Hong Kong: A Recap

Photos: Hong Kong: Lantau Island, New Territories, Macau

So here I am, on an airplane somewhere in between Hong Kong and Bangkok, catching up on my blogs. Instead of writing a day-by-day post, I’m just going to highlight the last several days in Hong Kong.

On Friday, Jan and I went to Lantau Island, which Jeff and his class had done several days before. Lantau is directly west of Hong Kong Island and is, oddly enough, accessible via the Hong Kong MTR! After a delightful breakfast buffet, which was complimentary thanks to Jan’s status, we headed out for our adventure of the day. We hoped to take the cable car up to the main monastery area, at Jeff’s recommendation, but unfortunately this was the day Typhoon Megi was predicted to hit or at least have some negative weather effects, ands o the cable car was shut down. The neat thing about that experience is that you could opt for a glass bottom car! Ah, well. Instead, we figured out the buses and hopped on a forty-five minute bus. It was a pretty ride, although a bit nerve wracking at times with the winding roads and the odd cow or bull here and there along the street.

We made it to Po Lin Monastery, which houses a Big Buddha statue and several interesting statues and shops, in addition to a completely vegetarian restaurant and deli. Jan and I decided to wait awhile before climbing the 260-something steps up to the Big Buddha. We wandered along, following signs to something called “The Wisdom Path.” This turned out to have been a great thing to do, as we seem to have ventured into a part of the monastery grounds that others didn’t.

First it was just a trail, sometimes paved and sometimes not. At one point, we actually took a wrong path, thinking it was still the Wisdom Path. It took us through some foliage and then revealed to us a fascinating old place that seemed to be a glade for prayer. There were sticks of incense stuck here and there, and in some places a stone was resting on top of a stack of little squares of paper. There was no one in or near the glade but us and it felt like a sacred place, so we (somewhat unconsciously, I think) whispered and didn’t poke around too much.

Once we got back onto the correct path, we came to an open air pagoda which had brass plates describing what we were about to see: high pillars with calligraphy carved into their flat sides, with the “Heart Sutra.” It explained a bit about what this philosophy entails, which was fascinating: the concept of nothingness, and how chance and situation can be recognized and manipulated to make one’s life more favorable. However, this can only be done when the nothingness is recognized. (I’m fairly sure I butchered that explanation, but that’s what I took from it.)

There were about thirty or forty huge, towering stone pillars, placed in the pattern of infinity, with a trail winding around the outside of that shape. Again, it was  an impressive, awesome display of a spirituality that I, at least, don’t really feel attuned to that often. After we took our time walking around these, we followed a trail to Lantau Peak, climbing up (and up, and up) until we could see the Big Buddha from it’s own height, far away. It was an incredible climb, tough on the legs but well worth the effort. I don’t think we actually made it to the top of Lantau Peak, but we got pretty far and enjoyed the hike. At one point, we both heard what we thought was some kind of weather siren. We could see fog and cloud moving in and we worried that perhaps Typhoon Megi was actually coming in!

Once we climbed back down, about two hours later, and got closer to the main monastery, we realized that what sounded like a siren way up on that mountain was actually a broadcasted recording of monks chanting! Ah, well… we laughed at ourselves and promised never to tell anyone our silly mistake (sorry, Jan, too good a story not to write about!).

We eventually made our way around the monastery and up to the Big Buddha, before deciding that we were getting tired of the howling winds and gray skies and heading back down to the MTR station. Before we left, though, we had lunch, which was a small adventure in and of itself. I’ll explain why:

Jan has Celiac Disease, which is a severe gluten intolerance condition. This means that she can’t eat anything with wheat, rye, barley or other grains. This means most noodles, all breads and even soy sauce aren’t a part of her diet, or else she’ll get really, really sick. Incredibly enough, she also travels quite a lot due to work, and does pretty well. Before leaving for our adventure that day, we went to the front desk of the hotel and asked if they could write it out in Mandarin. After some confusion, they did one better and gave us a printout of all the things a celiac can’t have, explained very clearly.

So, anyway, at Lantau Island, in the monastery, we showed Jan’s celiac note to the restaurant and they apologetically said they couldn’t accomodate her food needs. But then we walked across the monastery square to a deli and they were awesome! They went through each deli item and discussed it amongst themselves before showing Jan which she could have and which she couldn’t. We both enjoyed our meal of fried rice noodles, tofu with honey and milk, and two custardy-like pies, one made from yellow split peas and the other from red beans. It was a fantastic lunch and Jan’s system liked everything just fine!

We headed back to Kowloon and met up with Jeff for dinner, which was shabu-shabu with classmates of his. That was quite the experience, replete with fish balls, prawn balls, all kinds of meat and vegetables and a boiling miso soup mixture. Yum!

