Tuesday 17 October – Life doesn’t get any Buddha than this.

A bit of a sleep-in (jet-lag induced) this morning, then breakfast and off to see Buddha – a very large Buddha.  Two train rides, finishing up somewhere on Lantau Island, then two hours of queuing to get on the cable car for the 5.7km ride to Ngong Ping, home to the Tian Tan Buddha, aka the Big Buddha. The ride was spectacular; it climbs so high that at one stage you have an aerial view of all of the Hong Kong International Airport, with planes taking off about every minute, as well as the canopy of forested mountains beneath us and views out over the ocean.  When you alight from the cable car you walk through a “village”, with restaurants (one of which we patronised for a late lunch) and an oddly–named piazza, with resident sacred cows wandering, snoozing or eating the flowers.  The Buddha is reached by a 268-step climb and absolutely dominates everything around it.  Built between 1990 and 1993, it is 34 metres high and weighs over 250 tonnes – a most impressive monument.  Nearby is the Po Lin Monastery, built as recently as 1906 and there are a number of walking trails for visitors, including the Wisdom Trail (which we were unwise enough to take, because it led nowhere and we didn’t gain any wisdom from walking it).  We also learned that the Big Buddha is 7,381 kilometres from Sydney Opera House.

After a couple of pleasant hours we made our way back to the cable car, passing a display of martial arts by a group of young men then, when we reached the bottom, caught the MTR to Jordan for a walk through the Temple Street Night Market, then a long walk back to our hotel in time for Happy Hour in the Club Lounge and another reasonably early night.