on hidden frames and appear to float, and the midnight bun-scramble up the towers.
Suggested routes
The condensed version: cable car, Buddha, monastery, stilt village. This is the route to take if you only have one day for the islands.
MTR to Tung Chung, exit B, and the cable car station is a 2-minute walk. Ride the Crystal Cabin up if the queue is short — the queue usually is not, which is exactly why the glass-floor cabins move faster. It runs 10:00–18:00 on weekdays and 09:00–18:30 at weekends.
At the top, the Ngong Ping market village is 1.5 hectares of white walls and grey tiles, five minutes from the station. Walk through it to the Buddha and climb the 268 steps; an hour covers it. Po Lin Monastery next door is worth a second hour, and its vegetarian canteen is the cheapest lunch on the mountain.
Then bus 21 or the Tai O bus from outside the Buddha down to Tai O for the afternoon — three hours is right for the stilt houses, the shrimp-paste shops on Wing On Street and a bowl of something with fish in it.
Stops: Tung ChungNgong Ping 360Tian Tan BuddhaPo Lin MonasteryTai O
Lantau for the sights, then an island with no cars for the seafood and a beach. Sleep on the island — it is the point.
Same Lantau run as the one-day route, but leave Tai O late and come back through Tung Chung to Central, then take the pier 5 boat out to Cheung Chau for the night. The last ordinary boats run late and the service is 24 hours.
Drop your bag, then go and eat: the open-air seafood stalls start right at the ferry pier and the fish is priced by what came in that afternoon.
Stops: LantauTai OCheung Chau
Cheung Chau is a dumbbell, so you can walk the narrow waist from the pier to the west side in minutes and out east to the beaches just as fast. Start at Pak Tai Temple and the bun-scramble towers, then walk out to East Bay for a swim and on to Kwun Yam Wan, where the windsurfers are.
Detour to Cheung Po Tsai Cave — the Qing pirate's hideout, a squeeze through wet rock, bring a phone torch. Eat a giant fish ball and a bun stamped with the character for peace before you board.
Stops: Pak Tai TempleEast BayKwun Yam WanCheung Po Tsai Cave
The softest itinerary on offer: two villages, a beach, one walk, and no cars anywhere.
The MTR to Central or Hong Kong station, exit E1, over the footbridge and about 7 minutes to pier 4. The boat to Yung Shue Wan takes 35 minutes and costs HK$16.1 on weekdays, HK$22.3 on Sundays and holidays, with sailings every 15 to 60 minutes from 06:30 to 00:30.
Walk the main street — craft shops, bars, cafés, and a Tin Hau temple over a hundred years old with an old whale bone inside it. Then 20 minutes on foot to Hung Shing Yeh beach, which has clean water, soft sand and a barbecue area.
Stops: Yung Shue WanTin Hau TempleHung Shing Yeh Beach
The Family Trail starts at Sok Kwu Wan and climbs from the beach through green scrub with wide views the whole way; allow 40 minutes to an hour and a half depending on which branch you take. Other paths run down to the south of the island past Lo So Shing and on to Sham Wan, winding and slow.
Finish at the stilted seafood restaurants at Sok Kwu Wan and order the set: chilli crab, garlic prawns, fried squid, ginger-and-scallion fish. Boats back to Central run to about 00:30 — check the last sailing before you sit down.
Stops: Lamma Family TrailSham WanSok Kwu Wan
Sights
The big one
The largest island in Hong Kong SAR, China, nearly twice the size of Hong Kong Island, sitting out at the mouth of the Pearl River. It is high in the south-west and low in the north-east, with Lantau Peak at 935 m the territory's second-highest summit. Flat ground exists only in small patches under the mountain streams, which is why the population crowds into Tai O in the south-west. It holds the airport, the Tsing Ma Bridge approach, Po Lin Monastery, the Big Buddha and the longest beach in Hong Kong at Cheung Sha.
Tip Do not try to see all of Lantau in a day. Pick either the Buddha-and-Tai-O side or a beach, not both.
Free, and worth the stairs
A bronze Buddha sitting on 268 stone steps at 520 m on Ngong Ping plateau: 26.4 m tall, roughly 34 m including the lotus and the base, about 250 tonnes, made of 202 bronze pieces — 160 for the body, 36 for the lotus, six for the cloud head. The three-tier altar underneath is modelled on the Beijing Temple of Heaven, which is where the name comes from. Po Lin, beside it, was founded in 1924 and is reckoned the first of Hong Kong's four great monasteries; it still puts visitors up so they can climb the peak for sunrise.
Tip Go early or late. Midday on the plateau is hot, and the steps have no shade at all.
Glass floor
Hong Kong's third cable car system, the largest ropeway of its kind in the world when it opened, running from Tung Chung up to Ngong Ping in about 25 minutes with 360-degree views over the sea, the forest, the airport and the Buddha. The 360 in the name is the view. The station building is deliberately plain so it does not fight the landscape, and the Ngong Ping market village is less than five minutes' walk from it.
Tip The Crystal queue is usually shorter than the standard one, so the expensive cabin is often the faster way up. Bus 23 from Mui Wo is the cheap alternative and far slower.
Venice of Hong Kong
The settlement that convinces people Hong Kong still has another life in it. Wooden stilt houses stand in rows over the channels, with water lanes running tidily between them, and the whole village smells of salt fish. It escaped the redevelopment that swallowed everywhere else, so the fishing-village fabric survives — along with the trade that made it: salted fish, shrimp paste, shrimp blocks and fish maw, all still made by the people who live here.
Tip Go on a weekday. On Sundays the lane between the stilt houses is shoulder to shoulder and you will not get a clean photograph.
The dumbbell island
Long and narrow, broad at both ends and pinched in the middle, which is why it is also called the dumbbell island. It sits south-west of Hong Kong and was a flourishing anchorage for fishing and trading vessels long before Hong Kong Island or Kowloon mattered; the trade moved away but the fishing never did. The narrow waist is the town centre, the west side is Cheung Chau Bay with the moored boats and the shops, and it is a short walk east through the salted-fish streets to Tung Wan, the island's most popular bathing beach, and on to Kwun Yam Wan where the windsurfers go.
Tip No cars, so the whole island is walkable. Rent a bicycle if you want to cover the two ends quickly, but you can walk it.
