Clear Water Bay
"Hong Kong place names are not usually this literal, and Clear Water Bay is the rare one that undersells itself."
A pair of clean, lifeguarded beaches on the Sai Kung peninsula named with unusual honesty — the water really is that clear.
Hong Kong has a habit of naming things aspirationally — Fragrant Harbour for a city whose harbor has not been especially fragrant in a long time — so I went to Clear Water Bay expecting the usual gap between the name and the reality. There wasn’t one. First Beach and Second Beach sit side by side on the Clear Water Bay peninsula, about forty minutes by taxi from Diamond Hill, and the water is exactly what the name promises: pale turquoise, genuinely transparent to a couple of meters down, clean enough that I could see my own feet the entire time I was swimming, which is not something I take for granted in a city of seven million people.
Both beaches are lifeguarded, netted for sharks in season, and equipped with the full set of amenities — showers, changing rooms, a small row of snack kiosks — that mark this as one of Hong Kong’s officially designated “gazetted” beaches rather than a hike-in secret. That infrastructure means it draws a real crowd on summer weekends, mostly families and groups from Kowloon and the New Territories rather than tourists, and it has a settled, comfortable feel that some of the more dramatic Sai Kung beaches don’t bother with. Lia and I came on a weekday and had long stretches of both beaches close to ourselves, floating in water so still it barely required effort to stay upright.
The headland above the beaches, part of the wider Clear Water Bay Country Park, has a coastal path with views out toward the Ninepin Group islands and, depending on which direction you walk, glimpses of the film studios that gave this stretch of coast its other claim to fame — a significant chunk of Hong Kong’s golden-age cinema, including many Shaw Brothers productions, was shot in and around this peninsula. There’s something quietly satisfying about swimming in water that clean while knowing it once stood in for a hundred imagined worlds on screen.
When to go: June through September for actual swimming weather, ideally on a weekday to avoid the family crowds that fill both beaches on Saturday and Sunday. The shark nets go up for the warmer months and come down in winter, so check current status if you’re visiting outside peak summer.