Giant Buddha, Po Lin Monastery, and The Wisdom Path

!
!!!

I'm not sure I'll be able to find words for this post, it seems I've been reduced to punctuation marks.

Basically, I've never seen more beautiful mountains.


But I've skipped ahead, so back to the beginning. Yesterday a friend and I (there were supposed to be more, but they were all too tired) ventured to Lantau Island to see the giant Buddha statue. "The world's tallest outdoor seated bronze Buddha..." The Internet told me Japan has a taller bronze Buddha, but it's standing.

Getting to the Island was really easy, we just rode two MTR lines to the end. We exited the station directly into a shopping mall--somewhere inside was a Bank of East Asia and I needed cash because of an empty campus ATM. After longer than I'd like of wandering amidst posters of a cute but unhelpful mall mascot we found it.

So we set off for the cable cars, replenished wallet in hand.

Ah! Best cable car ride ever!

These Easter egg colored buildings were my favorite. According to the brochure this is Tung Chung Bay.

Here's the Hong Kong International Airport. Too bad I can't cable car my way there come December; there'd be plenty of room for my suitcases.

!
"A stunning view of Lantau North Country Park."
Actually, I'm not sure if this photo's of the park or not, but it's stunning all the same.

Clearly, a very large statue.

We disembarked from the cable car and entered Ngong Pei Village, a touristy little collection of gift stores and restaurants. Chinese food would have been nice, but all those places looked fancy and expensive, so we went with euro go go (it felt strange not walking to the menu and pointing). Only after we'd eaten and arrived at the statue did we learn we could have bought meal tickets to have a vegetarian lunch prepared by the monks. Oh well.


Then off to the statue!

This isn't the statue. First we stopped off at The Chopstick Gallery, where I stole this photo. If I'd known I would have been told to put away my camera, I would have snagged a picture of some gorgeous chopsticks instead of cute glass figurines, which are totally lame by comparison. Seriously, I'd be frightened of using such fancy chopsticks.


!!!

Good thing our chicken, cheese and pineapple sandwiches filled us with the energy to climb these stairs.

!!!!!

I don't know who they are (the tourists or the statues).
Speaking of tourists, it felt weird not being one of the only ones around.
Really weird.

After we'd taken pictures of every possible statue and scenic view from every possible angle we went to the monastery. The smell of incense overpowered us, but not to a sickening degree. And I liked the chanting from the loudspeaker.

I loved the walls. Dragons like this one crawled along the sides of each door and the walls were covered in...if I remembered more art history I could tell you the name for this kind of carving...

A peek inside!

And this was not the only incense pot.

Finally, we headed down The Wisdom Path to see the wooden pillars with the Heart Sutra carved into them.

And then we walked to the...ugh, forgetting names of things again...what scenic places have so you can look out and get the super-scenic view.

Anyway...

Before we left we wandered through the gift shops, most of them selling the same assortment of jade jewelry and Buddha statues. Not to degrade jade jewelry or Buddha statues, because most of the stuff was really pretty. Except for the flashing keychains. We also popped into the tea house, but we'd missed the demonstration by an hour and had no way to spend an hour before the next one. I did, however, buy this:
I was thirsty and thought I was purchasing some form of iced tea. Yes, the can sounded suspiciously solid when I shook it, but I could only trust the English on the price tag and that said "Guilingao and Honey Tea." The only English on the can gave a brief history of the tea and said it could be served hot or cold.

So I took off the plastic lid. And found a plastic spoon. I peeled back the top and--gelatin? How curious.

I liked the taste, but there was no way I could finish a whole can of the stuff. So I poured the leftovers into the trash and kept the can. How could I not keep a can with its energy content expressed in kilojoules?

I'd been worried about not getting a clear picture of the Easter eggs (I have no idea what they're actually called) from the cable car. Then we stepped off and I realized I could still see them. Actually, now they're starting to remind me of saltwater taffy.

And the excitement didn't end when we returned! I think it was election day, there were signs for a polling station and all the streets looked like this one. Also there were lots of people pushing flyers into our hands. I thought it seemed clear we weren't voting.

And some more "No Dogs" signs for my collection. The top one reminds me of a doberman pinscher with shorter ears and a longer tail. The second one's a terrier.