A giant Buddha and a change of scenery
After I left the coffee shop yesterday, I got on the subway and headed for HK Island again. My first stop was Causeway Bay to scope out a hostel to which I was considering moving. Turns out they were full, so I left and walked around HK Island for a few hours in that neighborhood. It's a bit farther west than the other neighborhoods I'd already visited over there. I made my way back towards the Ferry peers and eventually got on a very busy ferry to Lantau, one of the larger and more well-known of HK's numerous islands. The ferry is pretty new and comfortable, in contrast with the Star Ferry from Kowloon to HK which is older and kind of more atmospheric, but the Star Ferry trip is much shorter, this journey to Lantau took maybe 30 minutes or so. After hopping off the ferry, I had to take a bus which ended up being a good 30 minutes also up a fairly big mountain through forests and hills, with views of beaches and coastline. It's kind of a remarkable contrast to the ultra-urban landscape of HK and Kowloon, and pretty much everywhere else I'd been. As it turns out, Lantau is bigger than HK Island but over 2/3rds of it is trees and undeveloped land, so it's pretty beautful. The bus eventually dropped us off right near the Po Lin monastery, my intended destination, and home to what is apparently the largest sitting Buddha statue in the world, or so they say. I'm in no position to argue with them. The buddha is on a large hill which towers over pretty much everything in the area. You climb up about 300 steps or so and you can walk around the base. There were an awful lot of tourists there since it was a Saturday, but it's a big area and ultimately not too crowded. There are two connected vegetarian restaurants to visit, and I ate at the one that was more cafeteria like. The other is more of a sit-down affair and the actual process of figuring out where to go, buying meal tickets, and actually ordering anything was kind of complicated and very not-english. Most of the tourists and visitors were Chinese, I only saw a handful of Westerners over there, though I did have a conversation on the busride with a woman who was visiting from Toronto with her husband, but is actually Israeli. She is originally from Haifa. They are visiting HK for a few days, then flying to Beijing to tour in that area for a while. I actually heard a few different people speaking Hebrew the day I rode the Star Ferry, apparently this place and other destinations in Southeast Asia are popular with young Israelis.
So I ate some vegetarian food, walked up a lot of stairs and checked out the Buddha which was pretty impressive, then walked around the rest of the monastery area a bit. You can't actually get close to the monks, it's probably not good for meditation to have a thousand tourists taking pictures of you all the time. But there is kind of an area all around the Buddha where people light incense to pray and also buy souvenirs. Rather than take the bus and ferry back, I decided to try out a new cable-car they have which takes you all the way down to the base of the mountain where you can hop on the subway and get back to wherever you like, underwater instead of over this time. On the tram car, I had one of my most enjoyable experiences so far. There weren't many foreigners, I was one of the few in line for the cable car, so I ended up in a car with about 6 Chinese people who were kind of looking and obviously talking about me and laughing. It was a family with a mom, dad, aunt, uncle, and a few kids. Maybe a grandma too, I forget. So the adults are kind of jostling the kids to talk to me in English, which one of the kids decides he wants to do. So he actually switches seats with his Aunt next to me and starts practicing his English. He was a young boy, maybe 8 years old or so, and he was asking me all sorts of questions and telling me his name, where am i from, what sports do i like, things like that. So he starts to run out of questions and I start to ask him some too in English. After a little bit, I ask if he speaks Mandarin too, since his family was speaking Cantonese. He didn't quite understand the question, so then I asked again, but this time in Mandarin. Up until then we'd been in the car for 10 minutes or so and I hadn't hinted that I actually knew any. So when I finally spoke some, the entire family busted up, it was pretty funny. So I spoke with him and the family a bit more in Mandarin, which most of them spoke too. They turned out to be visiting for a few days from Shenzhen, a town literally just over the border into China. They were very friendly and very amused at my Chinese, though they seemed to understand everything I said and were very complimentary which felt good. Other than short and random exchanges, I haven't had much opportunity to converse in Chinese. I also told them that I knew one word in Cantonese, which is Gaui Lo (possibly sic) which means foreign ghost in Cantonese and as far as I understand isn't really derogatory, but they were kind of laughing and slightly embarassed when they realized I understood that they had been using it to refer to me when they first got in the car. The whole experience was really fun, and I hope when I get to the mainland where Mandarin is more predominant, I'll have more experiences like it.