Old lanes
Beyond the beaches there is a dense little inventory of old fabric: Pak Tai Temple, where the bun towers go up in the fourth lunar month; the Tin Hau temple at Pak She; the Kwan Kung Chung Yi Pavilion; the Cheung Chau rock carving; Pak She Street and Sun Hing Street, both so narrow and so packed with old shops and open-air stalls that the pedestrianisation barely registers. Out at the west end, Cheung Po Tsai Cave is the hideout attributed to the Qing pirate of that name.
Tip The lanes behind the pier are the best part of Cheung Chau and the bit most day-trippers skip because they head straight for the beach.
No cars, 14 sq km
The third-largest island after Lantau and Hong Kong Island, about 14 sq km, 30 minutes south of Hong Kong Island, and known to older locals by its older name of Pok Liu Chau. It was a handful of remote fishing hamlets and the home village of Chow Yun-fat; from the 1960s its quietness pulled in young locals and resident foreigners — more than half the population was said to be non-Chinese at one point — so the main street at Yung Shue Wan is now craft shops, Western restaurants and bars, with bamboo thickets and gentle beaches behind it.
Tip Come in on one village and leave from the other. The walk between them is the best hour on the island.
Two villages, one trail
Yung Shue Wan, on the north-west, is the main settlement: the ferry pier, the craft and knick-knack shops, bars, and small restaurants doing European and Asian food, plus a Tin Hau temple more than a hundred years old with a whale bone displayed inside. Sok Kwu Wan, on the south, is the other main village — stilted open-air restaurants built out over the bay, and the trailhead for the Family Trail, which climbs from the beach through green scrub with wide views, then drops to a Tin Hau palace hung with old statues, red silk banners and lanterns.
Tip Order the chilli crab, garlic steamed prawns, deep-fried squid and ginger-and-scallion steamed fish. That is the canonical four dishes and every restaurant does them.
The swim
Lamma's famous beach, only 20 minutes on foot from the Yung Shue Wan ferry pier: clean water, soft sand, and busy with swimmers and sunbathers, including islanders who come down for the afternoon. There is a barbecue area behind it, so you can cook your own lunch and then swim it off.
Tip Bring water and shade. The path in is exposed and there is nothing to buy once the beach huts shut.
Walk it
Three eco trails opened across the south, north and middle of Lamma in 2008, developed by the power company with the Conservancy Association to explain the island's history, culture and natural life. They differ in length — anything from an hour and a half to three hours — and they are the reason to bring proper shoes rather than flip-flops.
Tip Start at Sok Kwu Wan after lunch so you finish at Yung Shue Wan with a cold drink and a short wait for the boat.
Lantau's ferry port
Mui Wo sits on the south-east of Lantau and is also known as Silvermine Bay, after the two silver mines once worked in the valley behind it — the Song emperor and his retinue are said to have sheltered here, which is how the place got its lustre. The old market has been swallowed by newer buildings, but the layout still works: snack shops by the ferry pier, the old market across the stream, the bus terminus outside the pier, and the beach along the waterfront. The town was earmarked for renewal as a small-town retreat with a promenade.
Tip At low tide the flats produce a surprising number of clams, and there are barbecue pits to cook them on. Check the tide before you go.
Look up
One of the ten core projects for the new airport: 2,200 m long with a main span of 1,377 m, two towers each 206 m tall standing 62 m above the sea, and the longest rail-and-road suspension bridge of its kind anywhere. Together with the Kap Shui Mun Bridge it looks like two rainbows laid over the water. The best place to look at it is the Lantau Link Visitors Centre and viewing platform on the north-west tip of Tsing Yi.
Tip You will pass under or over it on the way to the airport — worth looking up. Combine it with a stop at Tung Chung on the same MTR ride.
The seafood peninsula
Strictly a peninsula rather than an island, but it belongs in the same itinerary and the same appetite. One long narrow street runs about a kilometre along the coast, with an ornamental archway marking the centre, and almost every building on it is a seafood restaurant — plain, traditional, closer to the old dai pai dong than to anything designed. They do not look like much, which is generally a good sign.
Tip Choose the tank, not the menu. Point at what is swimming, agree the price before it is killed, and confirm whether the price is per catty or per plate.
Food
The dish you came for. A whole crab cracked and fried in a chilli and black-bean sauce, eaten at an open-air table with your hands and a beer, with the harbour two metres away. Order it at Sok Kwu Wan or the Cheung Chau pier stalls and expect to get messy.
Prawns steamed over a bed of chopped garlic so the flesh stays springy and the garlic goes sweet rather than sharp. Ask for the heads on — the fat in them is the best part.
Fresh squid in a light batter, flash-fried so it is crisp outside and still tender rather than rubbery. Squeeze the lime or dip it in the salt-and-pepper mix. The third of the four dishes everyone orders.
The test of whether a seafood kitchen knows what it is doing: a whole fish steamed to the minute, dressed with shredded ginger and spring onion and a splash of hot oil. If this is good, the rest will be.
Cheung Chau's steamed buns, stamped on top with the character for peace, filled with red bean, lotus seed or sesame paste. They are the buns that get scrambled for at midnight during the festival, and the rest of the year they are a few dollars and best eaten warm. Miniature bun keyrings and cushions are the island's best souvenir.
Fish balls roughly the size of a ping-pong ball, dense and springy rather than the floury ones you get on the mainland. Eat them on a stick with satay sauce or chilli, straight from the pier. They are one of the two snacks Cheung Chau is known for.
Silken tofu in syrup, served cold in summer and hot if you would rather. One bowl on Lamma is about HK$10 and it is the best ten dollars you will spend — fine texture, real bean flavour, and ginger syrup you will not find anywhere else.
Fermented shrimp pounded to a paste, or dried into a block — the block is stronger. A spoonful transforms stir-fried greens or steamed pork. Tai O's is made by hand in small batches and sold nowhere else, which is the reason to buy it here.
Tai O's speciality and a point of local pride: whole freshly caught fish stood upright in a heap of salt for a day or two, then dried — never split, never gutted, which is why it is called the closed-belly salted fish. Fry it with pork or steam it with ginger.
Dried swim bladders, prized for their collagen and used in soups to restore and strengthen. Buy a little and simmer it in chicken soup at home; it is one of the standard gifts people carry off the islands.
