Today we had a planned trip to Lantau island. We decided against the 1 hour ferry route as the water (as seen from our hotel room) looked a tad choppy and we did not wish to unsettle breakfast, so we took the MTR instead. Highlight of this journey was Phil trying to high five a child who was in fact trying to retrieve his toy car which had fallen behind Phils seat.
We arrived at the correct stop and boarded the bus set for the Buddhist temple we were heading for. Not sure what it is with us and bus trips but they always seem to be a little on the damp side…today was no exception, and we spent a frantic few moments trying to avoid the interesting liquid which appeared suddenly from the seat in front of us…..
After an hour of being gently hurled around mountainous roads we arrived at ‘Po-lin Buddhist monastery. We didn’t know what to expect and were happy to find an interesting looking area complete with temples, walks, a village and lots of other bits and bobs.
We began with a leg stretch, thinking, incorrectly, that we had joined the rather simple sounding tea garden trail. In fact we were on the rather unforgiving Lantau trail….which we gave up on after an hour of perilous steep rocky ascent and the passing of a sign marked ‘Lantau Trail’. We we informed by a nice man later that this one way trail was 70km long…lucky we stopped when we did. We also realised that on a clear day you could see outlying islands miles away…we saw fog.
We found the tea garden walk (no tea shop as such sad times) and enjoyed an atmospheric foggy amble around some trees on the wisdom path….feeling more knee pain than wisdom at this point thanks to walk number one. However an unexpected highlight to the day then occurred…’sweetcorn man’ (as we now affectionately know him by) was happily munching a corn on the cob when a sacred cow lunged forward and slurped it out of his hand. He stared in disbelief as his lunch was slowly consumed by this happy cow. His misfortune provided us a solid five mins of amusement and luckily he saw the funny side too.
All this laughing made us hungry so we decided to head to a building marked ‘delicate vegetarian lunch.’ After a little confusion over tickets and menu choices (not in great British) we sat down to a feast of fungus noodles and various other fascinating items. Very tasty!
We then visited some very beautiful Buddhist temples…lots of incense sticks…little fires…prayer offerings to the gods, monks and cows going about their daily business.
Btw on this trip Phil seems to have become HK’s official photographer…our trips have been punctuated with ALOT of taking photos of other people.
Took some photos of strangers and then made our way up the two hundred and something steps to the ‘Tian Tan’ Big Buddha statue….clambered over at least a million people taking selfies and arrived at the top where, like previously, the thick fog obscured what we are sure would have been a phenomenal view on a clear day.
We then skipped through tourist trap town of Ngong ping (which also boasts the Ngong Ping 360 cable car around Lantau) and ended up back on the bus for the ferry this time … Enjoyed a tea and green kitkat whilst waiting for the ferry… Tried to spot sea or bird creature with no joy.. After arriving back at Kowloon we wandered through the city park being intrigued by the noises coming from one area we ended up in a miniature illegal rave of dancing Malay and Indian
Once we got out of there we wandered through Temple street night market marveling at the interesting produce…we decided upon eating at a place called BBQ pork… And had… BBQ pork and goose..for 5£ for both of us… It really didnt disappoint.
Once we worked out where we were (by holding out the map in front of the waitress and asking) we were on our way to see if we could attempt the light show again.. We gathered with the crowds to enjoy the 13 minutes of music and dancing buildings…amazing!! We went back to the hotel (via the star ferry) to rest our weary legs ..
