Hiking on Tung Lung Chau

On Saturday, my dad and I went hiking with my friend from CDNIS and his dad. We were going to an island called Tung Lung Chau (info on Tung Lung Chau) , which is just to the northeast of Victoria Island, so planned to meet at the Sai Wan Ho ferry, but we saw each other in the MTR. When we got to the ferry quay, we waited a long time until the ferry came. The ferry ride was a long one, past Junk Bay and Joss House Bay. I was all right until the end of the ride, but at the end I was feeling a bit sick. When we got there, we walked through the tiny village then headed west to the famous rock carving (for more info on the Tung Lung Chau rock carving click here) . It is right at the sea level so we had to walk down a long staircase. The rock carving has a glass cabinet around it. It is very big but you can barely see the carvings. The rock carving is a HK monument, so they can’t destroy it and build a Starbucks there . After that, we went to the stair case with our jaws hanging down, we did not want to go up it! My friend counted the stairs as we walked up. When we got to the top, we were all very tired (our dad were a long way after us). My friend counted 463 steps in total! After that we took a long walk to a little hill we saw in the distance at the South of Tung Lung Chau. In Cantonese it is called the “deer’s Head” because it looks like one. We could see that it had some fences surrounding it. But we still thought it would be a good spot for our lunch. When we got there, we saw a sign that said:  When we saw it, we immediately  turned around and went the other direction. When we started climbing the main Hill in the middle of TLC, we had some trees hanging over us, which gave us some shade. But there were no tall trees after that, the sun came out, making it boiling hot. When we got to the top, there was a helipad and a helicenter. We had lunch at the top under a small tree. After that, we went through a bushy trail and then started descending the tall hill.  It was rocky and a bit slippery, and also very narrow but we did it in the end. There were some beautiful white flowers that looked like trumpets that you could see clearly from a distance. Also my friend’s dad saw a small black snake. When we got to the bottom, we saw some people camping. They kindly invited us for some tea. The tea was very good! My dad said it was KungFu tea (more info on Kung Fu Tea). Although the tea pot was small, it was also very beautiful with Chinese writing on it. We chatted in Mandarin and a bit of English, we found out that they were from Guangzhou. It was great to have such a friendly time with people we had never met before. This is a good thing about hiking! After that we went to the famous TLC  fort. It was built by by the Chinese in the Qing Dynasty about 300 years ago, so it is a very important monument in Hong Kong (more on the TLC Fort). It originally had 8 cannons and was used to guard the narrow water strait between TLC and Kowloon. It seemed to be very small, but the walls were very thick and made out of rock.

We were ready to head for home but found a noodle shop where we stopped for something to eat and drink. After that, we headed down to the ferry which took us back to Sai Wan Ho. I felt very satisfied because we walked all the way around an island, saw some interesting and historical things, met some new friends, and had been to a place we had never been before. I would recommend going to Tung Lung Chau, but suggest that it would be much easier to do in winter.

Tagged as: hiking