Saving the Best for Last

Hong Kong was obviously our last destination, and I have to say, that it was probably my favorite big city that we visited the whole trip. It is a really incredible mix of east and west, a efficiently run place with perfect subways and clean sidewalks, but also a place where you can get cheap Chinese food on a plastic table late into the night.

I covered most of our first several days in Hong Kong in this post, but I just wanted to talk about our last day in Hong Kong, where we decided to go check out the Hong Kong countryside.

One of the most unique and cool things about Hong Kong is the amount of nature that surrounds the city. My first taste of this was the Bowen Rd. path on Hong Kong Island. I like to get out and do some running in every place we visit, and thus I was pleasantly surprised that the Conrad Hotel had a little laminated card in the desk that gave you directions for how to get to Bowen Rd., which they billed as one of the most popular places to run in Hong Kong. As I found out quickly the first night when Pete and I ran up there, running in Hong Kong is great for those who like hills. We ran up probably around 400 feet of elevation in a half mile to get to Bowen Rd. Once you get there however, you are rewarded with the best running paths I have ever seen. Bowen Rd. clings to the side of a steep mountain, with constant views of the Hong Kong Island skyline. There are a whole bunch of other paths and lightly used roads up on the ridge as well. On one day I ran for 1:15 and made it quite a way up the top of the ridge towards The Peak.

We also spent a nice time up at the Peak after dinner one night, taking the tram up to The Peak and walking around the paths that circle the top. Looking down on Hong Kong Island on a cool night drinking beers from a backpack has to be one of the more atmospheric ways to spend an evening.

Anyway, our travels into Hong Kong nature culminated with our trip to the "Big Buddha" (officially called the Tain Tan Buddha) high on Lantau Island, an island of similar size to Hong Kong which is a 30 minute subway ride away and also houses the airport. Lantau is pretty lightly populated, by Hong Kong standards. Most of the inside of the island is a big forested park and there are just a few population centers around the outside of the island.

We arrived at one of these centers at the end of the subway, it consisted of around ten large (probably 40 stories) and new apartment buildings around a small mall. There is a 5 mile long gondola that normally takes you up to the big Buddha in a few minutes, however, evidently a gondola fell off a few months ago during maintenance, so the gondola is out of commission. So, on to the bus we went. The problem is that there is no road directly to the Buddha, so this bus takes you all the way around the mountain on a narrow road that is under construction, for a trip of about an hour. It was easy to tell who the veteran travelers were in our group as we were all sitting in a three across seat, Nisha asleep, me relaxing and looking out the window and Pete getting aggravated trying to figure out why the bus was taking so long.

We get off the bus to a rather uncrowded parking lot and the Big Buddha looming over us on the top of a small hill rising over the ridge. You can go up the steps to the Buddha for free, but it costs 80 HKD for the combination of the museum inside the Buddha as well as a vegetarian lunch. The Buddha itself is quite nice, he is a very peaceful and calming image, with only the sky as his backdrop. The views from up on the ridge are obviously quite impressive as well.

The vegetarian lunch was actually a very good deal. The food is served in a big Chinese dining hall in the monastery below the Buddha. It is all set menu, you just grab a seat and they bring 5 big bowls of vegetarian food and rice to your table. The food is actually quite good, and the portions are huge.

To get back to the subway, I looked at some maps and it appeared that we could get there with a 1 1/2 hour downhill walk. Comparing this to the 1 hour bus ride the choice was pretty obvious. The walk was very nice, kind of strange since you are basically on a paved sidewalk out in the middle of the woods. The views of the airport and the cluster of apartment towers around the subway station was quite a contrast to the undeveloped hills.

After walking by a few small monasteries and a few random houses out in the woods we finally got to the cluster of buildings. It is very abrupt, one minute you are walking through a field, then the next your are among the towering buildings. There were actually two groups, one a little older with about 15 buildings and the newer cluster right next to the subway. These had this strange kind of perfect/imperfect ideal society thing going on. It was kind of the perfect efficient socialist development, there are no cars and just some pedestrian courtyards surrounding grocery stores and shopping in the middle of the complex. It was quite bustling and everyone there looked pretty happy, but is certainly is depressing for me to think of living in Unit 1634 of Building E of the XYZ complex. Hard to think of yourself as anything other then just another bee in the hive. On the bright side, the new mall next to subway station had a nice little patio bar that had specials on giant Hoegaarden beers, perfect refreshment after a long day in the hills.