After a day wandering around the intensely urban heart of Hong Kong, you'll be ready to hop on a boat to Lamma Island. A short ride from the Star Ferry Pier, Lamma is a gloriously car-free place with great hiking trails and beaches in a place small enough to make an ideal day trip from the city. The lack of motorized traffic is a real tonic for the overtaxed urban soul and the island's 13.6 sq km (5.2 sq mi) are home to around 5,000 people and at least twice as many cats.

Take the ferry from Central or Aberdeen and disembark at the picturesque small town of Yung Shue Wan. The seafood restaurants that cluster around the ferry piers all look and feel very similar—open-air seating, tanks out front full of crabs and fish and lobsters for the picking and friendly, laid-back staff. Check out the “Lamma Hilton,” an open-air restaurant overlooking a small harbor. Sadly, the prices remain Hong-Kong high, but it's well worth the splurge. 

A small, touristy street runs through the town though the overall vibe is that Yung Shue Wan and Lamma Island are there for the people who live there, and that's part of what makes Lamma so great. There are no crowds chasing down that oh-so-famous site, because there's not one! The draw of the place is that it's island through-and-through. 

Once you've eaten your fill of fresh fish and crab, ascend the hillside behind Yung Shue Wan, where a slew of charming, low-rent-looking island pads feed escapist fantasies of getting out of the rat race and enjoying the quiet island life with one of the world's greatest cities just a short ferry ride away. Soon after, you'll reach a network of trails running through charming wooded neighborhoods, along beaches and steep hillsides, into the bush and through jungly and rocky "neighborhoods" 

Wander the “streets” of Lamma for a few hours and eventually you’ll end up near the water. The only thing that doesn't fit the landscape here is the looming smokestack of a power plant, situated on the coast a short way down from a very pleasant beach. It's an odd sight to see when you’re strolling along the surf line or turn off the main path into the organic vegetable-and-herb garden paradise of Herboland, a charming spot complete with healthy snacks and teas that completes the hippie experience. 

You can spend the better part of a day on the Lamma trail and, toward dusk, end up in another small fishing town, Sok Kwu Wan, where island cats abound. As night falls and the lights of Hong Kong Island begin to gliter across the waters, board the ferry and chug your way back home.

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