Getting to South Lantau is a little adventure involving a ferry-ride and bus. Public transport is good but limited and only residents are allowed to drive private cars. This protects the area from invasions of tourists, and life is accordingly slower-paced.
We took a ferry from Central after my tai-chi class and got to the beach around 2:30pm
Public Beaches in Hong Kong are very well organized. Like the Pope they are all protected by detachments of Swiss Life-guards. Swimmers are safe behind shark-netting and water-quality is monitored and published on the LCSD web-site. There are clean and well-maintained facility blocks with changing-rooms, showers, snack-shops and parasol rental etc. And plenty of rules to keep the patrolled-area of the beach orderly.
Swiss life-guards patrolling the deserted Upper Cheng Sha beach.
We later found more people down the other end of the beach playing frisbee with their dogs, nude sun-bathing and flying remote-controlled planes.
The temperature was about 25 degrees and the sun was hot so was hired an umbrella and sat in the shade watching the waves. Hannah went to work improving the beach with her spade, and I had a couple of swims in the sea. The water was 21 degrees and lovely & clean as promised (although it still tasted quite salty). And the sand was firm enough to practice some tai-chi to the amusement of the life-guards.
Around 5pm we wandered down to the Lower Cheng Sha Beach which has a village and a strip of beach-front restaurants.
We had dinner at a very nice thai restaurant called 'High Tide'. The food was good and the staff very friendly and efficient.
We finished our meal around 7:45 pm and after waiting 30min and missing several full busses we got space on a #1 bus to Mui Wo, then a ferry to Central, Star Ferry to TST and a taxi home by 9:30.