Ok, so made it back to the hostel, relaxed a bit, ran into my British roommates who told me about a traditional dragon dance that night which sounded promising, and then headed out to try to use the internet somewhere less expensive than my hostel. It was a "bookstore" with no books, a bunch of magazines, and some computers. The computer didn't work that well so that didn't really happen, and I headed down the same block to try a vegetarian Indian restaurant I'd had my eye on. That meal turned out to be really great, though I was probably the most full I'd been since getting to Hong Kong. I then hit the train and went down to try and find the dragon dance, in the vicinity of Causeway Bay where I'd been early in the day, but one more stop out at Tin Hau. I found it by looking for the 10 million people clammoring for space on the sidewalk, met two random Australian people who I ended up hanging out with for a while, and stood in a really crowded place for a few hours waiting for the dragon to come by. When it finally did, it was a bit different than I expected. Rather than colorful, it was actually made of burning incense, and about 200 feet long or so. It ran by to drums and dancing people who mostly just climbed over each other trying to get a picture or footage with their digital video camera, but did seem to enjoy it a great deal. That broke up pretty soon after the dragon went by and I found my way to Victoria Park, also pretty closeby though not without walking through Times Square, a district with lights, shopping, and a zillion people. The scenery changes pretty quick here. In Victoria Park, they had a huge lantern festival to continue celebration of the mid-autumn holiday. I walked around there a bit and it was very beautiful, but I pretty dead on my feet at that point since I'd gotten up so early, so I soon made it back to my bed and feel asleep probably sometime after midnight. My roommates didn't come back til 5am, but it was their last night in HK so I think they wanted to make the most of it.
This morning I slept til about 10am, which was pretty great. I'd been getting up pretty early. I got my things together and went to use the lobby computer and figure out where to go next. I found another hostel in a different neighborhood that sounded less touristy so I called them up, booked a room, and found my way here this morning. I'm now standing in their lobby, using what is finally free internet access to write this incredibly long blog update. The place looks real nice and very clean, moreso than the last place, and I'm going to walk out now and go find some food and explore my new neighborhood. I booked two nights here, and despite it being nicer than the last place it is actually cheaper, maybe just because it is a bit more remote from the city center than the last place. The last place was about $29 USD per night, this one is only $25 I think. So I'll probably stay here a few more nights, and then I think it may be time to head somewhere new soon. For those wondering who have asked, I think my next probably destination is Macau for a day or two, then into mainland China. My first stop in China will either be Foshan if I go from Macau, or Shenzhen if I go from HK. After that, Guangzhou, another big city but this time on the Chinese side of the border so I expect it to be a wholly different experience from HK.
Was that enough for one day?
