Lion Dancing and a Big Buddha

We sleep until 0730! I could not believe it when we woke up and the sun was peeking under the shade. Once we pulled ourselves together, we headed down to the buffet as Gill needed some more dim sum. We had roughly the same thing as the day before, but I switched up the order, having my dim sum last, there were some different ones this morning including a whole wheat vegetable one that was really delicious.  

While we were eating, we watched the big boss walk around and give all of the staff their New Years money envelopes; everyone looked happy.

Before noon, we went down to the lobby and found a seat. Then the eye dotting ceremony and lion dance was started to kick off the new year. The eye dotting ceremony is just someone wiping the eyes of the lion to 'light' them up. Then the lion dance started. Two tiny guys worked together to move that lion around the room and onto these tiny little pillars. They were fantastic!

Our plan for the day was to go out to Lateau Island, which is the same island that the airport is on. We headed toward the subway and noted that there were lots of people set up, we assume waiting for the fireworks the next night. The walking tunnels were filled with big groups sitting on cardboard playing games and eating.

The metro was easy as it was a different line that went from our location to the island, straight shot with no changes. When we got there we walked over to the cable car, which had this unbelievable line - like unbelievable. Gill had very smartly thought to ask the concierge for tickets and we purchased them at the hotel, this put us in a much shorter line, but it still took us over an hour to get into our cable car and then travel the 3 miles to the top of the mountain.

The line was filled with really horrible pushy people. The stop before the cable car stop was for Hong Kong Disneyland and Gill wondered if perhaps these were mainland Chinese come over for a holiday over the new year. Not really sure what the difference, but these were not the people that we have been interacting with for the last couple of days.  

For example, we finally get into our crystal bottom (glass) cable car so you can watch down as well as out and the family of four that was across from us immediately threw down a plastic bag filled with crap into the middle of the car and their fat little boy proceeded to eat the Chinese equivalent of Twinkies while throwing the wrappers on the ground. FYI: the box was empty when we stopped and 'mom' tucked the empty box between the seat instead of putting it in the trash. The old couple next to us shouted at me in Chinese the whole way and took dozens of pictures of us - mostly Gill because I kept putting my hand up.

All that said, the ride was spectacular. The cable car went from mountain to mountain - over the water and way way up into the air. Even with our horrible companions, I could not tell you how long it took us because I was completely mesmerized.

Once at the top we had to navigate a bunch of crowds and then head to the largest seated Buddha. There were people trying to worship, but it was mostly people taking very staged photographs. It was beautiful and the surrounding landscape was breathtaking.

We then walked the wisdom trail, which went through the forest a bit and then lead to this path lined with halved trees, placed in the shape of infinity. Each tree segment had lettering on it, which formed a Chinese poem about emptiness. The idea was that you walked along contemplating being empty. It was pretty cool, but again a bit overrun with morons.

Our final stop here was Po Lin monastery. This was a pretty big place where people mostly seemed to have come to eat at the vegetarian cafeteria, which seemed very complicated because you had to stand in line to get a ticket and then stand in line to get a table and then stand in line to get your food. We didn't do any of this, but we did enjoy these enormous incense sticks - like person sized, which were being lit in a bonfire creating big clouds of smoke.

We retraced our steps and the ride was a little better, and it seemed a bit quicker on the way down. We had some trouble at the metro stop because the machines were really fussy. Only one took bills - we didn't have enough change. The one that took bills, wouldn't take a 50, even though our fare was 46. Once we got change for the 50 and waited in line to use the one machine that took bills, we found out it would only take one 20 at a time. But never fear, we finally figured it out.

For dinner, we had left it with the concierge and told her roughly what we wanted and she had made us reservations at a place about 5 minutes away. Gill almost navigated us though several buildings, but in the end, we went down to the street. The restaurant was huge, and the internet said it would seat 300 people. Pretty much all the tables were filled with 3 generations and mostly groups over 8. We were given the regular menu, but everyone else had a yellow piece of paper and this caused lots of discussion at the other tables.  

We had a great guy help us, and he managed to sort out our order, which was suckling pig, spicy shrimp, braised greens with garlic, and a noodle cake with a meat sauce. We finished this amazing meal with custard dim sum, and the custard was sweet and runny inside - delicious! Watching the families was fun; there was a really big group that clapped and oohed and aahed in unison every time a course came.

We didn't even try to make it through the buildings and instead headed out into the streets and made our way home.