Having just done Cheung Chau Island last week, I took my 4 yr old boy to Peng Chau Island this past weekend and had a great time. We took the 840a.m ferry on Sunday morning, not too many people on that but more than you’d expect for that time and day. The fast ferry (ferry schedule here) only takes about 25 minutes.
When we got off the ferry, everybody headed right and into the town of Peng Chau Island, so we headed left, saw some fish, a few boats, and best of all, very few people. You’ll reach the end pretty quickly and have to take a right then left to get onto the Peng Yu Path which turns into Peng Chau Family Walk, basically a concrete trail around Peng Chau Island. Along this trail there are 2-3 beaches, not great for swimming, but we had the beach to ourself for almost 2 hours and my son had an awesome time finding crabs, throwing drift wood into the sea and writing stuff on the sand and other stuff.
This is exactly the type of thing that I search for – no crowds, beach/place to yourself. I guess it probably depends on the tide, for the first 20 minutes we just played around the rocks looking for fish in rock pools but after that the tide went out a bit and crabs kept him busy for 2 hours, until a group of loud locals (why do they insist on yelling at the top of their voices and sitting themselves down 2 feet from you when there is a whole beach empty??!!) Anyway, needless to say, Peng Chau Island in this respect is a much better option than Cheung Chau.
Peng Chau Island is also much smaller, you can walk around it in a few hours, and that’d be taking your time. You also get nice views looking over to Discovery Bay and Disneyland, and once you walk to the North Eastern tip, up some stairs, there’s a pavilion type thing and you can see Hong Kong Island including parts of Central and Western district – awesome! Again, very few people in site, we probably saw 10 people in the 2-2 and a half hours we were on the beach and walking up to the Pavilion.
Don’t tell anybody though, let’s keep it this way and let the tourists invade Cheung Chau! By this time it was about 12 so we headed back to the village, again an easy walk and you can see how the other half live,Tung Wan beach is a bit of an eyesore, loads of rubbish and not with going to in my opinion.
We walked though the town of Peng Chau Island, some quaint little alley ways and the only complaint (unusual for me!) is that there’s not many food options unless you’re into eating local, local. We walked around a bit, couldn’t find anything decent, then took the 1250 ferry back to Central. There’s normal ferries and fast ferries so be aware as the normal ferries take quite a bit longer.
Unfortunately because I wasn’t feeling great we missed out on Peng Chau Finger Hill, where you can apparently get some more good views, but no problem saving that for next time and next trip to Peng Chau Island because I’d definitely go back, mainly for the fact it’s 10 times less crowded than Cheung Chau Island and you can have the beaches to yourself if you’re into that kind of thing.
It’s smaller, so better for younger kids to walk around, and apart from the food options, it’s way better in every aspect and probably one of our favourite “hikes/walks” for kids in Hong Kong. We’ve been to Lamma Island a few times and that’s not bad but has become so dirty to the point of being disgusting and definitely worth going to until they clean it up.
So, if you really want to get away from the crowds, head to Peng Chau Island and enjoy the peacefulness that it is, no loud tuk-tuks, nicer people and just a very, very pleasant little half day trip with the kids, or with anybody.
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