Cheung Chau Island

Cheung Chau is a car-free island 40 minutes by ferry from Central — a fishing community of narrow alleys, seafood restaurants, temples, and beaches that provides the most complete escape from urban Hong Kong available within the territory. The island is small enough to walk around in two hours, dense enough to explore for a full day, and cheap enough to eat fresh seafood for lunch without worrying about the bill.

The waterfront promenade — lined with seafood restaurants that display their catch in tanks and on ice at the entrance — is the island's main attraction for day-trippers. The tradition is to point at what you want (fish, prawns, crabs, clams), agree on a price, and sit down while the kitchen prepares it. The quality is excellent and the prices are roughly half of what the same meal would cost in Central. The bakeries along the promenade sell the island's famous mango mochi and fish balls, and the beach (Tung Wan) is a decent swimming beach by Hong Kong standards.

The annual Bun Festival, held in May, is one of Hong Kong's most spectacular traditional events — a week-long Taoist celebration featuring a parade of children dressed as deities and suspended on poles (the floating colours parade), and the famous bun-scrambling competition where participants climb a 14-metre bamboo tower covered in lotus-paste buns. The island's mini Tin Hau Temple, its pirate cave (allegedly used by 19th-century pirate Cheung Po Tsai), and the cemetery hill with views across the South China Sea add historical and scenic dimensions to what most visitors experience as a seafood-and-beach day trip.