All ferries from Hong Kong Island dock at Mui Wo (“Plum Cove”), also known as Silvermine Bay. This is the least interesting place on Lantau, but it’s an important bus terminus, with some pleasant accommodation and restaurants, and also marks the eastern end of the Lantau Trail.

Lantau’s best short hike (3hr) is northeast from Mui Wo over the hills, via a Trappist monastery, to Discovery Bay.

Head along the seafront Tung Wan Tau Road to the end, cross the bridge over the river and follow the sandy bay round to the right. A signpost eventually points up some steps onto the bare hills, with some excellent views along the way over to Hong Kong Island. The Trappist monastery is not open to the public, so follow the road past it downhill to a signposted path towards Discovery Bay. This New Town is a too-perfect copy of idealized middle-American suburbia, with happy blonde families zipping about in golf carts, and very few Chinese faces. The main attraction is a 24-hour hydrofoil back to Central ($27; 30min); there are also buses to the rest of the island.

Daily 10am-8pm. Mon-Fri $295, children $170; Sat & Sun $350/200. Yan O/Disneyland MTR. Hong Kong Disneyland is the world’s newest and smallest Disneyland, this theme park is worth a visit if you’ve time to kill between flights, but compared with Disney’s ten other franchises is a bit tame, and queues can also be a drag. It’s split into four zones: Main Street USA, a re-created early-twentieth century mid-American shopping street (though the goods on sale are distinctly Chinese); Adventureland, home to Tarzan’s treehouse (made of fake bamboo) and a jungle river cruise; Tomorrowland, whose excellent rides include a blacked-out rollercoaster; and Fantasyland, populated by a host of Disney characters, and whose best feature is the PhilharMagic 3D film show.

Lantau’s best beaches line the south coast. All of them are accessible on foot from Mui Wo along the Lantau Trail, or by bus #1 or #2 (to Tai O and Po Lin Monastery respectively from Mui Wo) as far as Shek Pik Reservoir. Closest to Mui Wo is Pui O beach (9km; 3hr on foot), an excellent spot with barbecue pits and a free campsite. The next beach along is Cheung Sha (5km; 1hr 30min from Pui O on foot), Hong Kong’s longest stretch of sand at 2km, partly shaded with casuarina trees and with several low-key restaurants and bars. Further west, the road strikes inland to the Shek Pik Reservoir (13km; 4hr on foot), landscaped to provide picnic areas and walking trails; you can also just glimpse the Big Buddha from here. From Shek Pik there’s a walking track (20min) to another shady beach at Tai Long Wan, from where you can agin pick up the Lantau Trail for 5km/1.5hr to Fan Lau, an abandoned, overgrown village at Lantau’s southwestern headland, where the remains of a 1300-yearold rectangular fort overlook a stunning crescent bay, and bright green lagoons at the back of beautiful Kau Ling Chung beach.

Bus #1 from Mui Wo, #11 from Tung Chung, or #21 from Po Lin Monastery.

The largest and oldest village on Lantau, Tai O is home to two thousand people. There’s plenty of interest in its old lanes, including shrines, temples, and a quarter full of tin-roofed stilt-houses built over the water.

From the bus stop, you cross a small bridge onto the main street, which is lined by people selling dried and live seafood, and there’s also a tiny museum (daily 9am-5pm, free), displaying everyday artefacts such as washboards, the prows from a Dragon Boat, a threshing machine and a cutlass. At the bridge, operators offer short boat trips around the nearby inlets, to see the village from the water ($10-25 depending on where you want to go).

The pick of the village’s temples is Hau Wong Miu (free) on Kat Hing Back Street, about two minutes’ walk from the bridge. Built in 1699, it contains the local boat used in the annual Dragon Boat Races, some shark bones, a whale head found by Tai O fishermen, and a lovely carved roof-frieze displaying two roaring dragons.

Ngong Ping. Daily 10am-6pm. Bus #2 from Mui Wo, #21 from Tai O or #23 from Tung Chung. Po Lin Monastery sits at the terminus of the cable-car from Tung Chung, just below Lantau Peak. The complex is much grander than is usual in Hong Kong, and houses a noted group of statues of the Buddha - all three of which are fairly restrained given their setting, at around only three metres high.

There’s nothing at all restrained about the temple itself, though, which is painted and sculpted in gaudy colours. Inside the main courtyard, a huge dining hall (11.30am-5pm; set meals $60-100) is continually awash with diners filling up on vegetarian meals.

All this pales into insignificance besides the gigantic Big Buddha (daily 10am-5.30pm; free), at the top of a flight of steps in front of the monastery. Completed in 1993, the bronze figure seated in a ring of outsized lotus petals is 34m high and weighs 250 tonnes. Climb the steps for supreme views over the surrounding hills and down to the temple complex. The nearby S.G. Davis Youth Hostel, about 500m along the Lantau Peak track, makes a convenient base for a dawn ascent of the peak.

The 934-metre Lantau Peak - more properly known as Fung Wong Shan - is the second highest in Hong Kong, and a popular place to watch the sunrise. The steep, twokilometre trail from Po Lin to the summit takes about an hour to complete, and on a clear day the views reach as far as Macau. You can pick up the Lantau Trail here and continue 5km (2hr 30min) east to the slightly lower Tai Tung Shan, or “Sunset Peak”, from where it’s a further hour to Mui Wo.

There are two reasons to visit Tung Chung, a burgeoning New Town near the airport on Lantau’s north coast: to ride the cable-car to Po Lin Monastery, nicknamed “Ngong Ping 360” (Mon-Fri 10am-6pm, Sat & Sun 10am-6.30pm; $58 oneway, $88 return); and for a look at Tung Chung Fort, signposted 2km west of the centre on Yu Tung Road. The crenellated stone walls (currently surrounding a school) date back to 1817, and were built on the orders of the viceroy of Guangdong province to defend Lantau’s northern coast.