Stanley

This quaint little market town is located on a peninsula at the southern tip of Hong Kong island. Thanks to a little distance from the downtown areas, it has a very relaxed and tourist-friendly atmosphere.

This is a great place for getting away from the bustling crowds to spend a day at the beach. The bus trip takes less than one hour from the very centre of Hong Kong.

Stanley Market

The number one attraction here is the popular Stanley Market. This large collection of small shops and stalls is open in the daytime every day of the week. There is enough Chinese arts and crafts and other souvenirs on sale to satisfy the tourists, but the fact that they also have bargains in clothing, household items and many other goods has made the market a really popular destination among locals as well!

The waterfront promenade along Main Street has a whole row of restaurants where you can enjoy a lot of different types of food (including French, Italian, American, Indian, Thai and more) or relax with a beer and soak up the sun and friendly atmosphere in one of the bars.

To the west of the Main Street, past the amphitheatre, is the Tin Hau Temple (Temple of the Queen of Heaven). It was built in 1767 and is one of the oldest temples in Hong Kong.

Murray House

South of the Tin Hau temple is another historical building called Murray House.

Murray House was originally constructed as an army barracks in the early years of the British colony (1846) in Central.

It was then dismantled in 1982 to make way for more skyscrapers and eventually rebuilt "brick by brick" here in Stanley a few years ago.

Unfortunately there aren't very many colonial era buildings left in Hong Kong, as almost all old structures get torn down to make way for the new. That makes this building sort of interesting because even though it's been moved from its original location it still shows the architecture of the colonial time period.

Nowadays hosts some restaurants as well as the Hong Kong Maritime Museum which has exhibits on naval exploration, trade and warfare but is in the process of being moved a new and much bigger locale on the pier in Central. There is also another museum here, the Correctional Services Museum, a short walk to the southeast.

Beaches

Stanley is located on a really thin strip of land (an "isthmus", if you will) that connects to a peninsula. So on the one side you have Stanley's Main Street which offers the nice promenade boardwalk lined with restaurants, the market, Murray House and more.

But if you want to go for a swim, you have to take a walk of less than five hundred metres right across to the other side of the peninsula where you will find the main beach.

There is also St. Stephen's Beach which is a smaller, somewhat more secluded beach a few minutes' walk south of the main drag. Both of these are fine sandy beaches with fairly good water quality.

There is also another very well-known beach in Repulse Bay, only a short bus ride away.

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