Hong Kong pt2
Well I have now explored more of the main areas of note around Hong Kong and the surrounding areas. The public transit system here is flawless as far as I can tell. Cean, safe, fast and not expensive. I have used buses, trains, a ferry and a cable car all paid for with the one transit card you buy. It’s so easy, more cities should adopt such a system. Though why they call it the octopus card is beyond me, must be where London got the Oyster idea from?
Lantau Island is by far the largest island in the HK SAR, connected by a bridge to the mainland. I took a cable car over the hills to the ‘big buddha’, the largest outdoor buddha in the world. There’s a couple temples in the quite remote area too, a big contrast to the densely populated and hectic Hong Kong Island.
Went back to Soho at night, stumbled onto a Belgian pub and had a beer. Then onto a Chinese place for dinner. I seem to be eating a lot of noodles here, they’re everywhere! What’s amazing to me in the Soho district is the % of Westerners to Asian people, there’s more Westerners here wining and dining. Now once you get off the island and go to Kowloon that number reverses itself dramatically…
Today after a late noodle soup breakfast, I went farther North on the mainland to the New Territories to see the 10,000 buddha monastery. It’s a good walk up to get to, 400+ stairs and the pathway is lined with golden buddhas most of the way up as it winds by jungle.
Though the jungle was fenced off unfortunately. The temple is unique simply for the vast amount of buddhas in and around it…
I spent the rest of the afternoon on the South side of Hong Kong Island at Stanley walking around the bay and market. After buying a couple things there I caught the bus back across the island, which took twice as long as getting down there due to rush hour traffic. I didn’t care though, I love riding on the top deck of double decker buses. The Los Angeles Philharmonic was in town today and tickets were apparently in such demand that after the shows sold out they decided to broadcast a live relay of the concert outside the concert hall in the piazza overlooking the harbour for free! So I sat outside in the perfect evening weatherwise for it and heard Stravinsky’s “Firebird” which was very good while enjoying the view of HK island. The light show of the skyline was during the concert too, pretty cool evening.
I’m really enjoying Hong Kong, tomorrow I’m taking a ferry to Macau for the day.
On a funny note, while I was waiting for my order of noodles to be brought this evening after the concert the employees (age 17ish I’d guess) of the restaurant were cleaning up etc since it was about closing time. They were all speaking Cantonese, but I knew exactly what was going on between the manager and a couple employees. Cracked me up no end. Like watching a Hong Kong version of my old job. Nice to see the same stuff goes on in that particular working environment in other parts of the world…
Tags: Hong Kong, Travel
Adam
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