Big Buddha, Victoria Peak and more Buddhas

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Sunday June 18th

I woke up at around 11AM on Sunday after watching football with my dormmates until midnight the night before. I took a shower and went outside in an internet cafe called CyberClan where I wrote the previous blog entry. The cafe is really big and I was assigned a computer in a small remote corner right next to a girl that was chatting with guys on a webcam and that seemed really annoyed to have a neighboor. After that it was already 13:00 and I hadnt eaten yet so I was hungry so I went to a little cafe to eat and read a little bit. I was simply so tired that after 30 minutes of looking in the guidebook for things to do I just walked back to the hostel in the dorm and slept. I think that after a day of trying to ignore jet lag and try to do as much as possible it was getting back to me. Around 17:00 everyone sorta came back to the dorm and we planned to go back to the light show and then go watch the game in the ex-pat area in the island.

We were all starving so me kevin and laura (richard came later as he was taking his shower) went to a small cantonese restaurant where they give you cold tea and I ordered chicken filet curry. We then went on the shore to watch the light show again, hoping that the introduction would be in English this time since we heard it was different from day to day but it was in cantonese whereas the day before was in mandarin so I guess they have a 3 day rotation (english-mandarin-cantonese) and we got unlucky both times. It was pretty funny to watch and then we took the Star Ferry to the Island. We went in Lan Kwai Fong to go out which is a narrow pedestrian alley filled with overpriced bars. We watched the Croatia-Japan game in 2 different bars (one for each half) and it was also interesting to see the crowd walk by. I catched my first glimpse of seedy and usually balding 50 years old westerners walking with their 20 years old asian "girlfriend"...

The Ferry closed at 12:30 so we went back to the peninsula after the game (which was, I must say, really boring) and we went back to the Irish Pub right next to our hostel, Murphy's, to watch the Brazil-Australia game. We were rooting for Australia, especially Laura which hates Brazil and all Brazilians and anyone who has a positive opinion on Brazil, so we were quite sad to see Brazil win 2-0. The waitress tried to snatch 10$ away from us when we paid the bill but Laura got it back for us.

That pub is interesting. It is an Irish Pub that looks very much Irish, however it is entirely chinese owned and chinese operated. I'd be really curious to know if it was first started by an Irish who then sold it to chinese people who kept the Irish atmosphere or maybe it was started by a chinese person who had lived in Ireland. In any case, it shows how cosmopolitan and westernized Hong Kong is but at the same time how they westernized on their own terms.

After the game we went back to the dorm to sleep (it was around 2AM). It was Laura's last night with us as she was leaving for a bike tour accross mainland China.

Monday June 19th

I woke up fairly early and since I didn't want to wake up Laura and I had not said the final goodbye I wrote her a little note to say bye and went out. My plan was to go see the big Budda on Lantau Island and maybe Victoria Peak on Hong Kong Island. I ate at Pacific Coffee and checked my emails. I took it a little easy so by the time I took the Ferry to Hong Kong Island, I met Richard, Kevin and Kevin's friend John who was passing by Hong Kong. They were heading to the visa office before going to the Budda so I said great and went with them. John is another english teacher in China, he stayed 2 years in the Hunan province and speaks very decent mandarin. He had gotten a job teaching in Thailand so he was heading there the next day and was just spending the night in Hong Kong.

Kevin was out of the visa office really quickly but Richard had to wait in line so it took about 2 hours. We found a little cafe nearby and we talked. They thaught me a few words in mandarin and told me what to expect during my travel in China. They also showed me some amazing pictures of the moutains in Sichuan and I just can't wait to be there.

When Richard came out of the office he was surprised to see that we had waited the whole time but was also pissed off because he didn't get the visa he wanted (and was even more pissed off when I told him that a 6 months multiple entry visa was possible whereas he got a 1 month single entry visa). He walked with us but after a few minutes he decided to go back ot the office to try to argue to get a longer visa. So we went to the ferry terminal to catch the ferry to Lantau Island, where the Buddah is. At the terminal we met Dale who met John the day before. He is a fellow Canadian from Niagara Falls and was heading to Thailand on the same flight as John.

The ferry ride was much longer than the Star Ferry and it was cool to see the small outlying Island, the scenery in Hong Kong is truly beautiful. We got to the Island and hopped on the ACed deluxe bus (it's the only one...) to the Buddah and monastery. I'm not normally impressed by religious buildings but this humongous Buddah on the top of a mountain is just fabulous, and the view from the moutain with the Buddah is amazing. John practiced his mandarin with the souvenir shop girl (A lot of people who work in Hong Kong are from the mainland and speak mandarin) who ended up offering him 5000RMB/month to teach her kids english in Shenzhen (right on the border of Hong Kong, but on the mainland) which he had to refuse.