The big basin feast of the New Territories and the islands, layered with pork, chicken, fish maw, mushroom, radish and bean curd, and served at village banquets and festival time. If you are on Cheung Chau or in Mui Wo during a festival, this is what the tables are eating.
Salted fish of every saltiness, dried shrimp, fish maw, shrimp paste and shrimp blocks, all laid out on Wing On Street and Kai Si Street in Tai O. Made by the residents themselves in small quantities, which is exactly why the quality beats the city dried-seafood shops.
Where to eat
Ten dollars
No shopfront — a simple shelter and a few plain tables — and a queue in front of it all day. The pudding is famous for being fine and smooth with real bean flavour, and it comes with a ginger syrup you will not see in the city. The queue moves; it is worth it.
On stilts
A row of open-air restaurants built out over the bay at Sok Kwu Wan, which is why people come to this side of Lamma at all. Pick the tank, agree the price per catty before anything is cooked, and order the four canonical dishes: chilli crab, garlic steamed prawns, deep-fried squid, ginger-and-scallion steamed fish.
Crabs and beer
The open-air dai pai dong that begin at the ferry pier itself, with the drying fish and the boats for a view. The locals fish for a living, so what is on the ice came out of the water within hours, and the prices are fair in a way city seafood rarely is. Crab, beer, sunset — this is the meal the guidebook cover promises.
Vegetarian, on the mountain
The monastery has fed visitors for nearly a century, and the vegetarian hall is the cheapest proper meal you will get on Lantau. Plain food, big portions, no menu gymnastics. Come for it after climbing the 268 steps rather than eating at the market village.
A kilometre of restaurants
One narrow street, about a kilometre of it, running along the coast behind an ornamental archway, lined almost solidly with seafood restaurants. They look like the old dai pai dong — bare, traditional, nothing designed — and that is the recommendation rather than the warning.
Foreign food, island pace
Lamma's northern village is where the expats and the young locals landed, so the street is a run of craft shops, bars and small restaurants doing European and Asian food with sea views. It is the only place on the islands where you can eat something other than Cantonese, and the only place with a proper coffee.
Snacks between the stilts
Down the lanes between the stilt houses you will find the small stuff: fish balls, egg waffles, grilled squid, tofu pudding, and the donuts and bean curd that the village is quietly known for. Cheap, hot, and eaten standing up while you look at the water.
Festivals and activities
Fourth lunar month
Officially the Tai Ping Ching Chiu, held on Cheung Chau in the fourth lunar month and the most distinctive festival in the islands. It honours the island's guardian deities and also appeases the islanders killed by pirates, whose hungry ghosts were said to roam the island looking for food. Three bamboo bun towers about 16 m high go up in front of Pak Tai Temple along with images of the three gods.
Tip The midnight bun-scramble is the climax: teams race up the towers to grab as many buns as they can. Turn up hours early for a place.
Piu sik
The centrepiece of the bun festival and the thing everybody photographs: children dressed as figures from history and legend, mounted on handcarts on hidden rods and wires so they appear to float several feet above the ground as the carts go past. Between the costumes and the impossibility of working out how it is done, it is genuinely delightful rather than merely quaint.
Tip Come the day before and sleep on the island. The last ferry after the parade is an unpleasant experience.
Second lunar month
Part of the celebrations for the birthday of Hung Shing, the sea god, and held at Mui Wo for four days from the thirteenth day of the second lunar month, around late March. Water lanterns are set adrift on the sea and sky lanterns released into the night, and when the lights go out over the water and up into the dark it is the best photograph on any of the islands. There is also a proper poon choi banquet and a run of traditional events alongside it.
Tip Bring a tripod or a steady hand; the lantern releases happen after dark and the light is low.
Third lunar month
The twenty-third day of the third lunar month is the birthday of Tin Hau, the goddess who protects fishermen and guarantees fair weather and heavy nets, and the fishing communities of Cheung Chau, Tai O, Mui Wo, Peng Chau, Lamma and Po Toi all celebrate it at scale. It is a loud, colourful festival and the most distinctive offering is the paper flower cannon — an altar piece made of coloured paper.
Tip Tai O's version is the most photogenic because the procession passes the stilt houses.
Varies by district
The other festival the islands take seriously, dedicated to a Hau Wong whose identity is still argued over — usually taken to be Yang Liangjie, a loyal minister of the late Song. The date changes from district to district: Tai O holds it in the sixth lunar month, Tung Chung in the eighth. If you are on Lantau in high summer and see opera staging going up by a temple, this is why.
Tip Check the lunar date before you travel; it moves against the Gregorian calendar every year and catches visitors out.
Free, and dark
Wild camping is the islands' best-kept pleasure. Kau Ling Chung on Lantau is called the most beautiful campsite in Hong Kong, and the appeal is straightforward: no traffic noise, no light pollution, a fire on the sand, and stars you cannot see from Kowloon. At midnight you can walk down to the wet sand and dig for whatever is living under it, then climb a summit before dawn to watch the sun come up out of the sea.
Tip Camp on a weekday and tell someone where you are going. Mobile signal is patchy on the south-west coast of Lantau.
Where to stay
The practical choice
Off the ferry pier you will pass a dozen hand-painted guesthouse signs, and because supply outruns demand most of them do not need a booking at all. Off-season a double goes for around HK$300 and you can often negotiate it lower. Some are genuinely good seafront rooms. Go and look at three before you commit.
Eighteen rooms, near East Bay
A purpose-built guesthouse opened in 2006, with the main and annexe blocks on Tung Wan Road next to the ferry pier and East Bay beach: reception, a dining area, a roof terrace to sit on, and 18 double rooms. In 2011 it added family rooms on Pak She Street, close to Pak Tai Temple and the waterfront seafood strip — which is the better half of the island to sleep on.
Lamma, cheap
A three-storey villa in Yung Shue Wan, a few minutes from the ferry pier, fully equipped and cheap, with room to haggle in the low season. This is the one to take if you want to be on Lamma rather than Cheung Chau and you do not care about a sea view.
On the plateau
The one to book if you want Lantau after the day-trippers leave, and the only way to be on the plateau for the Buddha at dawn and a sunrise climb up Lantau Peak. Run by the Hong Kong Youth Hostels Association, which takes bed and campsite bookings online.
Peninsula beds
Two association hostels in Sai Kung country — Pak Sha O and Bradbury Hall — both cheap, both bookable online, and both full of people walking the country parks rather than shopping. If the point of your trip is the Sai Kung seafood street and a hike the next morning, these are where to sleep.
