Big Buddha Obsession

I also walked around Kowloon Park in Hong Kong. I think it’s the city’s largest park, but if it isn’t, it’s up there. There was a nice-sized pond and a lot of area to walk or even jog if you’d prefer. I didn’t see anybody there jogging, though. What I did see was a lot of older people practicing Tai Chi. The low-impact stretching exercises were going on individually and in groups. It was a little disconcerting because there were dozens of people doing this and I felt a little out of place. No problem, though. I suppose I was destined to feel out of place from time-to-time while I was in China.

In my final afternoon, I decided that I needed to see the Big Buddha. Even though I had never heard of the Big Buddha 24-hours prior, I had heard people talking about it all morning and I decided that I needed to see it too.

Since I’m tired of sending you to Wikipedia every time I write about something of which I’m ignorant, I decided to actually do some homework this time. Hong Kong’s Big Buddha is the Tian Tan Buddha. It is the world’s largest outdoor bronze Buddha, or at least it was until 2007. This ancient structure (he said sarcastically – it was completed in 1993) sits atop a hill on Lantau Island in Hong Kong. It would sort of be reminiscent of Cristo Redemptor in Rio de Janiero except it doesn’t actually overlook the city.

Seeing the Buddha on top of the mountain truly is amazing. What I found just as amazing, however, was the trip to the mountain. After travelling on the subway for about 45 minutes, I reached the Tung Chung station. From there, it was a short walk over to buy a ticket for the Ngong Ping 360. The highlight of the Ngong Ping 360 is the gondola lift from the Tung Chung station to an area close to the Big Buddha. The trip allows you to cross the Tung Chung Bay and then mountain hops on Lantau Island until you reach the Ngong Ping plateau. The trip takes about 25-minutes, and since I was alone in my car, I had nothing to do but take in the scenery and it was pretty thrilling.

There was a problem, however. I got to the Big Buddha late and I didn’t have time to climb up to the monument. I had a meeting at 6:30, so I had to settle for only going to the steps that rise to the Big Buddha. I had another problem, as well. The weather was crappy and the sun was behind the Tian Tan Buddha, so all of my pictures were much darker than I’d like. Anyway, I was able to get Big Buddha out of my system.

After our meeting, we went out to dinner. It was a Chinese restaurant, but the food seemed kind of western to me and I ended up just eating chicken fried rice because it was the best I could come up with in the ordering process. That was fine, though, because I was getting ready to embark on 27 hours of travel to Kunming beginning early the next morning, so I really didn’t want to play too many experiments with my tummy.

That pretty much ended the trip to Hong Kong. We went on to Kunming (where I am at the moment) and I will pick it up from there in another post.

Hong Kong Light Show. With Lasers.

Coming down from Victoria Peak and across the harbor, we returned to the port for the Hong Kong laser/light show with about thirty minutes to kill. If I had to guess, and of course I don’t, but if I had to, I would say that we had maybe a thousand or so people around to watch the show. We got what turned out to be good seats on a little walkway overlooking the harbor and waited for the show to start.

The light show started and it was, let’s just say not overwhelming. The music was loud – mostly classical music – and the pre-show announcements were in English, Mandarin and Cantonese. (I’m sort of guessing on that, but I think it may be correct.) The show consisted of the music, with lights around certain buildings in the Hong Kong skyline pulsating in time with the music. While this was going on, other buildings across the harbor were shooting green lasers or white lights into the sky. With the haze over Hong Kong, every time I saw the white lights shoot into the sky, I half-expected to see a Batman logo in the middle of it. The show lasted around fifteen minutes and there was a grand finale, which wasn’t particularly grand, and that was that. If you are in Hong Kong and have fifteen minutes to kill at 8:00, you should see the show. You definitely shouldn’t come to Hong Kong for the light show, though.

At night, we went to a local food market for dinner. There was nothing spectacular about the food. Our guide made fun of me because I wanted fried chicken pieces and bean cheese, so I had a stir-fried shrimp dish. It was good, but I think I’d have preferred the bean cheese. Anyway, one thing I found amusing was that Chinese girls in red uniforms were working the crowd getting them to try San Miguel beer. I spent the entire summer drinking San Miguel beer in Madrid (it’s a Spanish beer), but evidently they are marketing it heavily in Hong Kong at the moment so I was able to take a break from the Chinese beer for an evening and relive my summer in Spain.

That was it for the first day in Hong Kong. I still had no idea what I wanted to do the next day, but I did play on Facebook and my websites for a while because it was the first time since I arrived in China that I had access to any of them.

The next day, I walked around the financial district because I wanted to see what it looked like in comparison to western financial districts. It looked pretty much the same. People in suits, lots of fast-food restaurants for businessmen on the go, skyscrapers that refused to let in the sun, younger women in suits with inappropriately short skirts, taxis, taxis and more taxis. It looked like New York or Boston or London or . . .. I went to Starbucks for some tea and saw a couple of job interviews taking place. I guess that makes sense since space is at a premium in Hong Kong and not everybody has an office to him/herself in which to interview people. It reminded me of interviewing for a job in Washington, DC back in the 90s. Anyway, my view of Hong Kong’s financial district was “same ol’.” (Note: The photo isn't from the financial district. I just like it.)