We tried to climb the nearby mountain. We found what we thought was a path up the mountain but it ended in a dead end with a really ugly dog guarding a building. We went back to the parking lot and the bus was leaving so we took it and then took the ferry (had to pay double because it was a "fast ferry" and the ordinary one was leaving in 90 minutes. Once we got back to Hong Kong Island we decided to go see the lamest tourist attraction in Hong Kong: the longest continuous escalator in the world (it goes on for 20 minutes).

We went back to the hostel because I told Richard we'd meet him there at 19:00. He was playing guitar in the dorm so he came with us to eat in a nice restaurant and I ate some thai noodle with various meat in it. It was a really good, filling and most importantly for HongKong, cheap restaurant. We then went back to our favorite Irish Pub to watch Switzerland-Togo which was fairly interesting. We had the nice surprise of having Laura joining us, her tour was spending the first night in Hong Kong so she could spend her last night here with us. We talked for a while, said goodbye to the ones leaving and then we left: me Richard and Kevin going back to the dorm, Laura going back to her tour and Dale and John going to Thailand.

There were new people in the dorm. There was Quadeer, an Indian man from Hyderabad who is the rollerblade and ice skating national team coach, and Lisa who is an englishwoman that appeared to be really scared to be sleeping in a dorm with guys and made it a point of telling us that she was moving out of the hostel tomorrow (I guess we look that scary, despite all my attempts to be nice). Quadeer didn't know he needed to get a visa for China before going there so we told him to go with Kevin/Richard tomorrow since they were already going.

Tuesday June 20th

I woke up very early Tuesday with the intention to do a lot during that day. I took a shower and then went down to CyberClan to check my email. The wierdest thing happened to me when I was registering. The girl at the front desk fell asleep while writting down the computer number I was assigned to. I'm not kidding she fell asleep while writting. I said "excuse me, are you alright" a few times and she woke up, finished writting and gave it to me like nothing happened. Might be narcolepsy but I think she just spent the whole night working (she sure looked liked that)

I then took the MTR for the first time to Tsuen Wan, the farthest point on the line. My goal was to get to Tai Mo Shan, the highest mountain in Hong Kong, and climb it. Lonely Planet only said go to Tsuen Wan MTR and take bus 51 so I figured it would be no problem. I got to Tsuen Wan station and I tried to find the bus but I couldn't find it. I looked on the map where they say it should be, walked around everywhere and asked people where it was (they all gave different directions...) and after more than an hour of looking around and entertaining the locals I said: "Screw that mountain, it's not even that high anyway". The visit was interesting in one way however. For the first time since I've been in Hong Kong I didn't see a single westerner around and the vast majority of people didn't speak english. Yet I found it really interesting to find that even in Tsuen Wan there was Western food like sandwich, coffee, italian food, bakery etc. It really seems that the merge of culture in Hong Kong is not confined to the cosmopolitan center in Tsim Sha Tsu and Hong Kong Island or the english speaking elite but has spread to the whole population.

I decided to change my plans and go visit the 10 000 Buddahs monastery. Again the Lonely Planet said just take the KCR station to Sha Tin station and walk a little bit so I figured, hey there's no bus this will be no problem. So I went in Tsuen Wan station and spotted the closest MTR station with a transfer to the KCR rail network and bought a ticket to there. However what I had forgotten to check and my Lonely Planet didn't tell me was that there were different KCR rail system and Sha Tin station was on the East one, whereas the station I had picked was on the west rail system. Of course I realized that after I got off the MTR at that station (but just before I started swearing like a sailor). By that time I was seriously pissed. It was 10:30 and I had been wasting the last 3 hours so I just went back to the hostel to do some laundry.

I got there and did my laundry and talked a little bit with Sahara, the Japanese guy in the dorm which I hadnt seen much of yet. He is doing a pretty cool trip through China, the central Asian republic and then Iran/middle east. He is very brave to try to fight through central Asian republic bureaucracy to get a visa, it's something even I am not ready to do. Kevin got back to the dorm from the visa office with his work visa all in order and he was now ready to cross into mainland China to Shenzhen and then fly back to his city, Chengdu. He offered me to stay at his apartment when I get to that city which is pretty cool. However the visa application didn't go well for Quadeer, chinese authority ask for 100$ in traveller's cheques for every day of his stay in China which is a huge problem, but Richard was trying to help him to get it all sorted out.

