Hong Kong | Day 6

We drifted over to Lantau today, which is an outlying island on which Hong Kong’s international airport was erected. It took about an hour to get there by ferry, which dropped us at the Southeast end of the island--our first encounter with bikes in Hong Kong. On this side of Lantau, everybody who was anybody had a bicycle, whereas everywhere else we’d been in Hong Kong was distinctly vacant of bikes (weird coming from a country where the sidewalks are overcrowded by cyclists and the constant ding of their bells is present even in my dreams).

We had come to Lantau to visit the Po Lin Monastery on the Ngong Ping plateau, which boasts an awesome view of the mountains and ocean below in addition to harboring the largest bronze, outdoor, seated sculpture of Gautama in the whole wide world.



[ Tian Tin ]


It’s huge. But what was even more amazing was spotting the massive statue from various points on the island. Abby and I did some hiking around the plateau, and from every clearing we could see the big buddha jutting upward into the sky:




[ My favorite photo of ab, taken beside the big buddha’s left knee. ]



[This is the Ngong Ping Plateau, just outside the Po Lin Monastery where we shared a delicious Buddhist meal. ]



[ said “delicious Buddhist meal.” ]




[ Snapshots of the Path of Wisdom, a figure-8 of Chinese kanji depicting the Buddhist script on “Emptiness.” ]




[ From a boulder atop the Path of Wisdom overlooking the northern end of Lantau. ]


We didn’t want to take the bus back from Ngong Ping to the ferry harbor (because it took forever on the way up), so we opted for the cable car route instead, which travels as the crow flies straight down from the plateau to the northern end of Lantau where we could grab the subway back to Kowloon. We had to hurry down from the Path in order to each the last cable car, which we did (just barely), but were only able to get standing-room tickets (although they treated us like V.I.P., ushering us to the front of the line). The ride down from the plateau took us between mountains and straight toward the ocean. It was--cliche as it sounds--breathtaking. The sun had set completely at this point, but the city was lit up out near the harbor where we were headed.

The subway ride was long. When we got to Hong Kong Island, we drank beer and ate good Thai food in a buzzy section of Central.

1 Comment for this Entry

Val
That's amazing that you can see the Buddha from so far away....and that meal looks great!
Wednesday, January 24, 2007 - 01:16 AM