This is the entry for day four. It involves my trip to a giant Buddha, an awesome light show and a night market. Since this entry is over 1,000 words long, I have inserted a break. After the jump you will find the rest of the entry and a picture gallery.
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Thursday, February 17, 2011, was meant to be our last full day in Hong Kong and it was going to be a full one.
We start out the morning by going to the temple. Because we hadn’t done two ordinances the day before, Jacob (our fearless leader) asked us to do two sessions that morning. So we did. After the temple we had time to eat lunch and I used that time to work on fixing my computer.
The problem with my computer is that the hard drive is starting to fail. When we got to Korea, I tried connecting to the internet and I was unable to. I found a solution for it online but the conclusion that I came to with that was that I just needed to reinstall Windows. After a couple unsuccessful attempts to do that, I managed to get windows reinstalled. Basically the hard drive is having trouble writing data to the hard drive and I will need to have it replace before it fails fully.
Anyway, after lunch we left for another awesome place called Ngong Ping. We were told that it was a really cool cable car ride up to the top of this (sort-of) mountain that had a giant Buddha and a beautiful monastery. We jumped on a couple different subway trains to where the tram began.
Since this was an optional trip and thus had to pay for it ourselves, we had the option of a regular cable car (with windows on all sides) or a crystal cabin with a glass floor that you could see stuff that was underneath. Being cheap, I chose the cheaper regular car.
But the good thing was that it didn’t disappoint at all. There were a lot of really cool views from that cabin during the ride. For example, you could see all of the Hong Kong International Airport. In addition, part of the ride took right over the Tung Chung bay. Some of the pictures of it are in the gallery below.
Once at the top, there was a short hike to different attracts, after you walked through all the tourist shops of course. One the way there is a walk way that has statues on both sides. An interesting thing that we saw was these dogs. And there were quite a few of them. On the small patches of grass they were just sleeping. Some of them even looked like they were dead. It was a very interesting site to see.
Next, Jordan and I hiked up the really tall stair case to the giant staircase to the giant Buddha. It was quite the trek up the stairs but well worth the incredible views from up there. Of course there were some cool things up there too. The Buddha was surrounded by about a dozen smaller statues. I got a lot of cool pictures up there. You could go up to the upper area of the Buddha but they were charging for it so Jordan and I decided not to.
After that we went to the monastery. The first thing I noticed was how there were lots and lots of flowers. You also would notice the incense that was burning. The buildings were very ornamentally decorated with lots of gold and deep reds. The decorations were neat too. In kind of a secluded area Jordan and I found a big bell. It was really beautiful in that area too. Unfortunately a sign prevented us from ringing it.
Later we donated some money in the monastery and we were able to get some incense to burn. That was really fun to do for the first time ever. First you light it and then stick it is a fancy fire pit looking thing. Jordan and I were trying to get some good pictures of us doing it and it was funny because it kept on feeling like I was going to burn my hand when we were trying to get a picture of us putting it in the fire pit.
There was also a wisdom walk that we were unable to find that we were told was really cool. Others in our group (Liz, Chambrey and Carson) said they found it and went off the trail a bit to find some really neat buildings. We then headed back to the cable car station, waited a really long time and then made it down the mountain.
After that we headed back to Kowloon Island by the bay to meet up with the rest of the group that didn’t come to the mountain with us. There we ate some McDonald’s. I got a double quarter pounder meal and it never tasted so good. I finished it off with a strawberry swirl ice cream cone. After conversion it came to about 4.5 US dollars so I was fine with that. I love my meaty greasy American food.
After that we went to an elevated platform to watch a light show. As part of another tourism initiative, this show is really awesome. Across from that platform that we were at you could see all of downtown Hong Kong from across the bay. As mention before in my last entry, all the building are lit up in different ways. When the light show starts, all the building light up in beat with the music that is playing by the platform we were at. To make it even better, there were really bright spotlights and green lasers that were on top some of the buildings.
After that we left for the street market. It was amazing how big the market was. Endless it seemed. While in the market, one can barter for anything. When you go up to a booth, you point at something and ask how much. The owner will say a price and then you work your magic and try to get even lower.
There were some cool stuff in the stall. Everything from watches to ties to knock off sports attire. In fact, most of the stuff is a knock off but it was fun to see stuff that people sold. Jordan bought a really nice black and red striped tie for about 4 USD and I bought a bright neon green bowtie for about 3 USD.
After the market, we caught a subway back on our own. We then packed our stuff to get ready for leaving tomorrow. Jordan went to sleep and I stayed up to work on my computer. A small group of six of us stay up talking later in the night. One of my favorite people there was Adam. He is from Salisbury, England and actually knew Elder Taylor whom I trained on my mission. Another great guy that we were talking to was William. He was kind of forced to be up because of his crying son. The guy was brave enough to come here with his wife and two small toddlers. About 3 am we all made it asleep.