Liuqiu Island

The ferry from Donggang to Liuqiu takes about twenty-five minutes, crossing choppy water that had Lia gripping the railing the whole way, and then deposits you on an island so small you can circle it by scooter in under an hour. That smallness is the whole appeal. Liuqiu — often called Xiaoliuqiu, “Little Liuqiu,” to distinguish it from the Ryukyus — is a raised coral reef, which means its entire coastline is pitted with strange limestone formations, sea caves, and tide pools that look almost lunar at low tide.

Swimming With Turtles, Reliably

I’d been half-skeptical of tour operators anywhere promising “guaranteed” sea turtle sightings, but Liuqiu’s Green Bay and Houshi coastal waters host such a healthy resident population that we saw four turtles in our first twenty minutes of snorkeling, completely unbothered by our presence, grazing on seagrass a few meters below. One surfaced close enough that I could see the barnacles clustered on its shell before it dipped back down with a slow, almost bored flick of its flipper.

Beauty Cave and Black Ghost Cave

Liuqiu’s limestone geology produces cave systems with names that undersell and oversell in equal measure. Beauty Cave (Meiren Dong) is a narrow passage through jagged coral rock that opens onto an ocean-view balcony carved naturally into the cliff — genuinely striking, name notwithstanding. Black Ghost Cave, connected to a grim colonial-era history involving Dutch soldiers sealed inside during a 17th-century conflict, is darker in both senses, a low tunnel you duck through by flashlight before emerging at a rocky shoreline battered by surf.

Scooter Loop at Golden Hour

We rented a scooter for the full island loop in the late afternoon, stopping at Vase Rock — a coral outcrop shaped, more or less, like its name — and again at Shanhu Bay, where local families were fishing off the rocks as the light went orange. No traffic to speak of, no real infrastructure beyond a scattering of guesthouses and seafood shacks. It felt like the version of a tropical island escape that keeps getting promised elsewhere and rarely delivered.

When to go: April through October for the calmest seas and best snorkeling visibility; avoid weekends in July and August when day-trippers from the mainland arrive in bulk.