Big Buddha:

Friday was a nice day. So I took a nice boat ride across to Lantau Island, 15KM away from Hong Kong Island by ferry. On Lantau there are some beaches, which I generously spared the locals and tourists by avoiding, a few prisons, and a giant Buddha on top of a big hill.

The Buddha at Ngong Ping looks like this.

If you pay HK$60 (US$8?) you get a vegetarian meal in the monastery and admission to the Big Buddha Museum. The flags along the pathways are in preparation for the Buddha's birthday celebrations later this month. It was very windy and they looked great, so vivid, and so noisy, snapping in the wind.

The view down to the monastery.

You can't really see the sea from the mountain as it's hidden in the haze. That's a reservoir that's perched above the Shek Pik prison to the bottom right.

The meal was terrible. Is it churlish to not like the monk food? Actually I hardly saw any monks there at all. I did see a ton of official monastery souvenier stands selling bundles of incense for offerings, and all manner of giant buddha tat - bookmarks, buddha fridge-magnets, etc. etc.... I always find that sort of hawking off-putting at anywhere that's supposed to be religious. I know it probably pays for the upkeep but.....

The Curse of the Golden Flower.

Today's adolescent photo: Out the back of the kitchens the turtles were at it. It was like Sodom and Gomorrah in that cage....this is what happens when they work out they're not going to be eaten because the monks are vegetarian; they party like Wyckyd Sceptyr....

And the VIP Hospitality left something to be desired. Then again, it was in keeping with the food....

Still, the best was yet to come. I was on top of a windy mountain. I didn't fancy getting a bus back to the ferry and then another hour on the boat so I decided to take the new 5.7Km cable-car back down the other side towards HK Airport and the subway station.

I tried to get a car to myself but got lumped in with a miserable German girl. We tried not to talk to each other but finally gave in when the cars stopped for 10 minutes and we were swinging (quite literally) in the wind from side to side. Imminent death didn't pep her up either. I mean, it's bad enough entertaining thoughts of your own demise never mind having to share those moments with some random sourpuss. Oh well, she was probably thinking something similar about me.

When we got going again and we crested a hill the view was this. It's hard to explain how breathtaking it was. The HUGE Hong Kong Chek Lap Kok airport looks like a toy below.

And then there was the water jump....

This photo is slightly tilted to the right, that's the angle the wind was blowing the car at....

But the best thing is that the cable car connects to the subway line and I was back in my hotel 45 minutes later where the evil jet-lag caught up with me and sent me to sleep until 9:30PM.