Hong Kong Travels: Lamma Island

On Lamma Island, things take a long time to change. People are content with the equilibrium between expat and local, land and sea, and as such there is little appetite for change. In fact, it is likely the reason the island remains as popular as it is for people – particularly westerners – looking to escape the city.  

I first wrote about Lamma Island in my very first travel diary, all the way back in 2017. I was almost out of money after the aborted six month stay in the Caribbean thanks to two hurricanes. There, too, I was working as a tutor. Maybe I was always destined to teach children on islands after all. In any case, I remember being intrigued by the rusting ships anchored offshore, thinking about jumping from the ferry onto the pier at Yung Shue Wan, looking at the dried squid and whitebait on sale and wondering if there was any fish that wouldn’t be eaten in Hong Kong. How different it felt to return almost a decade later and view it as just another place to go for a walk. 

Of the two entry points to Lamma Island, Yung Shue Wan is the most popular. The servicing ferry leaves from Central, so it’s always flooded with tourists looking for a slightly more adventurous day out, as I had been too the first time.

This is expressed by the immediacy of the large restaurants that you walk past before even arriving at the main part of town. You must walk past small tanks packed with too many sea creatures and owners gossiping while they wait for customers to attend. Rows of bicycles are parked by the pier waiting for their owners to return – a signifier of which flavour of Hong Kong Lamma aligns with. 

When you do make it into town, the restaurants are filled with idling expats either slowing drinking away the day or getting food with their young children while dogs strain at their leashes.  The main street of Yung Shue Wan can feel slightly claustrophobic to begin with. The limited space can make even following the “main street” difficult. The blocky buildings scramble for any available space and are crammed with corner shops with unusually prominent alcohol placement.  

It takes no time to run out of an obvious route, as indeed you run out of town fairly quickly too. Even though I have been several times in the years since I came back to Hong Kong, I still get confused about which path to follow. In cases like that, I try to follow the largest crowd, which usually works. When it doesn’t, you spend a minute or two wondering if the walk through the quiet, modest two-storey residences will lead you to a main road again, which it always does. On most days you will drift past at least one unattended table with homemade necklaces and bracelets, or a selection of free books that are heavily weathered by the humidity. Such is the community of creatives in the western villages. 

Even though Lamma is one of the larger islands in the Hong Kong archipelago, the paths always take into account the fastest routes to the sea. The beach you will most likely come to first is the Lamma Power Station Beach. As long as you look only to the left, you can imagine yourself far from trouble. Hills heaving with green that roll down to the sea, a blue sky dotted with a few wispy white clouds, people resting and playing on the (admittedly unclean) sand make it a nice spot for a quick paddle. But it is impossible to avoid the giant industrial complex of the power station next-door. It dominates any view to the west and lends an eerie feeling of danger to the beach itself. Somehow, it feels wrong to relax next to a power plant, even if there is no evidence to suggest it is. 

The walk continues along the waterside, up into the hills. Thankfully, the day was so clear that I could see back to my past self on Lantau Island. Looking out to the ocean, Private boats sat close to less accessible beaches, and cargo ships sailed by like stoic sea monsters. The exposure that the hilltop walk can be uncomfortable during the afternoon heat, but thankfully the rest of the route is almost entirely under canopies. 

Something I always look out for when rounding the bend to is the cement plant that reaches out into Sok Kwu Wan bay. When I first visited in 2017, I remember seeing it under construction, or at least that it looked incomplete. Seeing it now, almost 10 years later, not just finished by noticeably weathered, highlights to me how long ago it was when I first got caught in those hurricanes on Salt Cay. How could Alex have known his writing project would become a decade-long practice? 

The view itself is more than just a cement factory, of course. The bay is occupied by fish farms and small boats, the water rimmed by lush green tundra and the small village of Sok Kwu Wan perched on the edge. This part of the view has not changed, at least. The drive for development has not quite reached this area of Hong Kong. Curiously though, you do spot signs of projects that never quite came to fruition. As you walk down the hill on the way to the village, near to the waterfront house serving pineapples on sticks, you can see the grey bodies of unfinished houses, almost like a carcass cleaned and prepared by a butcher. A feature not unique to Lamma Island, of course, but noticeable by its awkward proximity to the other houses. It makes you wonder what happened to stop its construction. 

One thing that has changed since I was last in Sok Kwu Wan is the introduction of more bars. Whereas before it had been a fish market and seafood restaurants, now there are a few dedicated bars meant to appeal to visitors rather than locals, evident from the decorations deliberately put up to encourage social media posts. It feels as if the character of Yung Shue Wan is beginning to spill over to other parts of the island, for better or worse. 

If you choose to continue past the town (there’s an option to take the ferry back to Central), the walk takes you past the island of Ap Lei Chau and Hong Kong Island behind it. You can tell that even on the main island, the skyscrapers are still scraping for every inch of land. As I passed more seaside houses, seconds from the shore, I wondered how it would be to live there during a typhoon. The flooding from high seas and rain must be particularly painful, I imagine. 

Eventually, you must turn inland to cross to the other side of the island. Lamma Island appears on a map like a child’s drawing of a fantasy land, with too many long, thin arms and not enough substantial landmass in between. It means there is ample opportunity for tiny communities to occupy each bay and beach, with only small public paths connecting them. When you walk between them, past banana farms and private gardens, or ruined houses with cups still on the table, surrounded by peace and quiet, you wonder how it must feel to have this an everyday experience. What does a daily commute look like for the residents of Mo Tat village, for example? Do the children get to walk through the jungle on their way to school every day, and stop to swim on the way home? It sounds like a wonderful childhood – if you don’t mind the sweat. 

But the experience is over all too soon. The island is only so large, and there is little room to deviate from the path for long. As such, a full loop of the island may take only a few hours eve if you dawdle, as I did. Once you finish, the ferries are fast, and before you know it you are back in the middle of the city. 

In many ways, Lamma Island has remained the same, but small improvements (or absences) show that life there too has moved on. At times, I was stepping through memories of one day in 2017. I never expected my return trip to be as quietly sobering as it was, but it feels nice to re-examine an old location with a new perspective. Maybe in another decade, I will write about it again.