Something not mentioned here yet is that almost as soon as I landed on Hong Kong concrete I matched on a dating app with Arum, a South African lady working in Hong Kong. At some point, I mentioned that I wanted to go see the Big Buddha and invited her to join me. Arum, foolishly, accepted this offer and on Wednesday we met up and travelled together for the day. This involved a ferry across Victoria Harbour and another water body not important enough to be labeled on Google Maps, and then a long hilly bus ride to the base of the monastery grounds.
We had an impromptu morning tea involving sour gummies and Pocari Sweat in a nearby garden currently ignored by the rest of the tourist hordes
The path towards the steps leading to the Big Buddha is guarded by statues of the twelve heavenly generals of East Asian Buddhism, which also align/represent the Chinese zodiac and certain times of day.
Two hundred and sixty steps lead up the hill to the Big Buddha, to serve as time for contemplation. while Arum and I used the landings between the steps as rest breaks, as well as the occasional photo.
The view from the statue itself were fairly epic.
The Big Buddha was surrounded by six smaller statues, “The offerings of the six Divas” each an impressive work themselves.
The Big Buddha itself is 34 metres tall, weighs in at 250 metric tonnes, and was created from 202 separate pieces of bronze. When casting the largest piece, the face plate, they only had forty seconds from the smelter to pour it into the mould, otherwise they would have to redo the piece. after it was cast they had to wait five days before breaking the mould and finding out if it worked or not. I doubt many of the people involved got any sleep during those five days.
In the opinion of your humble narrator, The Big Buddha is entirely deserving of the awards it has been given and is well worth the time checking out, even for an atheist like me.
However like much of Hong Kong’s sights, its mired by an unhealthy dose of consumerism. While the 711 is always a welcome sight, the addition of the high priced cookie shop and a claw game parlour seemed rather crass to me, like someone building a Maccas in the Louve.
Sadly on the bus ride back to the ferry dock, I got a bad case of motion sickness and had to get off the bus at the Interchange station at Discovery Bay. I sat, sweating and shivering against a wall, while Arum sat with me patiently and worriedly. At least one well-heeled expat asked if we needed anything while I sat, embarrassing myself, like a poorly finished monument to the folly of travelling on anything faster than a donkey.
After recovering some colour, we discovered there was a train that took us right back to Hong Kong Island, which we took, but not before watching a group of children playing in one of those water fountains, a good time being had by all.
On the train I received my one and only call on my HK Sim, from the agent I was using to get a Chinese Visa. My application had been denied, no reason given but the agent suspected it was because of my sparkly new passport being considered suspicous by the Chinese government . This flew the rest of my plans out the window, my plans were to travel overland from China, and then the train to Hanoi, and my Vietnamese visa was not valid for weeks yet, and was only good at one particular land border.
Adrian's Got The Moose 