Hong Kong Skyline

After a badly-needed shower and a short rest, we all met downstairs at the Goodrich Hotel for a Hong Kong specialty – Dim Sum. Of course, this meant having a bunch of different Chinese foods passed around on a turning plate as we all picked from them. Come to think of it, most of our group meals in China have been like this, but this was our first official “Dim Sum.” The best of the Dim Sum samplings were the dumplings – a barbequed pork dumpling that was not very spicy but was satisfying nonetheless, and a bean paste dumpling that was quite sweet.

After our late lunch, we went on a walking tour of Hong Kong. At least of the part of Hong Kong in which we were staying. I don’t know Hong Kong that well so I can’t tell you exactly where it was, but our guide told us that our neighborhood wasn’t in a particularly nice part of town and I know that we weren’t on Hong Kong Island. (I think we were in Kowloon. Is that a place? I think that’s right.) Anyway, we walked around for about 40-minutes, coming upon an area with really nice stores – Tiffany’s, Cartier, 7-11, etc. We ended at the harbor near the big clock tower that marks the end of the Eurasian continent. (I’ll look the name of it up and put it in here. KCR Clock Tower? Something like that. Anyway, I’ll let you know.) (Note: I looked it up. KCR Clock Tower is correct.) From this site we could get a really great view of the Hong Kong skyline from across the bay. It was quite impressive, though I still prefer the Shanghai skyline because of the uniqueness of many of the buildings in Shanghai.

Nearby to where we were at, we caught a ferry across the harbor to Hong Kong Island, as we were all determined to go to the top of Victoria Peak to get bird’s-eye views of the island. The ferry ride took about 15-minutes and was pretty enjoyable, giving us alternative views of the city. We arrived on the other side and negotiated our way to the tram station, where we caught a tram up Victoria Peak. This was one of the most interesting tram rides that I’ve ever been on as it went up the hill, towards the peak, at what seemed to be a 45-degree angle.

We got to the peak around quarter after five. It was a den of tourist-related capitalism, including a Burger King and a Starbucks, as well as dozens of over-priced souvenir shops. We walked around for a while trying to determine the best places from which to get views of the cities and pictures thereof. We found a little nook and stayed there for a little while and caught some great views of Hong Kong at dusk. At this point, we decided that it would be a shame to come to Victoria Peak and not get some night views of Hong Kong, especially since it was closing in on six p.m. and the sun sets here around 6:15. We found a little non-Starbucks coffee shop and hung out there. (I had milk tea. I’m falling in love with milk tea.)

As darkness approached, we ventured back towards our little sightseeing area to look at Hong Kong in the dark. The wait proved to be well worth it as the Hong Kong skyline, like every other skyline, I suppose, is much more impressive when the millions of lights therein are illuminated. (Sorry about the blurry photos, but I have better ones from across the bay for the next entry.) Other than the scenes, however, there wasn’t much else in which we were interested on the peak, and we wanted to catch the Hong Kong harbor light show, so we turned around and headed down the peak.

That seems like a good stopping place, doesn’t it? We’ll pick it up from there later.

Epic Travel To Hong Kong

Okay, where was I? I believe in my last entry, I was on the 24-hour trek across China, travelling from Longji Terraces to Hong Kong. At the moment, I am on what I believe is my final 24-hour train across China.Following a 2-hour trek from Hong Kong to Guangzhou, we are on a 24-hour train from Guangzhou to Kunming. But we’ll get into all that later. (By the way; I don't have any photos for this particular entry, so I'm just going to post a few random China photos that I haven't posted previously.)

The trip to Longji Terraces ended and we hiked down the mountain to a bus to Guilin in order to catch a train. It was supposed to be a three-hour bus ride. About an hour into the ride, the bus stopped along the side of the road, across from a larger parked bus. We were instructed to get out of our bus and into the bigger bus, so we did. We all found seats while the driver entertained himself conversing with various people in the front of the bus. Then, the bus started moving. Unfortunately, the driver wasn’t directing that movement. Evidently, the bus slipped out of park, causing it to roll downhill and ram into a relatively nice truck parked (originally) 25-feet behind us. There were angry people; there were cops; there was confusion. We got out of the bus and hung out around 20-minutes until we were able to get on another bus to Guilin. That bus got us there without further incident.

In Guilin, we had a few hours of free time, so we walked around, grabbed some dinner and bought some provisions for the 13-hour overnight train to Hong Kong.Nothing of significance happened except that the person that I was hanging out caught a case of the Tennessee Two-Step and caused us to be diverted to a Guilin-public-toilet-search that took up all of our remaining free time in Guilin.I’m glad I didn’t have the pork.

The train ride was pretty much without incident. I was in a cabin away from everybody else and I was able to sleep well. I think I’ve learned the proper combination of Advil PM and cold medicine that has allowed me to sleep 8-10 hours a night on these epic train rides so I don’t mind them nearly as much as I used to.

The train arrived in Hong Kong around mid-morning and we hopped on the subway to get to downtown. That trip lasted around 40-minutes and then we walked to our hotel – Goodrich Hotel. I know that there is a fight for space in Hong Kong, but the size of the rooms was a little ridiculous. My room had a full-size bed and there was no chance that I was going to fall out of it. The walls touched 3 ½ sides of the bed. I had to get into bed through a little opening at the bottom of the bed. There was a little closet and a bathroom in which I could practically flush the toilet while lying on the bed. I tells ya it was small. The television had four channels. Two were in English, though one appeared to talk about nothing but horse racing.I realize that I’m just sort of babbling about the room, but there’s no point in talking about what I did in Hong Kong at this point because this entry is about to end and I might as well save it for the next post.Speaking of which, see you then!