Peter and I headed out early this morning
after we decided to get away from all the city and explore some of China's natural beauty. We picked up some breakfast at a local mall after catching the HSBC shuttle to the train station. Unfortunately the weather didn't agree with our plan and after taking 3 trains and a bus Peter and I got to Pat Sin Range to find a nice 2.5 hour hiking trail to Bride's Pool where there are great hills and waterfalls. We were dropped off by the bus
but in the time it took us to take the trains and bus the rain really started falling. I was fine with hiking in the rain but as we were looking at the map at the station the lightning was really severe and close. As soon as you saw the light flash the thunder followed directly after. As much as I wanted to see the trails and get in a good hike we opted to just grab the next bus out. I was pretty bummed but I really didn't want to get struck by lightning today so we had to go with plan B. We took the bus back to the train station and took that to Sha Tin where we walked through the rain down a couple streets to find 10,000 Buddhas Monestary.
The monestary is on top of a hill and in order to get there you have to climb 431 steps (and several incline areas without stairs) that is lined with 100s of full size gold colored statues of Buddha followers. At the top (finally) there is a large room, similar idea and size to the other monasteries we experienced,
that had 29 shelves from top to bottom and extended the complete length of each of the three walls. On these shelves there were thousands of Buddha statues, in actuality there are over 12,800 buddhas altogether. It was quite the sight to see and a little confusing, I suppose one statue isn't enough. We walked around the area a little bit but there
wasn't too much more to see there and then we headed back down the stairs in the rain. I am spoiled by Florida storms so it is hard for me to remember that in some places when it rains, it rains all day. I am use to having a storm come and pass in less than 20 minutes and not hang out all day. We made our way back towards the train station but decided to check out a mall connected to it. In Hong Kong we have found that everywhere you turn there is a mall. Just about every train station leads to a mall and then if you walk just down the road from a mall you find another mall. It's not like in the states where there is one mall for every 4-5 cities, in Hong Kong it is more like there are 4-5 malls for every city no matter how big or small the city is. Also, the malls are huge. This particular mall was 8 stories tall and had a pretty good footprint. We went in several stores and then Peter found a couple things he needed at an electronic store. Once we left that
mall we took all the trains needed to get back to Central where we were going to get some lunch at (you guessed it) the mall. The malls here all have grocery stores in them and they sell weird things we aren't use to like any kind of fish imaginable, animal intestines of various kinds, and they have whole ducks and cow legs hanging about. We weren't going for any of that but rather to prepared food counter where Peter got a chicken wrap and I got a tray of sushi. We took our lunch out to one of the nearby raised pedestrian walkways and enjoyed eating in a little less of a crowded space.
After we filled up we decided to try and catch a boat in the harbor but the boat to the island we wanted to go to had just left and there wouldn't be another one for 40 minutes or so. We didn't want to wait around in the rain any longer so we decided to just head back to the flat. We grabbed a bus back and then played with the babies for quite a while. We each took a shower and then Peter and I watched a little bit of a show on my iPad while Vandita and Anupam went to a doctor's appointment for her foot. The girls were good while Vandita and Anupam were gone and eventually they both fell asleep. A little later we had some yummy Indian food for dinner and followed it by some ice cream for dessert. We had some good conversation and then watched a little of the Science Channel before retiring to our rooms.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home