So I ate some vegetarian food, walked up a lot of stairs and checked out the Buddha which was pretty impressive, then walked around the rest of the monastery area a bit. You can't actually get close to the monks, it's probably not good for meditation to have a thousand tourists taking pictures of you all the time. But there is kind of an area all around the Buddha where people light incense to pray and also buy souvenirs. Rather than take the bus and ferry back, I decided to try out a new cable-car they have which takes you all the way down to the base of the mountain where you can hop on the subway and get back to wherever you like, underwater instead of over this time. On the tram car, I had one of my most enjoyable experiences so far. There weren't many foreigners, I was one of the few in line for the cable car, so I ended up in a car with about 6 Chinese people who were kind of looking and obviously talking about me and laughing. It was a family with a mom, dad, aunt, uncle, and a few kids. Maybe a grandma too, I forget. So the adults are kind of jostling the kids to talk to me in English, which one of the kids decides he wants to do. So he actually switches seats with his Aunt next to me and starts practicing his English. He was a young boy, maybe 8 years old or so, and he was asking me all sorts of questions and telling me his name, where am i from, what sports do i like, things like that. So he starts to run out of questions and I start to ask him some too in English. After a little bit, I ask if he speaks Mandarin too, since his family was speaking Cantonese. He didn't quite understand the question, so then I asked again, but this time in Mandarin. Up until then we'd been in the car for 10 minutes or so and I hadn't hinted that I actually knew any. So when I finally spoke some, the entire family busted up, it was pretty funny. So I spoke with him and the family a bit more in Mandarin, which most of them spoke too. They turned out to be visiting for a few days from Shenzhen, a town literally just over the border into China. They were very friendly and very amused at my Chinese, though they seemed to understand everything I said and were very complimentary which felt good. Other than short and random exchanges, I haven't had much opportunity to converse in Chinese. I also told them that I knew one word in Cantonese, which is Gaui Lo (possibly sic) which means foreign ghost in Cantonese and as far as I understand isn't really derogatory, but they were kind of laughing and slightly embarassed when they realized I understood that they had been using it to refer to me when they first got in the car. The whole experience was really fun, and I hope when I get to the mainland where Mandarin is more predominant, I'll have more experiences like it.
Ok, so made it back to the hostel, relaxed a bit, ran into my British roommates who told me about a traditional dragon dance that night which sounded promising, and then headed out to try to use the internet somewhere less expensive than my hostel. It was a "bookstore" with no books, a bunch of magazines, and some computers. The computer didn't work that well so that didn't really happen, and I headed down the same block to try a vegetarian Indian restaurant I'd had my eye on. That meal turned out to be really great, though I was probably the most full I'd been since getting to Hong Kong. I then hit the train and went down to try and find the dragon dance, in the vicinity of Causeway Bay where I'd been early in the day, but one more stop out at Tin Hau. I found it by looking for the 10 million people clammoring for space on the sidewalk, met two random Australian people who I ended up hanging out with for a while, and stood in a really crowded place for a few hours waiting for the dragon to come by. When it finally did, it was a bit different than I expected. Rather than colorful, it was actually made of burning incense, and about 200 feet long or so. It ran by to drums and dancing people who mostly just climbed over each other trying to get a picture or footage with their digital video camera, but did seem to enjoy it a great deal. That broke up pretty soon after the dragon went by and I found my way to Victoria Park, also pretty closeby though not without walking through Times Square, a district with lights, shopping, and a zillion people. The scenery changes pretty quick here. In Victoria Park, they had a huge lantern festival to continue celebration of the mid-autumn holiday. I walked around there a bit and it was very beautiful, but I pretty dead on my feet at that point since I'd gotten up so early, so I soon made it back to my bed and feel asleep probably sometime after midnight. My roommates didn't come back til 5am, but it was their last night in HK so I think they wanted to make the most of it.
This morning I slept til about 10am, which was pretty great. I'd been getting up pretty early. I got my things together and went to use the lobby computer and figure out where to go next. I found another hostel in a different neighborhood that sounded less touristy so I called them up, booked a room, and found my way here this morning. I'm now standing in their lobby, using what is finally free internet access to write this incredibly long blog update. The place looks real nice and very clean, moreso than the last place, and I'm going to walk out now and go find some food and explore my new neighborhood. I booked two nights here, and despite it being nicer than the last place it is actually cheaper, maybe just because it is a bit more remote from the city center than the last place. The last place was about $29 USD per night, this one is only $25 I think. So I'll probably stay here a few more nights, and then I think it may be time to head somewhere new soon. For those wondering who have asked, I think my next probably destination is Macau for a day or two, then into mainland China. My first stop in China will either be Foshan if I go from Macau, or Shenzhen if I go from HK. After that, Guangzhou, another big city but this time on the Chinese side of the border so I expect it to be a wholly different experience from HK.
Was that enough for one day?
posted by Dan at 10:15 PM
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