Ride Lantau's Wildest Mountain Buses
There are only about 75 blue taxis licensed to work the whole of Lantau Island, so on a Saturday afternoon the bus is not the backup plan. It is the plan, and it happens to be a genuinely scenic one.
Why buses do the job a rental car cannot
Tung Chung Road and South Lantau Road are Restricted Closed Roads: standard private cars and ordinary rental vehicles cannot enter South Lantau without a special permit from the Transport Department. That single rule is why New Lantau Buses and licensed Lantau Blue Taxis carry almost everyone who is not walking or cycling, and why the bus network is worth understanding rather than dismissing as a last resort.
Looping the island on the New Lantau Bus network
Routes like Bus 1R, 2, 3M, 4, 11, 21, 23 and A35 cover Tung Chung, Ngong Ping, Tai O and Mui Wo between them, with single fares running roughly HK$13 to HK$35 depending on distance. Ride Bus 23 up over the mountain pass at Pak Kung Au toward Ngong Ping, then continue on toward Tai O or double back toward Mui Wo, and you get sweeping views of both the northern airport channels and the southern ocean bays from a single-deck coach seat, no car required. An all-day hop-on, hop-off pass turns this into a proper circuit instead of a string of single fares. Older listings price it at roughly HK$35 to HK$55 depending on weekday versus Sunday or holiday travel, but the current product on sale, the Lantau DayRover+, is a flat HK$85 to HK$99, and it is not clear whether a cheaper tier still exists alongside it. Check the fare board at the NLB counter in Tung Chung before assuming the lower figure still applies.
Lantau Blue Taxis, for the gaps the bus doesn’t cover well
With only around 75 of these taxis licensed for the entire island, they are genuinely scarce at peak weekend hours and whenever a ferry has just unloaded a crowd at Mui Wo pier. They earn their keep on point-to-point trips the bus timetable does not serve well, like a 3:30am transfer to a peak trailhead before the first bus of the day runs. Pre-booking through a local taxi hotline is worth the extra step for anything timed that tightly.
The verdict
An all-day bus pass wins for a full day spent looping the island’s main sights, whatever it costs this season; a blue taxi is worth the wait only for the point-to-point trips a bus schedule genuinely cannot cover.
Tap an Octopus card rather than paying cash on NLB buses, since it is the fastest way through the line when a full coach of day-trippers disembarks at Ngong Ping or Tai O all at once.
For how to stretch a day of bus-hopping into a full multi-day trip, see multi-day trips on Lantau Island .