Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Hong Kong - Day 10


We tried to sleep as much as we could on the plane. It was a flight of about 4 hours. We arrived in Hong Kong in the morning this time, rather than the evening, so no sleeping in the airport. We had accomplished a lot on our first day in Hong Kong so this day we wanted to take it nice and easy. We were able to use the lockers this time around and then dropped of our stuff and headed out. Instead of going straight to the city we took a bus to the Big Buddha. The bus ride was not too long and before we knew it we were at the cable car station to go to the Big Buddha. The cable car extended over the highway, across a bay and then up and over mountains. It was a long ride, maybe about 45 minutes or so. As we got to the area of the Big Buddha we noticed a small village built up brand new. The village was a sort of Disney downtown. Latanya and I called it Buddha Land. There were multiple souvenir shops and little restaurants.

It was a nice walk towards the Big Buddha. Even from the cable car we could see the Big Buddha, the statue certainly lived up to the name. We walked to the base and took quite a few pictures. It was really picturesque with the surrounding mountains so green and lush. Latanya was pretty tired at this point so she sat down and I took a small trail and walked around for a bit. It was overcast at this point with some sprinkles of rain. After a little while we went back to the cable car and made the decent down to the bottom and then eventually to the city.

Once back in the city we made our way to a temple and checked out a really nice park. The heat was definitely getting to us now. It was midday at this point and maybe the heat was not the problem but the humidity sure was. It was ridiculous. By now the clouds had left and the sun was pounding on us. The park was really nice even in those weather conditions. Every piece of shrub, plant, tree, building or anything else for that matter was built or shaped with a purpose. You know to keep the feng shui of the place. It was all really impressive to know that every blade of grass was clipped a certain way to make it all come together.

After the park we headed to the harbor. We walked around the harbor front where they had the Chinese Hollywood stars. Just like Hollywood they had stars along the sidewalk. We made sure to find the best ones, like Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee. Most of the other ones we had no idea who they were. We also got the end of the walk and found the Bruce Lee statue which was really cool. Boy was it a tourist attraction. After that we walked around the surrounding neighborhoods and took in the city. We really liked Hong Kong. It was so inviting and foreigner friendly.


We then sat in a coffee shop for a bit waiting for the evening to come. We were anticipating the downtown light show that was going to happen in about a half hour. The premise of the light show is for the downtown skyline to light up and produce lasers that go along to music. Because we were on the other side of the harbor we had the best view. So when the light show began we were taken back. Taken back in the sense that this was it. Though it looked like it was hard work producing the show it was sure a let down. The lasers were not on every building and we felt that the sequences were a little lame. But we set out to see it and we accomplished that. Just before the show ended we sneaked out and headed for the airport.

Getting to and from the airport at this point was second nature to us now. We then picked our bags up from the lockers, so much cheaper than the left luggage. We grabbed I bite to eat and then caught our flight back to Korea. We knew it wasn't going to be to long until we were back on another vacation. Next on our list was back to China for one last Chinese experience.

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