Hong Kong: Lantau

Jousan! 

We took off for Hong Kong Monday the 14th, and arrived Tuesday at midnight. As you can see, the whole area of Hong Kong is huge! We stayed in an apartment in Tsing Yi, which you can see right in the middle of the map. 

view from the 27th floor in Tsing Yi 

We fell right asleep & felt basically no jet lag the whole trip. We woke up and fell asleep earlier than we would have in the states, I may have woken up at six on my own a few times, but they also don't have daylight savings, so it was lighter earlier in the morning. Wednesday was our first fun day, and we did some things on the Lantau island.

As I mentioned, umbrellas were one of our very first purchases, because it was raining when we left that morning. We took a long, winding bus ride up to the Tian Tan Big Buddha. However, the rain wasn't really a downer, and it was nice to not be so crowded. We weren't the only people up there, but it was nice. 

warrior for the year of the rabbit

warrior for year of the dragon

The Big Buddha! 
(which was disappointingly  only made a few years back as a tourist draw!)

At the top!

Po Lin Monastery

The Wishing Tree in the Ngong Ping Village. 
Folklore says any wish made under the tree will come true. 

Lunch! Delicious! 

Eventually the rain stopped, so we were able to take the Ngong Ping 360, a cable car, 

for the ride down, which was a much more pleasant ride!

so excited for the Ngong Ping 360! 
(yes, that's Buddha in the background!)

Ngong Ping 360

view from the cable car

After the cable car we took another bus ride over to the Tai O  fishing village.  They have stilt houses built right in the water & a little market with fresh fish, dried fish, ready to cook fish . . . as well as other treats and souvenirs. It was fun to walk around. There was also an old police station up from the village that they are renovating into a hotel, so we went up to see what that looked like. 

British Police Station being turned into a hotel 

the diagonal lift!

boats

stilt houses

Pink Dolphins!!!

Pink Dolphins are only found two places in the world, the Amazon and Hong Kong. 

The ones in Hong Kong are pink because of over developed blood vessels. They're really shy because the boats' propellers can hurt them, so they're really hard to spot. They barely come out of the water for air, not at all like the friendly, performing dolphins the media has trained us to expect, so I didn't see them at all the first time we went on the boat. The second time we went out, after walking around the village for a while, we saw the above momma dolphin and calf multiple times as they swam along side our ship, coming up for air every so often. It was so cool to see them! Easily the highlight of our day on Lantau!