Skip the Tour Bus, Take the NLB
Search “bus tour Tung Chung” and you’ll find operators reselling something you can buy yourself at the NLB counter for a fraction of the price: a seat on the regular public bus up Tung Chung Road. There’s no separate hop-on sightseeing coach here, and there doesn’t need to be.
The real bus tour costs a few dollars
New Lantau Bus routes 11 and 23 both leave from the terminus at Tung Chung MTR and climb the switchbacked Tung Chung Road through dense forest, cresting at Pak Kung Au between Lantau’s two highest peaks before descending toward either Ngong Ping (Bus 23, 45 to 50 minutes) or Tai O (Bus 11, about 50 minutes), passing coastal views of Cheung Sha Beach and Tong Fuk on the way down. Paying a markup for a packaged “tour” version of this route buys a schedule and maybe a guide’s commentary, not a better road or a better view.
Where a day pass actually earns its cost
If your day touches more than one stop, an NLB day ticket (sold as the Lantau Pass) covers unlimited rides on nearly every route except the 1R. Compare that against paying per ride for Ngong Ping, then Tai O, then back, and the math tips toward the pass quickly once you’re making three or more legs in a day.
The one genuinely different ride: the Golden Bus
The exception worth paying attention to is Bus B6, a 24-hour shuttle from Tung Chung to the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge port, about 10 to 15 minutes for roughly HK$8.30. From there, the cross-border shuttle bus, nicknamed the Golden Bus, runs the full 55-kilometre sea crossing to Macau or Zhuhai over viaducts and an undersea tunnel. This one is worth treating as an event rather than transport, since the bridge itself is the attraction.
The verdict
Don’t book a bus tour product for South Lantau; buy an NLB day pass and ride the same route the tour buses use, then decide separately whether the bridge crossing to Macau is worth a day of your trip. For the Ngong Ping ticket end of this ride, see multi-day trips from Tung Chung , which lays out how to combine it with an overnight stay.
Buy the day pass at the NLB counter at Tung Chung MTR before you board, not from a resale site, since the physical counter is the one place guaranteed to have it in stock.