Simple, and early
The monastery has taken in guests for decades, on the understanding that you are there for quiet or for the climb. Rooms are plain and the point is timing: you are already at 520 m when everyone else is still on the MTR.
Half a day is enough
Tai O and Mui Wo are day trips, not overnight stops — half a day covers either, and the accommodation in both is thin. Sleep where the evening is: Cheung Chau or Lamma. Sai Kung only if you are walking the next morning.
Shopping
Wing On Street and Kai Si Street by Dai Yung Bridge: stall after stall of salted fish in every degree of saltiness, dried shrimp, fish maw, shrimp paste and shrimp blocks. The difference from a city dried-seafood shop is that this is made by the residents themselves, in small batches, and sold nowhere else. Take the bus 11 to the terminus and walk five minutes to the bridge.
Shrimp fermented with salt and ground to a thick paste, or dried into a block that is stronger again. A spoonful lifts stir-fried greens or steamed pork. This is what moved people who watched the food documentaries, and it is the single most useful thing you can carry off the islands.
Tai O's signature: whole fish stood upright in salt for a day or two, then dried, never split and never gutted, which is why the belly stays closed and the flesh keeps its oil. It is what the village is proud of, more than the shrimp paste.
Dried swim bladders, full of collagen, prized as a restorative. Simmer a piece in chicken soup at home for something rich and clean-tasting. Buy it whole rather than pre-cut so you can see what you are getting.
A family operation on Tai O's Stone Pier Street that has been making shrimp products entirely by hand for more than 80 years. People come out from the city specifically to buy it. The shop smells exactly as you would expect, which is the quality guarantee.
Cheung Chau sells the festival in miniature: bun-shaped keyrings, cushions, magnets and phone charms stamped with the character for peace. Cheap, light, and a better story than another fridge magnet. Buy the edible version warm as well.
Fishing has faded on the islands and the money has moved into processing seafood and tourism, so the stalls are full of shells, driftwood, rope work and small lacquered fish. Nothing here is expensive and most of it is cheerful rather than tasteful — which is fine.
UnionPay, Visa and Mastercard work in the city and in the bigger island shops, but the produce stalls and the snack carts are cash. Small stalls mean small change: carry HK$10 and HK$20 notes and coins. Prices at the markets are negotiable; the first number is not the number.
Getting around
Hong Kong International is one of the world's ten busiest airports and it sits on Lantau, which means you land on the islands before you know it. The Airport Express is fast and expensive — HK$60 to Tsing Yi, HK$90 to Kowloon, HK$100 to Hong Kong station — and you can pay with an Octopus. Public buses are the cheap way in at HK$14–48, with A routes faster and E routes cheaper. Taxis carry up to five and cost the most.
Intercity trains run from Hung Hom station in Yau Tsim Mong on three through lines: the Guangdong line to Dongguan (Changping), Guangzhou East, Foshan and Zhaoqing — about 2 hours to Guangzhou East, with a dozen or so departures a day; plus Beijing West in about 23.5 hours and Shanghai in about 18.5 hours, both every other day. Ferries arrive at the China Ferry Terminal in Tsim Sha Tsui (06:00–22:00) and the Hong Kong–Macau Ferry Terminal in Sheung Wan, which is open 24 hours.
The heart of the whole operation. The numbered piers in Central work as a terminal for the islands: pier 4 for Lamma's two villages, pier 5 for Cheung Chau, pier 6 for Mui Wo on Lantau. Octopus is accepted, so you walk on and tap. Get to the piers from Central or Hong Kong station exit E1 and walk through the IFC mall — it is about 7 minutes to pier 4.
Lantau is the one island you reach by railway rather than ferry. The Tung Chung line takes you to the cable car in minutes — Ngong Ping station is a 2-minute walk from Tung Chung exit B — and from there the buses fan out: 3M to Mui Wo, 11 to Tai O, 23 up to Ngong Ping from Mui Wo. The MTR runs about 06:00 to 01:00 with a train every couple of minutes, and fares run HK$4 to HK$26 by distance.
Sai Kung is reached from the Kowloon side. The fastest common route is the MTR to Choi Hung, exit C2, then green minibus 1A or bus 92 to Sai Kung town. Alternatives: bus 92 or 96R from Diamond Hill (96R weekends and holidays only), minibus 1A or 1M from Diamond Hill, bus 299 from Sha Tin Town Centre, minibus 1 from Telford Gardens in Kowloon Bay, or minibus 101 from Hang Hau.
Buy an Octopus on arrival — HK$150 including stored value — and use it on the MTR, buses, minibuses, trams, ferries and even at 7-Eleven. It is accepted on every form of public transport except taxis. One caution: buy it and return it on the same day and you will pay a handling fee, so either keep it or time the refund.
Tips
Pier 4 for Lamma, pier 5 for Cheung Chau, pier 6 for Mui Wo. The piers are not next to each other in any intuitive order, and people miss boats standing at the wrong one. Sunday and holiday fares are higher than weekday fares on every route.
Typhoons run mainly from July to September, and signal 8 stops the ferries outright. If you are booked on an island when one comes in, you may be there for a day; conversely, a crossing you booked for a clear morning can evaporate.
Summer is the season for Hung Shing Yeh, East Bay and Silvermine Bay, and also the busiest. If you are not swimming, winter is mild and the seafood is just as good — the islands empty out and the restaurants are glad to see you. Hong Kong is not cold in winter.
Both are small. Three hours covers Tai O including the produce market; three hours covers Mui Wo and the beach. Do not book a night in either — sleep on Cheung Chau or Lamma, where there is something to do after dark.
Point at what you want in the tank, confirm whether the price is per catty or per plate, and get the total before it goes into the wok. The food is honestly good and honestly priced, but the unit of measurement is where visitors lose money.
The tofu-pudding stall, the fish-ball cart and the Tai O produce sellers take Hong Kong dollars and nothing else. Carry HK$10 and HK$20 notes and coins, and remember the first price at a market stall is not the price.
Mainland mobile users need roaming enabled before departure or there is no signal at all; calls back to the mainland are dialled as 001-86 plus the number and roaming is expensive. A local SIM from a border crossing, an MTR station or a 7-Eleven is cheaper and works immediately.
