Peng Chau is usually the Island mentioned last after Cheng Chau, Lamma Island and Lantau on most things to do in Hong Kong lists. Thank god for that because the crowds tend to stay away, especially if you early on Saturday mornings. To get the best Peng Chau experience, take one of the early Peng Chau ferries at 8:00 or 8:30. First thing to note is the Peng Chau ferry has regular and fast sailings. Don’t worry too much about them because the slower one is only around 5-10 minutes slower.
In the summer, even at 8:30, there can be a few people on board but once you get off the boat, turn left (90% of the people will turn right into the village). Walk along the waterfront then take the last right that takes you to Peng Yu Path. If you follow the path you’ll come across a few beaches. Go to the second one, there’s usually nobody there. I must have been here about 10 times with Grobbler and never have I seen more than a few people here and most times we’ve had the whole beach to ourselves.
The beach itself isn’t that great, especially for swimming, but when the tides out, there’s hundreds of crabs you can find under rocks and your kids can spend a few hours there just hunting for crabs and fish in the tide pools. When the tides up there’s not much to do at this second beach so check the tides before going here. If you google “tides hong kong” or anything similar, the first results is from tides4fishing.com. Don’t check them on here because they’re not accurate here. Go to the HK Observatory’s site here. It doesn’t specifically list Peng Chau, but nearby Cheung Chau is listed and is similar.
Anyway, this second beach at Peng Chau is a favourite of ours. If you catch it at high tide, forget about crab hunting, but then head to the next beach. Again, the beach itself isn’t great and not really one you’d swim in, but there’s bunch of rocks with tide pools that your kids will have a ball at. From there, you can either back the way you came or just keep walking around the Island and do some exploring. It’s about 15-30 minutes back to Peng Chau Village depending on how fast you walk.
I’ve only eaten here once, at a local Chinese restaurant which now seems to be closed. There’s some restaurants within the village but nothing great. The majority of people go here for Peng Chau Finger Hill, but if you really want to get away from the crowds, the beaches on the northern part of the island are way better. It’s a small Island but you could probably spend a day here and walk around the entire island.
For entertaining the kids, this is probably one my favourite places to go in Hong Kong. Most blogs and travel guides on Hong Kong will tell you to go to Lamma Island or Cheng Chau to get away from the crowds, but you can expect just as many people on both of those Island as there are in the middle of TST. They get extremely busy and Lamma Island in particular can get very dirty. Keep this to yourself because it’s one of the few places in Hong Kong you can go and have a whole beach to yourself.
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