Hong Kong country park retreat that’s hard to say goodbye to
It took some convincing but having eventually moved into a village house deep in the Sai Kung Country Park, the homeowner is now reluctant to leave. It’s not hard to see why
“Over my dead body” was Inez Albert’s initial reaction to husband Nick Morgan’s suggestion that they move to the farthest reaches of Sai Kung Country Park. She came round, however, persuaded by this 2,100 sq ft village house, the garden and the price in a market that “had gone crazy”. Three years on, she finds it hard to leave.
“I work in Taikoo Shing [as digital director, Asia Pacific, for The Economist] and, at first, I found the drive a nightmare,” she says. “But once I get home, I don’t want to budge. It’s beautiful, especially on a sunny day. But it’s Nick who really gets the benefit.”
Morgan, a media consultant, works from home, taking breaks to swim off one of Hong Kong’s loveliest beaches, a couple of minutes’ walk away and visible from the roof terrace.
With a herd of feral cows grazing just beyond the garden hedge, monkeys playing in the trees nearby and the village basking in the sound of silence on the day we visit, it is a slice of rural heaven.
“We bought the house in great shape and did very little apart from rip out a family bathroom on the ground floor to create more storage, put in a few picture windows in the family room and tidy up the garden,” Albert says.
The space is spread over three floors, with an open-plan kitchen, dining and living area on the ground floor; two bedrooms, a family bathroom and a large, bright family room on the middle floor; and the master suite and a study/spare bedroom on the top floor. Then there’s the roof, with frameless-glass windbreaks, a large shade sail and a charming sitting area overlooking the beach, the bay and the surrounding tangled forest, mangroves and rock-strewn hillsides.