23 April 2019
The cloudy dragon beach trip
Hiking over the dragons back via Chai Wan station and a connecting bus
Today I was lucky enough to hike along what is officially one of the words top 10 urban tropical hiking locations. Who makes these lists? Coming up shortly, my top 14 goat herding locations above 300 feet of altitude.
The dragons back hike is generally the first you will see whenever you look up hiking in Hong Kong. Everyone raves about it. Frankly, I was a little disappointed. I think the lion rock hike is better.
It is not that the view is bad, its just that its not great. And the hike is very easy.
I read things saying it would take 5 hours. It barely took 1 hour. You start near the top when you get off the bus, after a short hike up its flat and downhill.
Now, you can do this as a loop, which would be really disappointing, instead I decided to combine 3 hikes. In addition to the dragons back, I continued on down to the Big wave beach, which should be called the no wave terribly sunburnt British people beach, then I hiked up over the biggest staircase of this trip to the Chinese graveyard. Even after all of this it was still only 20,000 steps. I consider a good hike 30,000 and a long hike 40,000+. The dragons back on its own probably isnt even 10,000. So thats enough about steps.
I guess the dragons back is quite remote, you do have to take a bus to get to it, but it is very convenient, easy to find bus number 9 from the subway station, and it departs every 10 minutes. There are toilets at the bus stop as you shall see. If you do go to the beach, there are shops and toilets there as well. If you do go back up over the hill a different way into the back of the graveyard, theres a gate at the top that says private property keep out. Who are they kidding? There are hundreds of people wandering around the graveyard, I dont really think they are being charged admission or being asked to prove they are related to someone dead in the ground.
Like most Asian mega graveyards (I cant spell cemetery it seems), there are lots of spots to burn paper versions of everything. So be prepared to choke on smoke. There is actually a big push in Hong Kong to convince people to not be buried at all, there are signs at bus stops explaining this, perhaps there is even a reward? So there you go, a hike a beach, a graveyard, a rant, bad English, long sentences, unnecessary brackets, insensitivity, stereotyping, elitism, this post had everything.
The view from the bus stop is already quite good, but I was disappointed you start so high up. I would have rather started at the bottom and climbed up.
Here are the above mentioned public toilets, with full time cleaner cheerily greeting everyone who wants to use his toilets. He was very proud, he literally said 'please be my guest'.
As you can see, quite flat. Theres some fog around the top, and maybe that made the view not quite as OMG!!!!!! as everyone seems to claim it is. More elitism shown here.
The sun shining off those white buildings is not agreeing with my camera. My very expensive full frame camera. Interesting. Most of the buildings you see around here belong to elite country clubs and golf courses, as you shall see.
I think that area is called Shek O, there is a big golf club white colored pants only area to the left.
You can hike all the way along all these peaks as part of the Hong Kong trail, I think it is very very long though, more than 100km. I already did part of it yesterday.
My course would follow the ridge just to the left of this shot, in the fog. You can see golf courses below. They like to hide them in Hong Kong in areas people that rely on public transport cannot get to. Also I now realise that little bit of beach is the beach I climbed down to and up again from later.
The first part of the dragon back ridge amaze balls walk is out in the open, but that only lasts about 30 minutes, then its standard covered trail in shade. Nice streams periodically.
There were not many spots for a view, this is back over the other side, the same side that bus stop is on but a lot closer to the main part of Hong Kong.
Eventually I got to this spot, which is a T junction. You can either go down through those buildings to the subway, or turn right and go down to the beach. I chose the beach.
Big wave beach has no waves, but lots and lots of backpackers staying in places with old surfboards on display in the window. There are numerous shops selling ice creams. I think a small mini bus comes to here, but if it doesnt and you dont like hiking over mountains, you can walk along the coast to the Shek O place shown above where all the buses go.
Here is the beach. It has life guards, shark nets, and almost no Asian people at all, everyone was British.
More beach as seen from the huge staircase over the mountain. Really a surprisingly large number of stairs. I was sweating profusely as you shall soon see.
First, a bit more of the coast. You can see the same golf course as pictured earlier. I am standing on the 11th tee here, its a dog leg 7km to the fairway or something. BOGEY.
OK, so where I was must be quite secluded. That is the Hong Kong maximum security prison. Luckily I brought my tennis racquet and some balls filled with contraband to knock into the exercise yard. Also I refuse to type RACKET no matter how much my dictionary doth protesteth.
Its my big ugly sweaty head. Terrible hair day. This is probably the 2nd to last big ugly head shot. Rejoice.
And after all that, it was time for a leisurely descent through a mega graveyard back to the subway. By this point I was looking forward to my delicious orange.