Public hospitals are cheap but overwhelmed and often by appointment, private ones are expensive, and finding a clinic as a visitor is a chore. Pack the usual remedies for stomach upsets, sun and insect bites and save yourself the hunt.
Practical
The islands run on the ferry timetable and the lunar calendar. Check both before you book anything, and leave a boat of slack in your day.
| Region | Hong Kong SAR, China — more than 200 islands outside the main harbour; Lantau is nearly twice the size of Hong Kong Island, Lamma about 14 sq km |
|---|---|
| Entry documents | Mainland travellers: Two-way Permit with endorsement, 10–15 working days to process, valid 5 years, up to 7 days per visit. Many other nationalities enter visa-free. A 7-day transit exemption exists for onward travel |
| Language | Cantonese is the everyday language, English is official and widely spoken; younger people understand Putonghua even when they do not speak it well, some elderly islanders speak neither |
| Money | Hong Kong dollar (HK$); roughly 1 : 0.8 against the renminbi. Notes of 10/20/50/100/500/1,000, coins from 10 cents. UnionPay, Visa and Mastercard widely accepted; cash only at stalls and carts |
| Electricity | 200/220 V. Most accommodation lends adapters and converters; bring your own if you want to be sure |
| Time and phones | UTC+8, no time difference with Beijing. Dialling code 00852. Emergency — police, fire, ambulance: 999. Calls to the mainland: 001-86 + area code + number |
| Ferry fares | Central–Yung Shue Wan HK$16.1 weekdays / HK$22.3 Sundays and holidays; Central–Sok Kwu Wan HK$19.8 / HK$28; Central–Cheung Chau HK$12.6–28.7 slow, HK$24.6–35.3 fast |
| Big tickets | Ngong Ping 360 standard cabin HK$135 return adult, Crystal Cabin HK$213; Tian Tan Buddha free; Tai O, Cheung Chau, Lamma, Mui Wo, Sai Kung all free |
| Cost of living | Budget bed around HK$300; a meal about HK$38; cola about HK$8; bottled water about HK$5. Island rooms run roughly half city prices |
| Health | Public hospitals cheap but crowded and often by appointment; private hospitals expensive; clinics are hard for visitors to find — bring your own medicines |
Travel with them
Flora Chan, Lawrence Ng, Raymond Lam, Miriam Yeung — 25 episodes, 2000
The reason a lot of people know Lamma at all. The seafood restaurant in the series, named Bailixian, was on Lamma, and the plot is exactly what the island feels like: a group of young people trying to make a seafood restaurant work, with no villains and no violence, only romance, warmth and a little humour.
Liao Weitang
Liao Weitang once asked himself how hard it is to be a poet in Hong Kong. In this book he writes as poet, critic and artist at once, observing and commenting on the contradictory atmosphere and the strange situation that art faces in the space between Hong Kong and the mainland. It is the most intelligent thing written about island distance.
Hebe Tien
I think this distance suits us well — just a stretch of sea between us and neither one bothering the other; I am an outlying island, an island at the edge of the sea of people, and the world smiles at me politely. It is the emotional register of these islands exactly: faintly detached, faintly lonely, and completely fine about it.
The questions visitors ask us most about Hong Kong Outlying Islands, answered plainly.
Prices and practical details are reviewed every month by our Beijing team and updated the day a rule changes.
Summer, if you want to swim — the beaches at Hung Shing Yeh, Cheung Chau's East Bay and Silvermine Bay are the reason most people go. Summer is also the busiest, and typhoons run mainly from July to September, so check the signal before you book a crossing. If you are not going in the water, any month works: winters here are mild, and a bowl of seafood on a pier in January is its own pleasure.
Very. Hong Kong is far safer than its gangster films suggest — theft and robbery are uncommon, police patrol the islands, and public call boxes and help points are well signed. The real risks are weather and terrain: a typhoon signal 8 cancels ferries outright, and the Lamma trails are hot and unshaded in midsummer.
Not really. Cantonese is the everyday language and English is official and widely spoken, so between the two you can get almost anything done. Putonghua is understood by younger people even when they cannot speak it well; some elderly islanders speak neither Putonghua nor much English, in which case typing traditional characters on your phone works better than talking.
Cheaper than the city. Accommodation is the big saving — off-season an island room runs about half what the same money buys in Kowloon, roughly HK$300 for a Cheung Chau double, and the rooms are bigger. Seafood is fresh and good value, snacks cost less than downtown, and souvenirs are reasonable. The ferries are the cheapest sightseeing in Hong Kong at HK$12.6 to HK$35.3.
All by ferry from the numbered piers in Central. Pier 4 for Lamma's two villages, pier 5 for Cheung Chau, pier 6 for Mui Wo on Lantau. For Lantau's Buddha and Tai O, take the MTR to Tung Chung instead: the Ngong Ping cable car station is a 2-minute walk from exit B, or bus 11 to Tai O. Sai Kung is reached by minibus 1A or bus 92 from Choi Hung and Diamond Hill.
The islands are part of Hong Kong SAR, China, so the entry rules are Hong Kong's: mainland Chinese travellers need a Two-way Permit with a valid endorsement, usually processed in 10–15 working days and good for stays of up to 7 days per trip. Most other nationalities get visa-free entry for 7 to 180 days. Transit passengers can sometimes use the 7-day transit exemption instead of a permit.
Yes, and Lantau is the one to do if you only have a day — MTR to Tung Chung, cable car up, Buddha and monastery before lunch, bus 11 to Tai O in the afternoon, last boat or MTR back. Lamma and Cheung Chau work fine as half-day trips too, since the crossing is only 25 to 45 minutes each way. Staying a night is worth it, though: the day-trippers leave and the islands change.
Cheung Chau or Lamma, because that is where the rooms are — Tai O and Mui Wo need only half a day, so sleeping there buys you nothing. Walk off the Cheung Chau ferry and you will pass a dozen family guesthouse signs; off-season you can negotiate a double down to about HK$300. On Lantau and in Sai Kung the hostels of the Hong Kong Youth Hostels Association are the cheap answer, and they take bed and campsite bookings online.
Plan this trip
The same places, with a driver, an English-speaking guide and the tickets already bought.
City guides
Dalian
City guide · 15 tours
The Northern Pearl — China's most romantic coastal city.
Shenyang
City guide · 12 tours
Where the Qing dynasty began — an imperial palace, a warlord's mansion and the cheapest good food in the northeast.
