Last weekend I pretty much wasted all of Saturday laying in bed because, once again, I drank too much on friday. Needless to say that won't be happening again on this visit. In fact I haven't even had a beer (which is typically as cheap as water here) since then.
I made up for my wasted Saturday by filling Sunday with activity. First I headed down to Tsim Shai Tsui (TST) to see why my new custom shirt hadn't been delivered. Thankfully I did because it was too small. So I had them remake it along with a couple more (only $40 each). They were delivered on Tuesday and they are very well done. I actually have to go back because 2 of them still seem a little tight around my shoulders to me. While the tailors ability to measure seems to be lacking his ability to make a nice shirt is not.
After leaving the tailors I jumped on the MTR (train/subway) and rode out to Lantau Island to visit the "Big Buddha." The Buddha stop is actually the last on the line. Once there you have to take a bus for about 20 minutes, over a mountain, to reach the Buddha. The mountain road was very narrow at times and our bus nearly got into two head on collisions on the way down the backside with other buses that were coming up. The turns were all narrow and blind so our driver had to be quick on his break then backup the mountain a little to let the other bus get past. It was crazy. However, we all survived and arrived at the Big Buddha. And it is BIG.
Making the Buddha seem even more impressive is the fact that he sits on the top of a hill that you have to climb to get close. There are 250 stairs (plus 22 we couldn't climb) to reach the Buddha. While most of the people there, such as myself, just walked up the stairs there were others who stopped on each step, kneeled, and did a little hand flipping motion. Every step! The guy I saw doing it looked pretty worn out by the time he reached the top.
The Buddha is actually semi-surrounded by 6 smaller bronze statues who look to be offering him gifts. After I walked around there a little I headed inside the base of the statue where there is a small, unimpressive museum. However, you can, and I did, buy a vegetarian meal ticket which you can use to enter a special part of the museum and see a "RELIC". The relic is some kind of bone or rock (it's white) that supposedly was left behind when the Buddha entered some kind of nirvana (it started with an S.). The relic was very, very small and was recessed back a ways from where we could stand - plus it was embedded in some kind of container where it rested in a little bowl. Basically all we could see was the alter that held the relic. I'm not even certain a relic was there.
Finally I left the Buddha and walked down to the main temple area and watched some Monks do some praying and got smoked out by some insane quantities of incense. I was told not to take photos of the Monks and I couldn't take photos in the museum or of the Relic. There seems to be a real aversion to photography at all of the big tourist places. This has to drive the local tourists crazy because they all have amazing camera's that they are basically denied the ability to use. I don't understand it.
I never did use my vegetarian meal ticket to actually get food; I just bought it so I would be allowed to see the Relic - I'm a sucker. Finally I hopped on a bus and rode back to the MTR station (it was much less eventful on the way back) and started the long ride back to Hong Kong. Except I decided to get off at Sunny Bay and switch MTR lines from the Tian Tan line to the Disney Express line. That's right, I went to DisneyLand Hong Kong.
If you have been to a Disney before (California or Florida for instance) you have seen all that Disney Hong Kong has to offer and then some. It is very small. The entire park is about the same size as main street at either of the other two. It was very, very small. However, at the same time, it was kind of neat. They have a Main Street that looks just like a mini-main street Disney World. They have a very scaled down facade of Cinderella's castle and they have a tomorrow-land and an adventure-land. Inside adventure land they had a "pirate land" too which seems to be a capitalization on the recent Johnny Depp "Pirates of the Caribbean" franchise.
I spent a little time in each part of the park. I bought the girls some Hong Kong "anniversary" pins (1st and 2nd anniversary of the park). Then I rode space mountain which, just like the rest of the park, seemed a little smaller and less impressive than it's US counterparts. Finally I went and watched a live Lion King show over in adventure-land. The show was actually pretty well done and was, surprisingly mostly in English. There were two guys who played odd little "monkey" type characters that would occasionally interject some Chinese (I would suspect Cantonese since it is in Hong Kong but I'm not certain). There were two guys who spun flaming batons which seemed to really impress most of the crowd and the singing by the main characters was pretty good. I thought the stage itself was the most impressive as it incorporated these big animal things that moved all over the place plus the stage changed height a few times during the course of the show.
Finally, I left and headed back to my hotel room for some sleep. It was a long day and I was pretty tired. I took a ton of photos (many of which are linked throughout this post) plus I have a bunch more I didn't put up on the web.
This weekend I plan on going to Macau and the worlds largest Casino. My original plan was to go to Beijing but there are no flights returning to Hong Kong on Sunday so it made my choice of weekend activities pretty easy. So to Macau I go! I'll try some Blackjack and keep the legend of "mobile gambling" alive.