Ham Tin Beach Life

There are 4 beaches at Tai Long Wan ('Big Wave Bay'), of which we visited 2.

The largest is Tai Wan ('Big Bay') separated from Ham Tin village by a small headland.   It is apparently dangerous for swiming because of  strong rip currents.   In the photo below I think we can see two places with gaps in the breakers and deep blue channels in the sand where the rip currents run.   There is lovely camping on the grass above the beach, but no toilets or shop so we chose to camp at Ham Tin.

Traveling in style -one of the many big cruisers moored in the bay.   I'm guessing these are 2 'banker boats' on the right, and the customers' boat is the one on the left.   A popular outing for the 1% is to cruise in their 'gin palaces' to remote and tranquil beaches and then roar up and down on jet-skis.

Ham Tin village has 2 beachside restaurants, the Hoi Fung and the On Kee Store, and a lovely beach just across a small creek.

Ham Tin beach is safer for swimming, and is more popular for camping since it has official campsite with a toilet block.    Good food and refreshments are available at the 2 restaurants.   There is also 3-bar 3G reception so you won't need to suffer withdrawal from your  i-phone addiction (as long as you bring spare chargers).

By the late afternoon, there were about more than 200 people camping on the beach, swimming, frolicking and playing beach volley-ball, and a steady stream of young men carrying cold beers across the bridge from the store.

In the evening we were joined at our campsite by a party of Americans with their chinese girlfriends, who pitched their 5 tents next to us in a wide cycle around a campfire.

Hannah, Rika and I enjoyed a lovely dinner at On Kee Store restaurant, and then twilight on the beach.  We went to bed at 9pm when it got dark.   I'd read that there was nothing to do except relax, unwind and listen to the sound of the waves.

Our young American neighbors held a lively beach bonfire, and kept everyone in the party mood with music and fascinating conversations about Facebook until 2:30am.  When it got too quiet and we were in danger of nodding off, they'd set-off fire-crackers, and everyone could share the joke.   Although I didn't record any of the fire-crackers, this video captures the ambience.

Video:  Ham Tin beach - idilic sounds of silence.

We woke at dawn at 6:30am to the sound of birdsong and a remote-control model plane doing circuits of the beach.

Our grey tent in the foreground and our new neighbors in the blue tent 1.5m to our left.

6:30am.  Flying remote-control model-aircraft on the beach in the still dawn air.   This plane is powered by an powerful internal fan, and flies like a real jet.  An impressive but rather noisy toy.

Hannah and I had a lovely ealy-morning walk, and I found the beach just above the waterline was firm enough do a few sets of TaiChi.

Hannah was feeling sick with a return of her cough, fever and sore tummy.

Video:   Ham Tin campsite in the morning

So we cancelled plans to go hiking to the rock pools at Sai Wan beach or climb Sharp Peak.  Instead I booked a speedboat out in the afternoon through Carol Lai at the Hoi Fung store.   Then we lay in the shade on the beach, caught up with sleep, and had a very pleasant lunch at On Kee Store.

4:30pm boarding the speed-boat at Ham Tin beach

Tai Wan from the sea.

The 20min speedboat ride was really fun with great views of the islands around Port Shelter and their impressive basalt formations.

Video:  speed-boat from Tai Long to Sai Kung

Looking south-west from off Long Ke Wan.   We were soon at Sai Kung and got a taxi home by 6pm, and had an early night.

Minimi was very happy to see us come back home, and was especially affectionate and clingy.  Here he is miaowing and telling me to hurry-up to come to bed and give him a cuddle

All in all a good camping trip although rather a Curate's Easter egg, with some good lessons learned for our next trip.   I'm keen to return and try camping at Tai Wan, and to hike over Sharps Peak.

Hiking to Tai Long Wan

For the Easter break we planned to go hiking and camping for 2 nights in the Sai Kung Country Park at Tai Long Wan.   This is one of Hong Kong's finest beaches (link) and can only be reached by boat or hiking.

