Hong Kong: Lantau Island

Lantau Island lies to the East of Hong Kong Island, but is easily accessible by way of MTR or ferry. It is billed as having a number of cultural attractions and loads of natural activities, such as hiking and swimming at beaches. The two cultural attractions that I wanted to see were the Tian Tan Buddha and the Po Lin Monastery (there is also a fishing village and Disneyland, but since we didn't see those places, I won't comment on them). These seemed like nice, authentic sights to see before we wandered off to take a dip in the ocean.

We arrived by MTR and discovered that we would have to take further transportation to the statue and monastery. We would have to take either a bus or a cable car dubbed the 'Ngong Ping 360' (The cable car ends in a village called Ngong Ping, but as far as we could tell, the village is just a terminus for the cable car. Seriously, it's just a newly-built street lined with expensive souvenir shops). We took the bus (partially out of spite towards the cable car's name), which we later found was a terrible mistake. It was a winding and jerky 45 minute ride up and down many mountains, that I felt should have taken far less time, as it seemed like we were driving in a roundabout way. I just asked Melissa if she wanted to add anything about the bus ride, and she replied, "Just that it made me wanna puke." Well said. Anyways, 45 minutes later, we get off the bus from Hell, already feeling violated by this tourist trap. We look around at the hundreds, maybe thousands of tourists flocking up the stairs towards the Buddha statue and join them. 

By this point, Melissa was an unhappy camper. After we had walked up many, many steps to the top, I started to feel a little used. I mean, the statue is big and all, but there were so many people getting in the way of everybody else's pictures that it was hard to enjoy it. I kept telling myself that there must be some saving grace to the Buddha. Maybe it is a few hundred years old? I later found out that it was built in 1993 (it's as old as the students I teach) and that it faces North (towards Beijing), instead of West (towards you know where). Son of a...

The monastery was a lot more interesting than the statue, but that isn't saying much. There were still a lot of people walking around, but there were so many ornate details in the decor that everyone kind of blended in. In fact, that is the thing I remember most about the monastery. 

The walls, ceilings and smaller statues were intricately detailed with lots of colors and etchings. They provided a vegetarian lunch that Melissa describes as 'PBBBBBBBT!' Needless to say, no pics were taken of that, but we did agree that we would need to at least try to locate a beach. That, however, was easier said than done.

First, we ended up wandering up a service path, lined with broken televisions and old dog houses. It may seem like an honest mistake, but we were actually hoping to take the path less travelled. We wanted to do some get-back-to-nature trailblazing. So, we went off on the path that nobody was taking (and for good reason). Then, we walked up to a fork in the road, where we discovered that we were miles and miles away from any beach, and many hiking trails were closed due to rock slides. 

But all was not lost! Right at that very spot where we stood was the ancient Wisdom Path! Okay, so it's not ancient, or even authentic for that matter. It's a bunch of split trees with Buddhist sayings carved on them, which are arranged in an infinity symbol. Well, as you may have gathered, we did not end up finding any beach, or anything off of the planned tourist areas. So, we were pretty bummed about that. 

Maybe we felt like we were wasting our time on Lantau Island because it was our last day in Hong Kong, and there was still so much that we wanted to do. At least that gives us some more incentive to go back!

Cullen