Adventures in Hong Kong: Take 3

 

The absolute best part of our Hong Kong Adventure was the 3rd full day of our trip, which was the day we toured Lantau Island.  Wyatt probably had more fun at Disneyland, but MOM loved this tour!

Our tour didn't start until 1 p.m., so we started off our morning by visiting Kowloon Park, which is a beautiful, amazing park that I do not have a single picture of.  Why? Because my daughter ate my camera.  Seriously.... I was trying to entertain her at Disneyland during a show and I let her chew on my camera, which seemed to have a negative effect on its operational ability. 

We walked through a beautiful maze made of bushes, checked out a reflection pool, watched the geese/ducks/pond animals play, watched a whole bunch of random Chinese people doing their Fung Sheu meditation moves, strolled through lush gardens, and then the music reigned down from above and the playground of all playgrounds lay before us. Wyatt took off at a dead sprint and played for a solid hour.  Livy had a great time too, but there was a large group of Hong Kong-ers there who apparently thought we were Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman (you know, back in the day) out at the park with our kids, because at every turn there were cameras stuck in my kids' faces.  The kids could have played longer, but after an hour of this (well, 3 days, really) I grew very tired and GROUCHY because A) I had previously dropped my Starbucks drink and it had spilled all over the ground, and B) I was tired of people sticking cameras in my kids' faces!!!  They were not at all polite about it... I mean literally sticking the camera in our faces and the flash going off.  I got fed up and we left.

Luckily we had naptime for Livy and lunchtime and more Starbucks for me and the day improved greatly.  We left for our tour at 1 p.m.

First we rode this AMAZING gondola ride for 25-minutes suspended in mid-air by only a cable car and some cable wiring.  I have no idea how high up we were but it was pretty freakin' high... we traveled over the river and through the woods (well, mountains) and it was, quite possibly, the coolest thing I have done in my whole. entire. life.

When we were almost to Lantau Island, I looked over and said, "Holy cow, what is THAT?" Then a split second later, "Wait - that's the Big Buddha!!  Holy cow - that is a BIG Buddha!"  You could see him off in the distance just sitting there meditating. 

When we got out of the cable car, we jumped out and met our tour guide, Queendy.  We were the only people on the tour that day, so we got our own private little tour.  We walked through this cute little village that I would have loved to spend more time in, but instead we went right to the Big Buddha.  Here are some pics of us enjoying His Bigness....we walked all around in it and up to the top and got the whole history lesson.

 
The Big Buddha - 83 Meters tall - Tommy says that is like 24 stories tall!

There are 3 smaller statues with their "offerings" to the Buddha.  You can see me holding Olivia to get an idea of how "small" they are.

 

Next we went to the Pau Lin Monestary, which is an actual practicing monestary with monks and everything. 

 We walked through the monestary and heard them chanting, sat down and ate a yummy little snack there, and walked through the gardens. I had just read Eat, Pray, Love which was very fortunate because it helped me understand some of what the tour guide was actually saying.

Loved this; thought it was beautiful and wished I could take it home with me for "yard art"!

Everything was decorated very intricately.  The detail was absolutely amazing! 

Last but not least, we headed to Tai O Fishing Village, the last remaining fishing village in Hong Kong.  It was AWESOME!  I just love how simple things are in this tiny little village. 

I just love the little markets. We sampled and bought some tasty almond cookies and our tour guide told us about the various types of crazy food they have there while we strolled through the streets.

The entire village is built in/along the water!

 The houses on stilts built over the water were amazing to me.  Queendy told us that some of the sons and daughters who had left the village for the city had brought back flat screen tv's for their families!  This seemed totally crazy to me...to live in this house with a flat screen tv? So funny.

I just love these beautiful shots of the village and water with their little boats.  I can't wait to frame some of them and put them up in the house!

The troops were getting restless by this time so after a VERY windy bus ride, we boarded the ferry that would take us back to Hong Kong island.  Probably a better option would have been for us to ride the Gondola back though, because as most of you know I get sea sick very easily.  I was ok for about 15 minutes but the last 15 minutes.... not so much.  I barely made it to the port but we had yet another problem in that we needed to take a second ferry to Kowloon, which I was not about to do.  The Taxis didn't seem to understand what we wanted and so we decided to find the subway.  We did, but it was rush hour, and we were starving, and we had starving, tired, cranky kids, but an hour later we made it back to our hotel!

Good stuff.  Good times. Good memories!

Except... that I started to pack and realized that we were missing something.... something very important that could only have been left on the ferry or the subway.  And with that, I'll leave you to wonder what it was, and save that tale for my next post!