Ended up at Nam Sang Wai after trying (and failing) to try to visit Mai Po Nature Reserve. Mai Po Nature Reserve is a marshland area apparently with loads of mudskippers and crabs and the like, things that Grobbler likes, but apparently you can’t just go along and show up and have to book a tour, which is 1/ not up our alley and 2/ impossible to do since their website has no days available for the next year. Anyway, starting off, I thought Nam Tai Tai was going to be a real (somewhat of a) hidden gem.
The Entrance to Nam Sang Wai
Nam Sang Wai is located in Yuen Long, near the Yuen Long MTR and Yoho Malls. As usual we drove there, bit later than usual, around 10a.m. Basically you need to get yourself to the Nam Sang Wai Ferry Pier. We parked about 50 metres away, there’s some public metered car parking spaces near the entrance, and even at 10ish on a Sunday morning it wasn’t full. Because it’s summer, places like this aren’t usually crazy busy because not many people want to be out in the sun in 30 degree heat.
Walk through here to get to the ferry
Anyway, Grobbler has has bike, I stupidly didn’t take mine thinking I would just walk around, but that was a mistake. Anyway, you get to the Nam Sang Wai ferry pier, it’s basically a tiny little boat that wouldn’t fit more than 5-10 people, and takes about 10 seconds to get to the other side. Costs $6 one way. You can take your bikes across in it. If you don’t want to bring your bike like me, there are shitloads of abandoned and bikes from the bike sharing apps just dumped willy nilly across the other side.
Again, I stupidly didn’t get one, but pretty quickly regretted that. When you get the other side you’re greeted by a cat, some mudskippers and some big ass crabs. Nice start and we thought we were in for a real treat. Started talking/biking along the track and it’s nice, tree lined paths that you’d be surprised to see in Hong Kong. Lovely biking along some ponds/swamps/marshes and saw some frogs. As with many things in Hong Kong, the good is short lived. The first bit of the path last for about 1-1 1/2 km’s before turning into a nice big parklike area.
Dudes are flying drones, remote control cars and some other fella’s have big ass remote controlled helicopters. The area would be good for throwing a ball around, flying a kite or stuff like that. We were expecting just marshes so didn’t have anything unfortunately. Once you walk the length of that, you’re back onto concrete, for the rest of the way. So word of warning, you’ll see some nice photos of tree lines bike paths when you do any amount of research for Nam Sang Wai, but that’s probably 10% of the track.
The remainder you’ll be biking on a road, which, whilst not that busy, still has cars going up and down so you’ve got to be careful with letting little ones bike too far ahead. I don’t know why the let cars own here, but it’s a bloody dumb idea. You can actually drive in here and park in places (and avoid having to go on the 10 second ferry), but you’d definitely get a ticket if the fuzz were doing checks. Some of the road is one way and there’s quite a few passing areas so I don’t recommend you drive in here. The ferry, whilst only about 20 metres, is a bit of a novelty.
So once you get on Nam Sang Wai Road, that’s pretty much it. Yes, Nam Sang Wai is somewhat marshland, but you can’t get down to get in the mix and explore the wildlife as it’s all blocked off. Basically you just around Nam Sang Wai Road and end up back near Yoho Mall, or actually wherever you’ve parked. Yes, you can see Shenzhen and the bike road around Nam Sang Wai Road is rather pleasant, but as far as seeing mudskippers, crabs and other creatures, which is the reason we went, well you won’t see any of those apart from where you get off the ferry.
You could, I guess, risk getting a severe telling off and just jump over the walls, but we couldn’t find anywhere that looked even remotely good to explore the wildlife. A few people go to Nam Sang Wai for birthday watching, but we only say a few of those big white stork looking things. not that exciting and there are better places and seasons for bird watching in Hong Kong.
So, overall, Nam Sang Wai was a bit of a disappointment. It’s quite nice out there, but as mentioned really on the first 1-2km are any good, the rest is just a bike ride along the Shan Pui and Kam Tin Rivers. It’s not that far, about 7-8km in total. Grobbler described the ride around Nam Sang Wai Road as extremely boring and I think I’d have a hard time convincing him to go back. However, this was probably party due the fact that I didnt’ ride a bike so we couldn’t have any races or much fun as he was riding slowly while I was power walking.
If you go to Nam Sang Wai, take some rugby or soccer balls, a kite, or something like that because the open area is ideal for that. There’s some local restaurants along the way, but very local and not much on offer. better to bring just a few snacks and head to the Yoho Mall afterwards.
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