Changbai Mountain
City guide · 12 tours
A volcano on the North Korean border, a jade-green crater lake at 2,189 m, and hot springs on the way down.
Kunming
City guide · 12 tours
China's Spring City — a mild plateau capital of flowers, markets and the Stone Forest, with gulls on the lake in winter.
Dali
City guide · 12 tours
A walled Bai town between a 4,000 m mountain and a great lake — wind, flowers, snow and moon, and life at a slower speed.
Shuhe
City guide · 12 tours
The quiet version of Lijiang — a Tea Horse Road village of canals, stone bridges and slow afternoons, 4 km from the crowds.
Lijiang
City guide · 12 tours
A UNESCO Naxi old town of canals and cobbles beneath a 5,596 m snow mountain — the cultural heart of north-west Yunnan.
Xiamen
City guide · 12 tours
A subtropical island city of temples, fishing-village lanes and the best street food in Fujian — with the car-free islet of Gulangyu a 20-minute ferry away.
Gulangyu
City guide · 12 tours
A car-free island of colonial villas, pianos and cats, twenty minutes off Xiamen — and the one place where the trick is simply to stay the night.
Fuzhou
City guide · 12 tours
A 2,200-year-old capital of banyan trees and mountains-within-the-city, where the Ming lanes of Sanfang Qixiang meet the dockyard that built China's modern navy.
Lugu Lake
City guide · 12 tours
A 2,680 m lake on the Yunnan–Sichuan border, home to China's last matrilineal people, pig-trough canoes and a great deal of doing nothing.
Xishuangbanna
City guide · 12 tours
China's tropical south — rainforest, wild elephants, Dai villages and the Mekong, wrapped around the gateway city of Jinghong.
Shangri-La
City guide · 12 tours
A Tibetan town at 3,300 m in Yunnan's Diqing prefecture — monasteries, grassland, prayer wheels and cold thin air.
Nanchang
City guide · 12 tours
Jiangxi's 'hero city' on the Gan River — one great Tang pavilion, a 160-metre Ferris wheel, and the best claypot soup you will eat in China.
Hefei
City guide · 12 tours
Anhui's 2,000-year-old capital: the hometown of China's model judge, a moat-turned-garden ring, and the fast rail gateway to Huangshan.
Hongcun
City guide · 12 tours
A 900-year-old Hui village laid out as an ox, with water running to every door and a mirror-still crescent pond at its heart.
Wuhan
City guide · 12 tours
Three towns, two rivers and the best breakfast in China — a huge, blunt river city of bridges, lakes and cheap, brilliant street food.
Changsha
City guide · 12 tours
Hunan's loud, young capital: a 3,000-year-old city that eats chilli-hot food, stays up all night and treats foot massage as a civic duty.
Fenghuang Ancient Town
City guide · 12 tours
The stilt-house river town of Shen Congwen's 'Border Town' — glowing lanterns, stepping stones and the best two nights in western Hunan.
Lushan
City guide · 12 tours
A cloud-wrapped granite mountain with a Victorian hill station on top, waterfalls in three tiers, and the mist that Su Shi said you could never see through.
Wuyuan
City guide · 12 tours
China's 'most beautiful countryside' — dozens of white-walled Huizhou villages strung along streams and terraced into the hills, and two weeks a year of gold.
Mount Heng (Hengshan, Hunan)
City guide · 12 tours
The South Great Peak: a pilgrimage mountain of 72 summits where the temples run all the way to the top, and the sunrise over the cloud sea is the whole point.
Huangshan
City guide · 12 tours
Yellow Mountain: 82 granite peaks of twisted pines and grotesque rock, a sea of cloud that changes by the hour, and hot springs at the foot.
Wudang Mountain
City guide · 12 tours
The Taoist first mountain of China — a gilded bronze hall on a 1,612 m summit, temples hung off cliff faces, and the birthplace of tai chi.
Luoyang
City guide · 12 tours
Thirteen dynasties, 100,000 Buddhas carved into a river cliff, China's first Buddhist temple — and a whole city that turns peony-pink every April.
Yuntai Mountain
City guide · 12 tours
A UNESCO geopark in Henan where red-stone gorges squeeze a river to a slot, a 314 m waterfall drops in one plunge, and every path leads to another pool.
Rizhao
City guide · 12 tours
A low-key Shandong beach town where the sun rises straight out of the Yellow Sea, the sand runs 60 km and a seafood dinner costs less than a coffee in Shanghai.
Yantai
City guide · 12 tours
A northern Shandong port of fairy-tale cliffs, wine cellars and long golden beaches — where emperors once hunted the elixir of life and China's wine industry still begins.
Lianyungang
City guide · 12 tours
A working Jiangsu port with a myth in the middle of it — the Flower-Fruit Mountain of Journey to the West, a sea causeway to a big island beach, and some of the cheapest seafood on the coast.
Sanqing Mountain
City guide · 12 tours
A vertical forest of granite pillars in Jiangxi — the Python Out of the Mountain, the Goddess of the East Sea, two cable cars and a cliff-hugging walkway at 1,660 metres.
Tianjin
City guide · 12 tours
Beijing's port city next door — a river of 24 bridges, 2,000 colonial villas, and the best street breakfast in northern China.
Datong
City guide · 12 tours
A frontier capital of carved Buddhas — the Yungang Grottoes, a temple pinned to a cliff, and the oldest wooden tower in China.
Taiyuan
City guide · 12 tours
Shanxi's provincial capital and noodle heartland — the spring of Jinci, two Ming pagodas, and a museum that explains the whole province.
Pingyao
City guide · 12 tours
China's best-preserved ancient walled town — a Ming wall, the first Chinese bank, and two temples of painted clay just outside the gates.
Wutai Mountain
City guide · 12 tours
China's foremost Buddhist mountain — fifty-plus temples in one valley, crowned by five flat-topped peaks up to 3,058 m.
Hulunbuir
City guide · 12 tours
China's finest grassland — a 263,000 km² sweep of steppe, birch forest and border river, best driven with the windows down.
The Forbidden City
City guide · 12 tours
Beijing's 600-year imperial palace — 8,700 rooms behind a 72-hectare wall, and the largest surviving wooden palace complex on earth.
Sanya
City guide · 12 tours
China's only true winter-sun coast — four very different bays, a coral island and a 108 m sea Buddha, all at 18° north.
