Lantau

Save your breath. There are 268 steps. The bronze figure was finished in 1993, and the podium beneath it holds an exhibition hall that anyone holding a meal ticket for the vegetarian hall can enter on that ticket.

The vegetarian hall takes its own ticket. Three monks began it as a hermitage in 1906 and most of what stands now went up later, and the incense fills the courtyard thickly enough to settle in clothes, so a light outer layer earns its place.

Strong wind stops it running. The cable car covers 5.7km in 25 minutes, and the cabins with glass floors cost more but put the ridge directly under your feet. Maintenance closes the line for weeks together.

Houses stand on stilts over the water with narrow channels between them. A 20-minute boat from the pier threads out of those channels into open sea. The white dolphins turn up on some days and not others. The bridge gives you the whole village at once.

Sunrise means you start up in the dark. It stands 934m and the route is stone steps nearly the whole way, which the knees notice. Many spend the night at the hostel below and climb before dawn, and the wind at the top makes a jacket necessary.

This is not a sight. It is a small town on the east side of the island with a direct ferry from Hong Kong Island. Fifteen minutes up the stream behind it there is a waterfall, and above that the sealed mouths of the old silver mine.

A branch railway line runs right to the gate. Its windows are cut as a mouse's head and the hand straps match them. The park opened in 2005. It is compact next to the others, so a single day covers most of it.

Thirty-eight timber columns stand across the slope, set out as a figure eight. The Heart Sutra is carved down them, except for one left blank, which the sign explains as the emptiness the text speaks of. It is a 10-minute walk from the Buddha.

Six cannon sit along the wall facing the sea. The fort was built in 1832 and the ground inside it served for years as a school. Walk in from the new town's housing blocks; nobody takes money at the entrance.

Some 3km of sand is split by rocks into Upper and Lower Cheung Sha. Both are gazetted beaches with lifeguards through the bathing season, and the western end of the Upper beach has the post, showers and changing rooms. The restaurants are on the Lower side.

A quiet south-shore beach; ownerless water buffalo graze the wetland behind and wander down onto the beach. They are placid, but keep clear of the calves. A campsite and barbecue pits sit beside the sand.

At 869m, the third-highest peak in Hong Kong. Some twenty stone huts built by missionaries in the 1920s and 1930s dot the ridge under the summit. In October and November silvergrass turns the ridge silver, and plenty of hikers aim to top out at sunset.

A residential town where private cars are banned, so residents get about by golf cart and shuttle bus. The ferry from Central Pier 3 needs less than 30 minutes, and waterfront restaurants ring the pier plaza. With no city din, many come for a weekend half day.

A Catholic monastery that settled on the eastern slopes of Lantau in 1956. The monks live in silence, and signs ask visitors to hush too. Walkers come over a hill path from Discovery Bay in roughly an hour; a small boat also crosses from Peng Chau.