An idiot abroad

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Today I visited the world's biggest Budda with my new GBF Francis. After travelling on the Disneyland line (Francis was very excited about this) to Tung Chung we took the Ning Ping 360 cable car up the mountain to reach the Budda and the monestary. I had forgotten quite how frightened I am of cable cars and this added to the high wind and the Typhoon warning really didn't make for the most enjoyable 25 minutes of my life. However, the views were excellent and Francis' comments just made it even better;

"Look at those buildings there just so vertical!" Francis observes the skyscrapers.

"Yes, what do you expect? Jeez, we're not in Pisa!" I snapped.

Turning past the airport proved highly entertaining as the cablecar opposite us was stopped and evacuated. There was a rather obese man in that particular carriage who was causing the whole thing to tip dangerously to one side, I'm not sure whether they were going to get him his own carriage or make the group walk the rest of the way down, what ever the outcome, it would have been extremely embarrassing for him!

The cantonese people in our car didn't really do much to help my fear; they were talking in cantonese but ever now and then I would pick up the word "typhoon" and a panicked look on their faces as we swung about in the high winds over the sea. I also wasn't enjoying watching the planes take off beneath us either this prompted Francis' second mastermind observation of the day. "Oh, so the airport's on an island. I thought they put it in the water to keep it out of the way." Oh dear!

I actually really enjoyed the tourist trap at the top; we had photos taken in front of crazy backgrounds of fireworks and chinese dragons, we watched a brilliant martial arts show and explored the Budda and the temples. The rain picked up prompting Francis' latest revelation, "don't laugh but I though typhoons were a type of dragon, people kept telling me to beware of the typhoons and I thought it was strange because I'd always just though that they were mythical creatures." Just in case he reads this and is offended (I'm pretty sure he won't be), I must admit I can probably claim dumbest quote of the day! Walking down a path towards the monestary Francis asked if this was indeed the monestry to which I replied, "I presume so, mmmmm, can't you smell the incest?"

The two northern idiots had had enough of admiring the Budda (and the curly-haired guy that Francis had taken a shine to) so we decided to get on the bus back to Tung Chung (this was obviously due to it being cheaper rather than less scary than the cable car). This sounds relatively straight forward but travelling with me is never plain sailing! We managed to hold the queue up by dropping our money on the floor and then the air conditioning leaked on us (Francis definitely got the worse deal) so we got soaked and resorted to the man sat behind us putting up an umbrella on the bus in order to keep dry!

The stress of the day (or lack of iron) must have tired me out because I broke the 10 pm rule and was fast asleep by 8- good preparation for another week of teaching, typhoons and trying to avoid peanuts!

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