After shabu-shabu, Jan headed back to the hotel and Jeff, me and four of his classmates headed out for the night markets. Everyone had a good time bartering and getting tinkets, clothes and gifts. I had a good time trying on some of the merchandise and had to refrain from buying some of the little kid clothes in oriental style… they were so friggin’ cute!

The night market we went to was the ladies market and was crammed full of tourists. It was an experience all in itself, even as the second time I’d gone.

 

On Saturday, Jan and I met up with Barbara, another classmate’s mother who had arrived the night before. We dragged her out with us to explore the New Territories, which is far too vast to explore, but we at least stopped somewhere in that area. We went to the Ten Thousand Buddhas Temple, which was quite the adventure with lots of steps and steep hills to climb. There were a serious number of life-sized buddhas sitting along the entire pathway, in various poses holding various objects and with various expressions on their faces. The view from the top was awesome!

Before we found the temple, though, we made a wrong choice, climbing stairs to a mausoleum of some sort. It was obvious many tourists did the same thing because no one seemed to mind a threesome of obvious foreigners wandering around. Once we passed several alcoves one a single level with plates engraved with Chinese characters and pictures of people, we headed down and eventually found the right path to take to the temple.

After the Ten Thousand Buddhas, we headed back to Kowloon for lunch at the hotel. Then Jan and I took a break to relax for the afternoon. Unfortunately, a medical non-emergency really stressed Jan out (having to do with an urgent message from her doctor that she needed to take blood tests, in Hong Kong, immediately), and that took the energy out of both of us. Luckily it was resolved in the end (on-call doc said not to worry about it) and we were able to get dressed and ready to go out… out on a night cruise of the river between Kowloon and Hong Kong Island!

The cruise was pretty much what you’d expect: live band (they were pretty good), buffet dinner (it was pretty bad) and the most amazing view. We were out on the water in enough time to watch the light show that happens every night at 8pm. Buildings all along the coast on both side light right up, some with laser shows and others with nifty patterns and colors flashing and alternating and blinking. It was just gorgeous and I was able to capture some of it on camera in the form of a video, which I’ll attempt to post at some point, and some fish-eye view pictures (they turned out the clearest for some reason).

The evening was marred slightly for me when someone accidentally knocked into me and my glass of wine, splashing it all over my shirt. I was feeling a bit dumpy anyway, even though I was a little dressed up, and that just capped the feeling. I went to the bathroom and rinsed the shirt out a best I could while sniffling away my self-condemnation. Luckily, the shirt was a dark  one and there didn’t seem to be any stain on it the next day. Also, I recovered from my momentary bout of feeling-badness, and was able to climb out of the funk to at least mostly enjoy the rest of the evening. We decided not to join the party crowd that disembarked to explore Hong Kong Island nightlife, which turned out to be a good decision – we were all beat!

On Sunday, Jeff’s class had the option of doing a day trip to Macau. Macau is another Special Administrative Region (SAR), just like Hong Kong, which means I have some extra passport stamps! Yep, we had to “depart” Hong Kong, take an hour long boat ride, then “arrive” and go through customs at Macau, and the same for the way back. Pretty wild! Macau was a Portuguese colony for awhile and the architecture there was an amazing mix of European and Portuguese. We went to a very well put-together museum on the history of Macau, then took a look at the one standing facade of a church that was the only wall left after a huge fire quite awhile back. Jeff, Jan and I broke away from the tour group to do our own thing, meandering along the cobbled streets and taking it all in. We tried some beef jerky-like stuff that several stores were selling, and it was quite tasty (if a bit greasy).

We decided that we wanted to follow a “Top 10 Hong Kong” lunch tip and hopped in a cab, which took us to another island which is part of Macau called Coloane, to the far coast. There we found Fernando’s, and we were  number thirty seven on the waiting list. Luckily, we sat at an outdoor bar area and enjoyed a pitcher of sangria with a cheese and bread plate. The sangria was made with some red wine, a can of orange slice soda and a can of sprite, and some limes. It was actually fairly tasty!

Incredibly enough, we were seated maybe thirty or forty minutes after putting our name on the waiting list. The wait staff took Jan’s Celiac note to the chef and came back to show us what she could have. We decided on two plates of garlic prawns and a roasted chicken and that was WAY too much food! The prawns were amazing and huge and delicious (and garlicky!) and the chicken was roasted to perfection. Truly, it was an awesome lunch.

Next we rolled ourselves out of Fernando’s and walked down to a black mineral sand beach, walking along it to a huge swanky hotel. Jan and Jeff bought some shirts and golf balls as gifts for friends back home, and then we cabbed it back to central Macau. Jeff bought some of the jerky-like stuff (about half a pound, to be exact!) and then we raced back to the pier to meet up with the group and head back to Hong Kong.

On Monday, Jan left early in the morning to catch her flight to Bangkok. Jeff and I followed several hours later, catching up as much as we could on our blogging and copying each other’s photos, and looking in the Thailand and Bangkok books Jeff had brought along. We were ready to tackle our next country!

--Z