Hong Kong Adventures: Hong Kong Day 28

LOTS of pictures again today!!!

Today we went to the Giant Buddha in Ngong Ping. We took the MTR down to Tung Chung, and then walked over to the cable car terminal to take the cable car over the hill to Ngong Ping where the Giant Buddha is located. There was a pretty long line for the cable cars so it took a while. We got our tickets and then got in the line for the cable cars. Ciara and I decided to take the "crystal cabin", which has a clear glass floor. Evelyn, Yan, and Kathy took the regular cabin. We decided that it was worth paying a little bit more for the special cabin. The ride over was really cool and it had some amazing views, it took around 25 minutes. Unfortunately it start to rain right as we left, and it was also kind of foggy so it wasn't quite the few that it could have been. I took a lot of pictures, and it was really cool to just look down and see the tops of trees.

We got off in Ngong Ping to some rain and clouds. We walked into the little village they have up there and decided to stop at a little shop for lunch. Since it was raining we decided to eat right away and see if the rain would stop. I had noodles with chicken wings and wontons, and also got some "thick toast" with blueberry jam and peanut butter. The soup was good, the wontons were really good, and it was nice to have some peanut butter and jelly. The village also had a bunch of cable cars from other countries. It was neat to see the different colors, designs, and looks that they had.

After we finished eating, we went out and started to walk to the Buddha. There were a couple of neat archways and also a bunch of warrior statues along a walkway. We took pictures of those, and then got to the bottom of the stairs leading up to the Buddha. It was foggy off and on the whole day, at times it was so foggy that we couldn't see very far, and there were other times that we had a really clear view. We could kind of see it at the beginning, it was a little bit foggy, so there were some clouds in front of it, but not too many. As we walked up, the fog came and went, so we were able to get some more pictures. At one point we stopped and asked someone to take a picture of us, but the camera was zoomed in a bit and I don't think he realized how to zoom out. It ended up being a pretty funny picture, a close up of all of our faces, and you can just see a tiny bit of the Buddha in the background. We got to the top, and walked around the Buddha a couple of times, took some more pictures and then headed back down. On the way down it cleared up some so we were able to get someone to take a picture of all of us in front of the Buddha.

We got down and then went over towards the Po Lin Monastery. They had some little shops there, and were selling incense to light and put in the various areas. We bought and lit some incense, walked around a bit, and then went over to get some food. They have a vegetarian restaurant there, but since we already ate, we decided to go to the vegetarian cafe they have. We got the bean curd and ginger sauce that we had when we were at Lamma Island, just warm.

After walking around the monastery, Ciara, Kathy and I walked over to the wisdom path. It was a bit of a walk to get to it, and then it was a short little walk in an area with a bunch of boards/trees with different Chinese sayings on it. The whole thing was so impressive to see, the boards were really tall, and there were so many of them. We walked around for a bit and then headed back towards the Buddha. I went into a little shop, took a few more pictures of the Buddha and then went into the gift shop. I bought myself a magnet and a pin and also a statue of the Giant Buddha.

We took the cable car back down to Tung Chung, and it was just as cool of a ride. It wasn't raining and it was a bit clearer, so we had some clearer views. Ana had invited us to go to tea with her if we finished early enough at the Buddha, and we also had planned to go to dinner. We were there for a while, so it was a bit too late for tea since we had dinner coming up. Evelyn, Kathy, Yan, and Ciara went to the outlet malls in Tung Chung, but I didn't feel like shopping, so I went to Ana and Marks to wait until they were done shopping. She had made lemon cake, so we ate some of that and just talked for a bit. Yan stopped shopping a little bit earlier than everyone else, so we went and joined her down at another mall, and just walked around for a little while. We went into the grocery store in the mall, and saw some really fancy pasta. They had some with multi colored thin stripes, some with thick colored stripes, and also had some with black and white stripes. Once everyone was done shopping we walked over to dinner.

Dinner was at a Korean restaurant, and it was with Ana, Mark, Josh and Vana. The food was REALLY good, I had stone pot rice with BBQ beef. It had so much flavor, and we had a long day, so that made it even better. We are going to try to go back for lunch one of these days. They have a special lunch price, so we will go and have Korean BBQ. After dinner we walked over to a bakery and had dessert. I got a peach tart, that was nice and sweet. I have been wanting something sweet, so this hit the spot. We then took a tram back to our apartments.