Kevin left and I figured I might try to do something so I decided to go to Victoria Peak on Hong Kong Island. I took the Ferry and walked to the tram to the peak because even though I like to climb mountain I had been told that the tram is a must see. The tram was indeed really cool, it climbs the mountain at an insane angle and gives wonderful views of the city. Once on the top I decided to do the walk around the peak that was written in the Hong Kong Tourist Bureau brochure and started walking but 15 minutes later, it started raining. Ha ha I thought, that is no problem I got my brand new umbrella which I had bought the day before for 20 HK$ (3CDN). I look in the bag and I realized I didn't bring it. Of course by the time I realized that the rain had transformed into a real moonsoon shower so I decided to walk back and head for cover after a person told me there was no cover ahead. On the way I met a couple that were staying in a relatively dry spot under a huge tree but decided to get outta here as this day was doomed.

As soon as I got back to the tram (and the nearby mall), it stopped raining. Being a east coaster I'm not used to this kind of 20 minutes heavy rain, when it rains in Montreal it rains for the whole day. I was just about to head back in the tram but said screw it I'm not gonna let those clouds beat me so I walked back in the path. After a while I stumbled on the couple that was staying under the tree so we started talking. They're an English couple named Glynn and Jude who are also at the beginning of a 1 year around the world tour. They just arrived in Hong Kong after 3 weeks in Japan. They were really friendly so we stuck together and talked. After a day of abyssimal failure this was the first positive thing that happened.

After a while it started raining again. This time I was wiser and just found a dry spot and we waited there for like 30 minutes for it to settle down. Another girl was even wiser and she asked a (unused) plastic garbage bag to a cleaning lady. Monson rain is not bad though, it is refreshing since the temperature is so high. After it stopped raining we continued walking, taking pictures of the city, a cool waterfall and the nice park on the other side of the peak. It turns out that these 2 also have a blog on this website (www.travelblog.org/bloggers/inspirado).

We took the tram back and we decided to head to the 10 000 Buddahs Monastery (this time taking the right KCR rails). We managed to get there without making any dumb mistakes and by this time it was 17:00 so the place was fairly empty. The place is quite nice you walk up the mountains on steps with Buddahs on both sides. All statues are unique and some are quite interesting (the one with arms coming out of the eyesocket for example). I thought it was a really interesting place especially since we had it all to ourselves (except, of course, the construction cranes nearby). There were warnings of monkeys at the beginning of the climb but we didn't see any unfortunately.

We walked back to the KCR station and exchange email/blog address and they left at Monk Kok station to their hostel while I went all the way to Tsim Sha Tsui to the hostel to meet up Richard. I got to the hostel and just lay down on the bed exhausted but Richard didn't give me time to rest because he got there 5 minutes after and we headed out to eat. We found a nice japanese restaurant and then we tried to find a place with cheap beer to watch the Germany-Ecuador game. The best one we found was a bar called 323 that was fairly interesting (and had longer Happy Hours than the others). The place was filled mostly with locals except a really sleazy westerner who was simply sitting on a table not talking. Everyone was rooting for Germany and the atmosphere was pretty cool during the game (Germany totally destroyed Ecuador).

I also got introduced to the concept of "bar girl" which are basically cute girls that is employed by the bar to talk with customers. The sleazy westerner sure seemed to love the attention. We didn't make eye contact with her so she didn't bother to talk with us. We went back to the dorm to find a south Korean guy in the dorm which was really friendly but I was too tired to talk for more than 5 minutes so I went to sleep.

Today was a long and at time very frustrating day but it turned positive in the end. I find that when you travel you have these huge down and up period. At some point you can be really depressed and tell yourself what the hell are you doing here and an hour later you meet some cool chaps (I'm hanging out too much with english people) and you feel great.

Anyway now I got one more day in Hong Kong then it is Macau Thursday and Manila and Philippines for 3 weeks!

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Photos

Me on top of Victoria Peak
Just after the rain

View from the Big Buddah
Superb in my humble opinion

Other side of Victoria Peak
You just take a 5 minutes tram from center of Hong Kong and almost all you can see is greenery.

Glynn and Jude
In the path toward the 10000 Buddahs

View of the monastery from farther up
Tried really hard not to have the cranes in the pictures so I couldn't get it centered

Comments

[Denise]

I like it
Quelles belles photos et comme j'ai l'impression d'être un peu avec toi quand je te lis. Continue, tu nous fascine.

[Horace]

Cool
J'ai hâte que tu mettes pied sur la Chine continentale.