Tai Long Wan from Sharps Peak trail, courtesy of my colleague Emma

We packed on Thursday night and planned to leave early Friday morning.  But we were late leaving and ran into the holiday crowds at Sai Kung queuing for the limited public transport.  Only the few special New Territories taxies can enter the Country Park, so there was there was a double-line around the NT taxi-stand.

And the same for the #94 Bus to Wong Shek Pier.

Hannah waited very patiently for an hour until we got a taxi.  Well done Hannah!

And once we were in a taxi it was a lovely 20min ride through the park to Wong Shek where we readily found a speedboat to take us across Long Harbor to join the Maclehose trail.

Speedboat from Wong Shek Pier

Video:  speedboat on Long Harbour

Everyone ready to start hiking.

We joined the Maclehose Trail Stage 2, and walked uphill for about 40min to the pass overlooking the Tai Wan bay, and another 20min down-hill to the beach

Rika had been training for the hike by doing circuits of Shatin shopping-malls, and Hannah & I didn't have to slow down and wait for her too often.

View looking east from the top of the trail.

Detail:   Tai Wan (Big Beach) on left, Ham Tin (Salty Field) beach on right.

The villages at Tai Long and Ham Tin are almost deserted these days but we saw a few locals.

We had pre-booked a tent at the Hoi Fung restaurant (via the ever-helpful Carol Lai 2328-2315) and set it up with some shade at the official camp-sit on the beach.  

Early afternoon view from our front door.

'Rather a lot of Buddhas' Monastery

We had a quiet day on Sunday and popped into Shatin for shopping.

It was a nice afternoon so I took the opportunity to drag Hannah and Rika to visit the 'Rather a lot of Buddahs' monestary up the hill behind Ikea.

This ancient monastery was founded way back in 1949.   Although it has no resident monks (wiki link) it does have 13,000 buddha statues which give it its name.

Hannah really loved it and can't wait to go back.

South Lantau - Cheng Sha Beach

This weekend Hannah wanted to go to a 'big beach' so we decided to try Cheng Sha in South Lantau Island.   Cheng Sha is Hong Kong's longest beach at 3km and also boasts fine white sand and very-good water quality.

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.

Swimming Gala

On Wednesday morning Hannah's school held its annual swimming gala

I was proud to see Hannah swim 25m non-stop and come second in her race.  Well done Hannah!

Ball game at the end of the gala.

Trio Beach

One of the glories of Hong Kong is its beaches, and the start of April marks the re-opening of the public beaches after the winter break.

I was keen to take advantage of a short patch of fine mild weather forecast for Saturday and try-out the nearest beaches.   We don't have a 'local' beach close-by so we decided to try Trio Beach which is one of the closest although it requires a 40min taxi-ride round MaOnShan to Sai Kung and Pak Sha Wan (aka 'Hebe Haven'), and then a short  Kaido (water taxi) ride.

Hebe Haven from the Kaido with Ma On Shan in the right back-ground.  Shatin Valley is on the other side of the hills.

Trio beach from the Kaido.  It is a small beach but has life-guards, shark nets, swim rafts and changing facilities and a pleasant shop where we hired an umbrella and bought ice creams.

BBQ pits with the inevitable group of Aunties.   They really know how to enjoy themselves on a budget.

Apart from the Aunties and the life-guards, the beach was virtually deserted.

But there was a lot of sailing going on out in the bay.

It was about 25 degrees and 20 in the water temperature which was perfect for me.  Hannah enjoyed playing in the sand and we enjoyed swimming in the sea out to the rafts moored off the beach.

Hannah wanted to take a large load of rocks home to paint.  We limited her to a dozen.

"Kai-do, kai-chariot, coming for to carry me home...."

Dinner at 'Thai Thai 2 'restaurant at the Hebe Haven pier.   The reviews on 'Openrice.com' warned of extremely slow service.   We arrived at 4:30pm when the restaurant was deserted, but they forgot our food-order and we eventually rolled-out at 8:00pm having drunk far too much wine!

A lovely day out, and good planning by Papa since Sunday was washed-out with more rain and fog.