Our next big adventure is underway and the starting point was Hong Kong. After being on the road for over eight weeks, I now have enough bandwidth to publish a post, with photos.
After the hectic activity of packing our Melbourne life away, we needed a quiet start to what we hope will be six to nine months on the road.
The Big Buddha was the only thing we had planned for our one day in Honkers.
We took the train from near our hotel in Kowloon to Tung Chung, then the Ngong Ping Cable Car to Ngong Ping Village.
The village is more a shopping mall than a cultural attraction with ‘opportunities to buy’ at every turn.
The central attraction is the Tian Tan Buddha or Big Buddha that was constructed in 1993. It is indeed big, standing 34 meters high and weighing 250 metric tonnes. It dominates the skyline on Lantau Island.
The cable car was a unique experience, as we opted to take the ‘Crystal’ cabins. These have glass bottoms, so you get an amazing view, both looking out and down, as you wend your way over the 5.7km journey from the Tung Chung terminal to the Ngong Ping terminal.
The highlight for me wasn’t the Buddha but the walk along the Wisdom Path, a winding track that runs behind the big fella.
The commercialism of the Ngong Ping Village had overtaken a small teahouse, that was at the start of the Wisdom Path. It had been abandoned and the the forrest was reclaiming the site.
Cow pads were everywhere but no sign of the bovines themselves. That was until later in the afternoon when we discovered the heard strung out along the track, eating their way towards the Big Buddha.
Hong Kong is a very commercial city and the Big Buddha is typical of that commercialism. I had a feeling that nature, and the cows were fighting back.
