Day Four:
Well, you all know the plan for today - I was gonna go to Macau - I got up in the morning, got dressed in my Macau best and made my way to the ferry terminal - only to discover that ferry tickets were twice what I was expecting to pay (Note to Lonely Planet - return fare prices would be nice - I don't think many of your readers are planning to go to Macau AND NEVER COME BACK!)...... So yes. Basically, it was gonna cost me something like HK$300 (50 Australian buck) just to get there and back - So I decided to leave Macau until a later date, when I know how much money I have, and whether I want to lay down 50 bucks for a boat ride. So I went and chilled out on Kowloon Park while I got my thoughts together.
The revised plan was to use today to do the New Territories, the northern part of Hong Kong which is a combination of forest and wierd, highrise 'New Towns'. Now, I call these New Towns wierd 'cos they're total high rise - forests of 30-40 story apartment blocks - but they're really Hong Kong's version of suburbs - they don't feel like cities, but they're built like cities.
Anyway, just outside of one of these New Towns, Sha Tin, there's a place called the Ten Thousand Buddahs monastery. So I'm walking up to this monastery, when I see these Golden statues - and I keep walking ,and there's more and more and more of them! hundreds of them, lining the path right from the bottom of the hill up to the monastery - My guide book tells me that they're boddhisatva - kinda like buddhist saints (hope I don't get any angry mail from buddhists for mis-representing their religion :p), but some of them are pretty whacky looking - I've got some cool pictures of the most interesting ones. Anyway, on reaching the top, I went into the main pavilion and sure enough, thousands and thousands of buddahs (and not all the same either, they're mostly the same size, but in subtly different poses) - Apparently the grand total is in fact 12,800 buddahs - a figure which I'm not about to contest - and the effect is amazing. Additionally, there's the body of a prominent buddhist, embalmed and encased in gold - fairly freaky thinking of the fact that there's a dead guy inside that statue over there. Again, no picture from inside the pavilion - people were gettin' their prayer on, and I didn't want to mess with that.
Coming back down from the 12,800 buddahs, I decided to take a side-trip to Sai Kung - and what an excellent detour it was! a 45 minute bus trip brought me to this seaside fishing/tourism town (but not the homogenised, overexposed, boring type of tourism - more like a seaside escape destination). And boy is it a cool place - all of the seafood (I almost wrote 'fish', but that would be ignoring the prawns, lobsters, shellfish, stingrays (yes, stingrays) and sea creatures I'd never seen in my life) is so fresh - these little boats, tubs full of water and live sea creatures, sit off the side of the dock and literally sell it right out of the boat - all of the restaurants are also seafood shops, and they keep rows and rows of tubs of live animals out front for you to see. This is seafood central. Which attracts those now familiar birds of prey, which I had a great time photographing. So, after wandering along the docks of Sai Kung for a while, I headed back by bus and then train to the big city.
All in all, I'm not disappointed I missed out on Macau for today - I had a great time getting away from the hustle and bustle for the day.
Alright, I'm finally up to date!
And I just noticed that really, these posts are obscenely long - I'm really just spewing things out from my head, trying to get everything down, and not really checking or editing at all - I wanna get as many of my thoughts down as possible (for when I'm can't remember them anymore, so, like, 2 days from now :p), but I hope that these are coming out somewhat legible.
Well, you all know the plan for today - I was gonna go to Macau - I got up in the morning, got dressed in my Macau best and made my way to the ferry terminal - only to discover that ferry tickets were twice what I was expecting to pay (Note to Lonely Planet - return fare prices would be nice - I don't think many of your readers are planning to go to Macau AND NEVER COME BACK!)...... So yes. Basically, it was gonna cost me something like HK$300 (50 Australian buck) just to get there and back - So I decided to leave Macau until a later date, when I know how much money I have, and whether I want to lay down 50 bucks for a boat ride. So I went and chilled out on Kowloon Park while I got my thoughts together.
