Lantau Island in the Fog

Hi friends and family! Victor and I first want to say thank you for your comments and feedback so far. We hope to write at least a few times a week, and we really enjoy hearing from all of you who have responded...

This past Friday the weather finally let us venture out of the city. Our first choice to make the best of our remaining days in HK was to head to Lantau Island, where they the largest sitting Buddha in the world sits atop a peak among other green peaks on this preserved island. The 45-minute bus ride, which took us up and down these mountains past waterfalls, reservoirs, and small beach towns, had Victor and I singing the Jurassic Park theme song. All we needed was for somebody to cue the Velociraptors. No kidding. This mountaintop is usually accessible to tourists by a beautiful five-mile cable car ride, but I enjoyed the sense of adventure the mountain bus provided...

The bus dropped us near the top of one of the peaks amidst dense fog. The first thing that stood out against this backdrop was a circular platform with levels of brightly colored prayer flags surrounding it. It was situated opposite the large stone staircase also disappearing into fog that led up to the base of the Buddha. This platform, upon which a monk waited to give daily devotions to the Buddha, combined with an imposing and elaborate gate in the background to let us know this was a special place.





We followed the monk down a path behind the platform, and eventually came to Po Lin Monastery. It is a beautiful working monastery that allows tourist visitation. Before the front temple gates stand large incense pots in which visitors offer lit incense sticks in thanks and prayer for loved ones. If I ever go back I hope to light some in honor of all of you. Its smell also enhanced the spiritual experience, as it wafted throughout the temple and very effectively put you in the right frame of mind to enter a reflective place.




I will leave the pictures to provide the remaining descriptions of this amazing place. It was beautiful, peaceful, contemplative, unique. Victor and I both came away with a strong appreciation for the path these monks had chosen as well as how quickly our surroundings were able to instill in us a similar feeling of peace.





We were unable to see the full Buddha in the fog, but his outline was ascertainable and still neat to see. The stairs up to him pass vegetation and growth with health and vibrancy of color I've never seen. When we came back down the path in the rain, we stopped by a nearby village called Ngong Ping, a recently completed tourist attraction created for visitors to the peak. It normally has a large variety of attractions, but these were limited, again, on account of the rain and the broken cable car. The upside was that Victor and I had the whole village practically to ourselves, and the places that were open treated us as honored guests.



Our activities included a four-dollar presentation called "Walk with Buddha" that describes the story of Siddhartha's life and path to enlightenment through a Disney-quality walk-through adventure put on just for us. We were then (once again, all by ourselves!) treated by a charming young Chinese girl to a tea ceremony at the village's tea house. She had spent three years in training as a tea specialist, and gave us the benefit of her education by demonstrating the correct pouring of tea, how to gently coax a pressed white flower out of its preserved, hard form into a beautiful floating blossom that looked, smelled, and tasted spectacular. (We brought the second flower home in the hopes of replicating this experience one day ourselves.) She then sat and made very nice conversation with us while continually refilling our small cups as we enjoyed the tea with a plate of honey-covered walnuts.

We left feeling serenely peaceful and taken care of, with a calm that remained with us through the harrowing ride back down the mountain through denser fog and rain to the subway station. We went back to our hostel on Hong Kong's most bustling commercial roads, and both fell into a deep, deep sleep.