Inspiration Lake Hong Kong is near Disneyland Hong Kong on Lantau Island. You can get there by taxi, car, train or bus, if you’re driving it’s about 35 minutes from Central if you go through the less busy Western Tunnel. This is a popular place for locals to take their kids bike riding, scootering and have a picnic. It’s not the prettiest lake in the world, if you live in the west, you probably won’t be that impressed by it, but if you’re an expat living in Hong Kong, it’s a welcome relief to get out of the city. Basically it’s just a lake with cycling/walking path around it. There’s some grass areas you can stop, pitch a tent and have a picnic at but we go there to scooter and ride bikes. In Hong Kong, you’ll find a lot of the parks won’t let you ride scooters or bikes so Inspiration Lake Hong Kong is a bit of a oddity when considering that. It’s a shame it’s a bit far.
I think we’ve been there about 4 or 5 times, it’s not what I’d call a great day out, but a good way to waste a morning if you need something to do and get the kids out of the apartment for something a bit different. We live in an apartment that’s near a (dog shit) park, that has some paths you can ride around, but it’s full of dog shit so not great for doing much else. If it wasn’t for that, we’d go out to Inspiration Lake Hong Kong a lot more often. Inspiration Lake Hong Kong is a lot bigger than most “parks” in Hong Kong, most of which are pretty sad excuses for parks.
Go there early morning, as soon as it opens, 9a.m most of the year but check that because they sometimes change that. There’s very few car parks so if you’re driving, you need to get there a bit before 9 or you’ll find yourself having to cue up for a park. Usually when we leave, around 11-1130a.m, there are bus loads of tourists arriving so unless you want that experience, show up early like we do. There’s not much there other than the lake, a small snack shop but nothing major to eat.
You can hire a peddle boat and peddle out around the lake, or just stay on shore and you can usually catch the massive Koi fish and some turtles that hang out by the snack shop area waiting to be fed. You can also hire 4-6 seater bikes which are pretty good to have a ride around. For tourists, Inspiration Lake Hong Kong is probably not that great a place to go, but for expats living in Hong Kong who long for a “normal” park to take their kids biking and scootering, it’s ideal.
Update: October 2017. Just attempted to go out to Inspiration Lake Hong Kong for some bike riding and got stuck on the highway for an hour. Be aware that whenever there’s a little bit of wind in Hong Kong, the whole city goes into panic mode. They closed the middle lane on Stonecutters bridge and the traffic was absolute chaos, took an hour to get to Nam Wan Tunnel (which is normally about 20 minutes) and had to turn back. Make sure you check the traffic in Google before heading out to Inspiration Lake Hong Kong, Disneyland Hong Kong or the airport as there’s now often very lengthy delays to get out there since the bright sparks at the traffic department decided to implement a toll near the airport.
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