The revised plan was to use today to do the New Territories, the northern part of Hong Kong which is a combination of forest and wierd, highrise 'New Towns'. Now, I call these New Towns wierd 'cos they're total high rise - forests of 30-40 story apartment blocks - but they're really Hong Kong's version of suburbs - they don't feel like cities, but they're built like cities.
Anyway, just outside of one of these New Towns, Sha Tin, there's a place called the Ten Thousand Buddahs monastery. So I'm walking up to this monastery, when I see these Golden statues - and I keep walking ,and there's more and more and more of them! hundreds of them, lining the path right from the bottom of the hill up to the monastery - My guide book tells me that they're boddhisatva - kinda like buddhist saints (hope I don't get any angry mail from buddhists for mis-representing their religion :p), but some of them are pretty whacky looking - I've got some cool pictures of the most interesting ones. Anyway, on reaching the top, I went into the main pavilion and sure enough, thousands and thousands of buddahs (and not all the same either, they're mostly the same size, but in subtly different poses) - Apparently the grand total is in fact 12,800 buddahs - a figure which I'm not about to contest - and the effect is amazing. Additionally, there's the body of a prominent buddhist, embalmed and encased in gold - fairly freaky thinking of the fact that there's a dead guy inside that statue over there. Again, no picture from inside the pavilion - people were gettin' their prayer on, and I didn't want to mess with that.
Coming back down from the 12,800 buddahs, I decided to take a side-trip to Sai Kung - and what an excellent detour it was! a 45 minute bus trip brought me to this seaside fishing/tourism town (but not the homogenised, overexposed, boring type of tourism - more like a seaside escape destination). And boy is it a cool place - all of the seafood (I almost wrote 'fish', but that would be ignoring the prawns, lobsters, shellfish, stingrays (yes, stingrays) and sea creatures I'd never seen in my life) is so fresh - these little boats, tubs full of water and live sea creatures, sit off the side of the dock and literally sell it right out of the boat - all of the restaurants are also seafood shops, and they keep rows and rows of tubs of live animals out front for you to see. This is seafood central. Which attracts those now familiar birds of prey, which I had a great time photographing. So, after wandering along the docks of Sai Kung for a while, I headed back by bus and then train to the big city.
All in all, I'm not disappointed I missed out on Macau for today - I had a great time getting away from the hustle and bustle for the day.
Alright, I'm finally up to date!
And I just noticed that really, these posts are obscenely long - I'm really just spewing things out from my head, trying to get everything down, and not really checking or editing at all - I wanna get as many of my thoughts down as possible (for when I'm can't remember them anymore, so, like, 2 days from now :p), but I hope that these are coming out somewhat legible.
posted by Jono Russell at 3:39 AM
4 Comments:
Hello my dearest!
HA! first comment- the fact that i am home on my puter at 11pm on a Saturday may not be something to brag about but anyways! OMG Hong Kong sounds amazing and i am debilitatingly jealous. And you're doing so much every day! i think the temples would be just MINDBLOWING...and i hope you do get a chance to go to Macau it would be cool- are there Macau's there? chillin with the comorants? he he he. Anyways bye for now, xo Hayley
PS: You can't spell weird....wierd oh god now im confused they all look wrong. Im pretty sure it's weird...i before e except after c does not apply in this circumstance :P
Hi Jonthan,
Please don't shorten your posts we like them just the way they are - fresh and interesting and really well-written. You make us feel like we are there (or at least you're making everyone in your family wish they were!!). The side trip to the fishing village sounds amaaazing - but you left out a detail - did you eat any of it!!
What a fantastic trip you're having - well worth all the planning and working behind the Safeway seafood counter!!
Missing you lots, love you lots
Mum
haha, actually, I didn't eat any seafood - but I did have my first sit-down meal last night! It's opened up a whole new range of eating options, I'm glad to say!
I agree! the long posts are great! you have blogging talent! (whatver that is...) and sadly its not just your family who wants to be there, we're all insanely jealous and getting itchy feet.. and we blame YOU! no, it sounds fantastic! I found Vietnam a bit confronting.. but i could definitely handle the shopping in Hong Kong and its just such an amazing culture! keep blogging! :)
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