What up, Tian Tan Buddha?

Tuesday morning, we woke up in Macau and took a taxi to the ferry terminal (riding behind a noodle delivery bike) to cross our first of 3 borders of the day! After a sad ham sandwich breakfast in the terminal, we boarded our ferry. The waters were choppy once again, and word that a ferry had sunk off one of the nearby islands the night before made our ride seem even more thrilling!

The ferry terminal back in Hong Kong.

We proceeded directly to our next ferry to Mui Wo on Lantau Island (about an hour's ride), which happily accepted our octopus transportation cards. The ride to Lantau was much smoother, and once we arrived he hopped on a bus to Ngong Ping Village to see the Tian Tan Buddha: the Big Buddha!

The bus ride was about another hour long (it was beginning to feel like we'd spent a lonnnng time traveling that day!) and let us off at the main gate of the park where the Buddha and the Po Lin Monastery are located.

You don't get to visit a temple or monument in Asia without first climbing up a bunch of stairs, and this place was no exception. Big Buddha is located 240 steps up.

Tourists!

This Buddha was the largest sitting Buddha in the world until a few years ago. It's made out of bronze and weighs 250 tons. This Buddha is pretty much the center of Buddhism in Hong Kong. I have to tell you, up close, it looks really, really big and very, very cool.

Buddha is surrounded by 6 other statues, each one carrying an offer for the Buddha. The view from the top is quite nice: the park is surrounded by lush, green mountains and you can even see an attractive beach below, as well.

After walking back down the stairs, we shopped for some souvenirs, and then headed to the grounds of the Po Lin Monastery. Inside, there were monks praying in a room full of golden statues, rich carvings and offerings of food. At least they were trying to pray... they were constantly stopping to tell nosy tourists to stop taking photos.

Incense outside of the temple.

Located in an area just before where our bus had let us off earlier was the small Ngong Ping Village area, not really a "village", but a small strip of touristy shops and restaurants leading to the cable car terminal. One of the touristy shops was Chopstick Gallery... probably a hot seller.

We decided to buy tickets for the cable car and to take that back down instead of the bus we'd rode up. After buying our tickets for the cable car, we were passed by a random parade of flamenco dancers.

Upon reaching the cable car line, we immediately regretted buying tickets. There was so many people. We should have checked the situation out first! We joined the end of a long, winding line quite a bit past a sign that said "one hour wait from this point". So, I went to get coffees for us to drink in the line.

As promised, we waited about an hour to get into our cable car. From our tiny car we waved goodbye to Buddha.

...and headed straight down. This cable car is a surprisingly long ride. I'd say it takes about half an hour? And you're really, really high up for most of it.. dangling helplessly over pointy mountain tops or water as the car rocks and shakes around. There were times when it sped up really fast and it felt like we were going to shoot right off of the line. I hadn't expected a thrill ride!

Safe at the bottom, we were let off at a mall that had a subway station nearby. We got some dinner of NOT baby pigeon, and headed back to the ferry terminal where we crossed our last border of the day by sailing back home into China. It's kind of weird to think of China as "home sweet home", but home is where your stuff is, and we were happy to see our stuff again after 5 days away.