Marinas and Buddas

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  Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Hey everyone,

Alison and I are now staying with James and Sue (some friends of my family) in a house boat in Discovery Bay marina on Lantau Island. We arrived here last night at 7pm. It's a beautiful big boat, and seems a lovely way to live - we're very grateful that they're letting us stay!

I'll update you on what we've been up to since I last wrote on Saturday night. On Saturday night we went over on the Star Ferry from Central to Tsim She Tsui to see the lights of the Hong Kong skyline. It was really impressive, but the photos don't really show the full effect unfortunately). Over there we also saw an enormous array of paper (or possibly fabric) sculptures of cartoon characters doing sports, which at night were lit up from the inside, so they glowed. There are some pictures of this too

Man Mo Temple

. We later found out that these characters are the mascots for the Beijing Olympics.

On Sunday we set off from the hostel first thing in the morning, and spent the day exploring Western and Central on foot mainly. We walked around lots of the back streets of Western and saw some shops selling interesting and strange things - see the photos of birds nests, dried fish products and snakes! After heading up some very narrow and steep side streets we ended up on Hollywood Road, and saw Man Mo Temple. It was really amazing seeing the locals doing the rituals of lighting enormous amounts of incense, offering fruit and flowers and banging drums and gongs. The room was full of incense smoke, and richly coloured in black and gold. We were not allowed to take pictures inside, but there are some pictures of the outside, and people burning stacks of paper, to represent money for the dead we believe.

Next, we wandered down to the bottom of the longest escalator system in the world. We were expecting it to be one long escalator, but in fact is was just lots and lots of smaller escalators to help people up the steep slopes. It was very impressive, and we enjoyed the ride!

From the top we walked to the Zoological and Botanical Gardens, which were full of lovely animals and plants

Burning papers at Man Mo Temple

. We really enjoyed watching the baby monkeys, and the beautiful birds. The jaguar was poorly, so we couldn't see him - we hope he's better soon! Then we went to Hong Kong park, but as by this point it was very hot, we decided to stop walking around in the sun, and instead walked to the ferry to go over to the arts and craft fair on Kowloon. It was not as varied as we had hoped, but we saw some very impressive paper cutting and calligraphy being done.

After some lunch under the trees we went up Victoria Peak on the tram (see pictures), and rushed back down to catch the 7pm shuttle bus back to the hostel (it was up a big hill so we didn't fancy the walk!!!).

Sunday was our last night at the Mount Davis YHA, so on Monday we packed up and went into town on the bus for the last time. It was sad to leave as we had started to make friends with the other people there, but we had managed to get lots of tips for the rest of our trip through China, since many of them were in Hong Kong after leaving China. We obviously had all our bags with us, so we found a left luggage place in Hong Kong MTR station. We later found a much cheaper place in Central Pier 3, so I'd recommend that for anyone else who might need luggage storage! Once we'd lightened our load we went up the Bank of China Tower to floor 43 to see the city from the viewing gallery

Bamboo scaffolding

. It was really interesting, as although we had seen views from high up at the Peak, from the Tower we could see people and vehicles making their way around, which was really cool!

We ate our lunch in a small park nearby, and then headed to the Space Museum on Kowloon, as yesterday was soooo hot, and we fancied some air conditioning! We saw an omnimax film on black holes, with some pretty bad English translation, but it was good nonetheless! After a bit of a look around the area, we collected our bags and headed to Pier 3 to get the ferry to Discovery Bay, Lantau. While we were waiting we picked up some dim sum and sat by the water -very nice! When we arrived at Discovery Bay we were hit by how different it was - it's a bit like a tourist resort, with so many expats it's quite strange. Ali and I were really impressed to have our own (enormous) cabins on the boat, as we were in a dormitory of at least 20 the few nights before! We had dinner on the boat bbq'd prawns - bet you can't do that in the UK at this time of year!!!

After a good night's sleep and a lazy morning of chatting, we headed off at about 11.30 this morning to see the big Budda and Po Lin monastery on Lantau. It was a short walk to the bus station in Discovery Bay, and then a bus to Tung Chung, and another bus up to Po Lin. The latter was an interesting journey - very bumpy, and there were cows and dogs in the roads at various points! There weren't many tourists on the bus, as it seems most people use the relatively new cable car to travel from Tung Chung to Po Lin, but we had heard that the bus was a good was to see the scenery - and so it was! As we got higher the mist started to descend, and visability got poorer. At the top we went along the 'Wisdom Path' (I don't think it made us much wiser) to an area with benches

longest escalator system in the world

. I think the view would have been amazing, but we could not see anything for the mist! We ate our lunch there, and then went back into the monastery (we couldn't eat near the monastery as we had brought some meat for lunch, and only vegetarian food was allowed). We saw two amazing halls with scultpures and offerings (photos were allowed and will follow), and incredible decoration. The monks were fund raising to try to build a new temple behind - the building works were going on (noisily!) in the background the whole time.

After seeing the monastery we went up the more than 250 steps to the Big Budda (not a very inventive name!) - build in the mid 90s so far as we can tell, and the biggest bronze outdoors seated Budda in the world. We could not get a great view because of the mist, but it was vast! After walking around at the top, we headed down and got the bus back to the marina, via Tung Chung again. Annoyingly all the buses require exact change, which seems to be quite hard with HK dollars. I ended up having to buy ice cream to get the change...

I'll update you again soon,


Kate and Alison xxx

Post your own travel photos for friends and family More Pictures & Videos

botanical gardens	Zoological gardens	View from Gardens	Fountain at gardens
view from gardens	Ali on tram to Victoria Peak	View from tram	view from shopping centre at the Peak
view from Peak	at the Peak	at the Peak	Viewing platform at the Peak
top of Victoria Peak	View from Peak	view from Peak	view from Peak
view from Peak	Night view	View from Bank of China Tower	vie from Bank of China Tower
View from Bank of China Tower	View from Bank of China Tower	View from Bank of China Tower	HK view
Exchange Sq	rooftop view	rooftop lunch	city view
city view	View of Lantau on arrval	Discovery Bay	Lantau
Near Po Lin Monastery	Near Po Lin Monastery	At Po Lin Monastery	racks of incense
incense at the monastery	burning incense	incense to buy	temple
roof of temple	roof of temple	statues inside temple	ceiling of temple
second temple	pond at monastery	Star Ferry	pond at monastery
Star Ferry	flowers for the temple	hangings in the temple	night view
inside the temple	night view	drum inside the temple	night view
lotus model	night view	building of a new temple	night view
carvings outside	night view	night view	on the way to the Big Budda
night view	view down from the steps to the Budda	night view	View of the Big Budda
Star Ferry night	the statues around the Budda	Star Ferry night	view of Budda in the mist
Budda in the mist	night time	Budda in the mist	night view
paper lanterns	statues in the mist	paper lanterns	statues in the mist
Budda's head in the mist	paper lanterns	paper lanterns	Swasticas - used as a religious symbol
Po Lin monastery	video at night	Alison bought some marinated ginger pieces...	night
I thought these were apricots...	shops	... but they weren't!	cat and produce
street signs	Swallows nests shop	dried things	snakes in cages
street view	bamboo scaffolding	Ali at Man Mo temple

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