Haikou
City guide · 12 tours
Hainan's capital is the island's living city — 600-year-old arcade streets, a volcanic village, and a morning-tea-to-midnight food culture.
Beihai
City guide · 12 tours
24 km of fine white sand on one side, a volcanic island of coral and lava on the other — plus a 19th-century arcade old street in between.
Nanning
City guide · 12 tours
Guangxi's green capital is a gateway to Detian Falls, Beihai and Vietnam — and a genuinely excellent food city if you let it slow you down.
Guangxi
City guide · 12 tours
One autonomous region, a dozen landscapes — limestone peaks and rice terraces in the north, a Vietnam border and a warm gulf coast in the south.
Huizhou
City guide · 12 tours
A free West Lake, a Taoist mountain and 200 km of white-sand coast — the Pearl River Delta's most underrated weekend.
Beidaihe
City guide · 12 tours
Northern China's classic beach escape — one sunrise headland, 10 km of calm swimming water, and a bird flyway overhead twice a year.
Shanhaiguan
City guide · 12 tours
The town where the Great Wall stops being a rumour of mountains and walks into the Bohai Sea.
Baiyangdian
City guide · 12 tours
The biggest freshwater lake on the North China Plain — and almost none of it can be reached except by boat.
Qinhuangdao
City guide · 12 tours
126 km of Bohai coast in one municipality — a working port, two famous resorts, and the only desert dunes that meet this sea.
Yesanpo
City guide · 12 tours
Gorge country where the Taihang and Yan ranges collide — 52.5 km of canyon walls, a cave that spits fish, and a river to fall off.
Zhuhai
City guide · 12 tours
The delta's slow city: a 28 km promenade, 146 islands, oysters fattened where the river meets the sea.
Wuyi Mountain
City guide · 12 tours
Nine bends of clear water, red sandstone cliffs, and the tea that made a mountain's name.
Jiuzhaigou
City guide · 12 tours
108 mineral-blue lakes in one 55 km valley — the place that ruins water everywhere else for you.
Mount Siguniang
City guide · 12 tours
Four snow peaks, three valleys, and the friendliest 5,000 m mountain in China to stand on top of.
Hailuogou
City guide · 12 tours
A glacier that comes down to 2,850 m, hot springs in the forest, and Gongga Shan filling the sky above both.
Daocheng Yading
City guide · 12 tours
Three 6,000 m sacred peaks, glacial lakes at 4,600 m and twenty hours of road — the hardest, highest payoff in Sichuan.
Shunan Bamboo Sea
City guide · 12 tours
Seventy thousand mu of bamboo over twenty-eight hills, a red sandstone corridor under a closed green roof, and a banquet made entirely of bamboo.
Dujiangyan
City guide · 12 tours
Not a monument but a machine: three pieces of engineering with no dam, still doing their job after 2,270 years.
Qingcheng Mountain
City guide · 12 tours
The mountain where Daoism was organised, and the one Chengdu escapes to when the basin turns into an oven.
Qingdao
City guide · 12 tours
Red-tiled roofs, cold beer and a granite mountain that walks straight into the sea — the easiest good time on the Yellow Sea.
Mount Tai
City guide · 12 tours
1,545 metres, 6,290 stone steps and three thousand years of emperors — the one mountain in China that is also a document.
Jinan
City guide · 12 tours
A provincial capital with 700 springs under the pavement — people still queue at the spouts to fill their kettles.
Weihai
City guide · 12 tours
1,000 km of clean coast, a free bathing beach, the island where the Beiyang Fleet died — and thousands of wild swans every winter.
Qufu
City guide · 12 tours
One family, two thousand years of steles, and a ¥150 pass that covers the lot — the easiest serious day trip in Shandong.
Penglai
City guide · 12 tours
China's immortals' coast — a Song-dynasty naval harbour you can walk for free, a mythology nobody ever found, and the ferry to 32 islands.
Changdao
City guide · 12 tours
32 islands, one causeway, a ¥150 land pass, tens of thousands of gulls and nowhere you can drive — the place where everything happens by boat.
Nanjing
City guide · 12 tours
Capital of six dynasties, capital of the Republic, and the city that eats more duck than anywhere else on earth.
Suzhou
City guide · 12 tours
Two thousand five hundred years of canals, sixty surviving gardens, and a city that shuts its gates at half past five.
Zhouzhuang
City guide · 12 tours
Nine hundred years, fourteen bridges, one ticket — and a town that only makes sense before eight in the morning.
Tongli
City guide · 12 tours
Fifteen canals, seven islets, forty-nine bridges — and a town that still gets up at dawn because it lives here.
Wuxi
City guide · 12 tours
Taihu on one side, a Grand Buddha on the next hill, and ribs sweet enough to argue about — the most underrated city on the Yangtze delta.
Yangzhou
City guide · 12 tours
A city built by salt merchants who had more money than restraint — gardens, a narrow lake, and the best breakfast in China.
Zhenjiang
City guide · 12 tours
Three hills, one ferry landing, and an unreasonable share of Chinese literature — the Yangtze city people drive past.
Changzhou
City guide · 12 tours
A 2,500-year-old canal city that built a dinosaur park and refuses to apologise for it.
Wuzhen
City guide · 12 tours
A town that is two towns: the older, quieter East Zone and the lit-up West Zone you sleep inside.
Xitang
City guide · 12 tours
Nine canals, 122 lanes, one long roofed corridor — and a town that still works for a living.
Hangzhou
City guide · 12 tours
A lake in the middle of a city, a tea village in the hills, and two thousand years of getting the mood right.
Xixi Wetland
City guide · 12 tours
Ten square kilometres of marsh inside Hangzhou, and the only way into half of it is a boat.
Ningbo
City guide · 12 tours
A 7,000-year-old port with Asia's oldest private library, a free waterfront 20 years older than Shanghai's, and the best seafood before the islands.
Mount Putuo
City guide · 12 tours
A Buddhist island with no cars, three great temples and a ¥10 lunch that is the point of the place.
Qiandao Lake
City guide · 12 tours
A thousand islands that did not exist sixty years ago, and the cleanest big-lake water in China.
Shaoxing
City guide · 12 tours
Two and a half thousand years of water-town China, and Lu Xun's house is free.
Zhoushan
City guide · 12 tours
1,390 islands, one road bridge in, and a harbour that lands more fish than almost anywhere on earth.
