We rode off the ferry from Central to Mui Wo, past a huge sea of bikes, along a bike path, and carried on along the coast, quiet little roads, no hassle, very few cars, nice little beach. We just looked at each other and realised we were both thinking the same thing: “This place is like paradise after Tsim Sha Tsui, how long can we stay here?”
I’d met Sally, an English cyclist doing something similar to me, and we wanted a break from the pollution/hassle of downtown Hong Kong. So we got the Star ferry across to Wan Chai, then a slow ferry to Lantau. It’s about twice the size of Hong Kong Island, but with only a fraction of the residents. Few cars, plenty of people on bikes, hiking trails, nice beaches, large amounts of forest, but also a few Western-style restaurants near the ferry pier. It seemed very quiet, with far fewer people than I expected. We got an apartment not far from the beach, and proceeded to do…well…not much really. Just sat around on the beach a bit, even reading the Sunday paper (!) Even found a bar that served a Weissbier – how good is that!
We did try going for a ride over to one of the other beaches, but the ride out of town was about a 10% gradient for 5km, so we decided not to repeat that experiment. Just a nice relaxing break for a few days, before coming back to the bustle today. A couple more days here, then back into China – may give Macau a miss this time, go straight into China. We’ll see what happens.