Welcome to Lamma. Here's Your Beer.

About two clicks southwest of Hong Kong Island is Lamma, a quiet isle largely-untouched by the hustle and bustle of the SAR, It can only be reached by ferry, as is free of motorized vehicles save ambulances and the carts needed to move freight around. Aside from an oddly-placed power-plant, Lamma offers an resolute patch of Ferngully standing against the Hexus of South China industry. I had the pleasure of house-sitting for a friend, a former missionary named Bud who had decided to retire there, and I grew quite fond of the place. Bud was lucky enough to live in apartment on the water, fifty feet from a ferry pier with a bright orange light that beckoned across the water to the massive concrete towers on the south side of HK island. In my more tender moments, I would wonder if someone was looking my way, thinking I was their Daisy.

Populated by a mix of locals and expatriates, Lamma Island offers a rare bit of agrarian solitude with its village life, natural beauty, and lack of apartment blocks. It's a haven for those less-active foreigners who would rather not live too close to the constant excitement of Central or Wan Chai, preferring instead the sleepy bars and cafes of Yuen Shue Wan, which are free of hawkers and more unsavory solicitations. The largest foreign demographic, it seemed to me, is older British males, probably driven from their usual watering holes by the influx of millenials and Mainlanders following the handover.

A common means of transport for a large portion of the community.

But Lamma is far from a sleepy retirement community. It's apparently a great place to raise a family, with clean(er) air and only a 25-minute ferry ride away from the good schools. There are certainly more eateries than in my bare patch of town, which a greater selection of cuisines. My visit also happened to coincide with the off-season, when the island's good-not-great beaches are less attractive to the Young Turks. The weekends, however, saw a steady influx of visitors—seemingly Hong Kong natives—probably seeking sanctuary from the legions of Mainland shoppers on their weekend hajj across the border. In fact, Lamma is probably one of the few districts of Hong Kong without a mall, and therefore offers no temptation for those buying vitamins and face creams in bulk. Its economy, more or less, is simple, non-commercialized leisure, its "resorts" no more than mom-and-pop inns which I can only imagine are run by Cantonese-speaking Basil Fawltys.

My temporary backyard.

Lamma is probably the chillest place in Hong Kong, where the expectation is you drink just enough, but never too much. The city's lax open-container laws—though profoundly more moral than the puritanical impositions of my homeland— are egregiously abused in areas with high-concentrations of financial bros. On the ferry ride to Lamma, it's basically expected that you at least consider sipping a cheap beer as ritual of transition, but it's free from the social pressures of rich expatria.