Hengdian
City guide · 12 tours
A backlot the size of a town, where the palaces are copies and the film crews are real.
Yandang Mountain
City guide · 12 tours
A volcano that weathering turned into scenery — 500-odd sights of peak, cave and waterfall across eight scenic areas.
Zhejiang
City guide · 12 tours
One small, mountainous, absurdly rich province that holds a lake, two canal towns, a Buddhist island and a dead volcano.
Hong Kong Shopping
City guide · 12 tours
A duty-free port where the tag starts lower, two citywide sale seasons knock a third off, and every mall sits on an MTR exit.
Macao
City guide · 12 tours
Four hundred years of Portuguese streets, a fake Venice under a painted sky, and the best egg tart in Asia.
Urumqi
City guide · 12 tours
The city furthest from the sea, with a snow range on its doorstep and dinner starting at nine.
Hong Kong SAR, China
City guide · 11 tours
A harbour skyline you already know by heart, dim sum trolleys at dawn, and 260 islands an hour from the neon.
Taiwan, China
City guide · 11 tours
Night-market alleys, high-mountain railways, and a coastline that changes character every hundred kilometres.
Qinghai Lake
City guide · 12 tours
A 4,400 sq km inland sea at 3,200 m, ringed by rapeseed gold, prayer flags and the best cycling road in China.
Mount Emei
City guide · 11 tours
A 3,099-metre Buddhist summit you can reach by cable car before lunch — and a mountain full of monkeys that will absolutely rob you.
Beijing
City guide · 11 tours
Six centuries of imperial red walls, a Great Wall you can climb before lunch, and the best roast duck on earth.
Taipei
City guide · 11 tours
A 24-hour bookstore, a night market that never stops sizzling, and a city that apologises when you bump into it.
North Xinjiang
City guide · 11 tours
Alpine lakes the colour of poured enamel, a village of log cabins under birch trees, and the last tear the Atlantic ever sheds.
Lanzhou
City guide · 11 tours
A city split in half by the Yellow River, where beef noodles are a breakfast ritual and the Silk Road still runs through the streets.
Mount Hua
City guide · 11 tours
Five granite peaks, one plank road bolted to a cliff face, and a sunrise that justifies the 2am start.
Dunhuang
City guide · 11 tours
A desert oasis where Buddhist cave art survived a thousand years and a crescent lake refused to dry up.
Gannan
City guide · 11 tours
433 kilometres of the Yellow River's first bend, a 3.5 km prayer-wheel circuit, and Tibetan grasslands almost nobody has commercialised yet.
Sichuan–Tibet Highway
City guide · 11 tours
2,142 kilometres of cliff-edge switchbacks, four of China's most beautiful mountains, and a road the Tibetans walk on their knees.
Kangding
City guide · 11 tours
The town that gave Asia its most famous love song, a 7,556m sacred peak on its doorstep, and the last real Tibetan town before the road climbs to Lhasa.
Lhasa
City guide · 12 tours
A city of prayer wheels and butter lamps at 3,700 metres, where the sun shines 3,000 hours a year and the world's highest palace watches over it all.
Nyingchi
City guide · 11 tours
Tibet's greenest corner — peach blossom valleys, a 7,782 m peak that hides from almost everyone, and the world's deepest canyon.
Namtso
City guide · 11 tours
A 1,920-square-kilometre sheet of impossible blue at 4,718 metres, ringed by snow peaks and prayer flags.
Chongqing
City guide · 12 tours
A vertical city of fog, cable cars and cliff-side stilt houses, where the火锅 never stops boiling and the night skyline outshines Hong Kong.
Qiandongnan
City guide · 11 tours
A thousand Miao households stacked up a mountainside, drum towers and wind-rain bridges in Dong villages, and a 600-year-old Ming garrison town on the road to Guiyang.
Libo
City guide · 11 tours
Emerald rivers threading through karst peaks, a 600-metre forest growing out of a riverbed, and China's largest wild plum grove.
Guiyang
City guide · 11 tours
China's summer capital at 1,100 metres, where the nights run on sour fish soup, street-side barbecue and mahjong that never quite stops.
Zhenyuan
City guide · 11 tours
A 2,000-year-old river town where the Wuyang River carves an S through the mountains and every lane hides a story.
Huangguoshu
City guide · 11 tours
Asia's biggest waterfall, and the only one on earth you can walk behind, above and around — plus 600-year-old Ming dynasty villages a short drive away.
Harbin
City guide · 11 tours
Minus 30 degrees, a frozen river you can walk across, and a cathedral built by Russians who never went home.
Yunnan
City guide · 11 tours
Snow mountains, tropical rainforest, twenty-five minorities and a plate of rice noodles — all in one province.
Shanghai
City guide · 11 tours
A 1920s waterfront of colonial banks facing a science-fiction skyline, soup dumplings you eat with a straw, and 20 million people moving like clockwork.
Zhangjiajie
City guide · 11 tours
Three thousand sandstone pillars straight out of Avatar, a glass skywalk bolted to a cliff, and a cable car that leaves from downtown.
Guangzhou
City guide · 11 tours
A 2,200-year-old trading port where dim sum is a religion, colonial islands sit beside 600-metre towers, and the food never stops.
Guilin
City guide · 11 tours
Karst peaks rising straight out of a green river, rice terraces carved into mountainsides, and the best bowl of noodles you'll eat in China.
Shenzhen
City guide · 11 tours
A fishing village that became a megacity in forty years — and it still has 500-year-old banyans, empty beaches and dim sum worth the border crossing.
Chengdu
City guide · 11 tours
A 3,000-year-old city where the schedule is tea, mahjong and hotpot — and the pandas are just the opening act.
Xinjiang
City guide · 11 tours
Snow peaks, grassland, desert and oasis — one-sixth of China, and the longest road you will ever ride.
Xi'an
City guide · 14 tours
Thirteen dynasties of emperors, a terracotta army buried for 2,200 years, and a walled city you can cycle in 100 minutes.
Qinghai
City guide · 11 tours
China's high-altitude blue heart: a salt lake you can walk on, a 3,200-metre sea, and yak butter tea at the roof of the world.
Tibet
City guide · 11 tours
A plateau the size of Western Europe where the sky starts at your feet, prayer flags carry the wind, and the roads run past 8,000-metre peaks.
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