Weekend is another word for…EXCURSION!!
Today was another trip to Lantau Island and the goal was to hike and see the Big Buddha. The statue/area is a very famous landmark and one of the most visited places of Hong Kong for tourists. Half of our group wanted to hike up the mountain to see the statue, but the other half wanted to take a cable car up the mountain and then hike back down (way less strenuous). IT TOOK US A REALLY LONG TIME TO COME TO A CONSENSUS…but we ended up taking the cable car up (called Ngong Ping 360, costed about $20 USD) which gave us a really nice 360 degree view of Lantau Island.
Our group had a total of 7 people, but when we were getting onto the cable car, the operators told a random man (who was a single rider) to hop onto our cable car and ride with us as well. We were chill with it of course, but little did we know that this man would follow us around ALL. DAY. So, the 8 of us rode in the cable car (which was about a half hour ride to the top of the mountain) and this random man that we literally just met ended up being like our little tour guide for the day. This man, named Anthony, was a HK local and looked about 50-60 years old. On the cable car up the mountain, he would point out EVERY single little area of the HK islands we saw but honestly, I was more impressed by his memory than him knowing so many facts about HK. The stuff he would tell us wouldn’t be just like “And over there is the tallest mountain of HK!!” it would be like “Over there is the tallest mountain of HK!! It is 1,000 meters high and it consists of 10 trails you can hike on. On Trail 1, you can see the Big Buddha’s shadow. On Trail 2, you can see where the monks used to live.” Okay, this was totally an example I just made up, but literally, his information would be THAT DETAILED. Like what…WHO REMEMBERS THE EXACT HEIGHT/ELEVATION OF MOUNTAINS AND STUFF LIKE THAT??? And he seemed to know every little fact there was about everything in HK, not just Lantau Island. Like I literally have lived in the Bay Area all my life (until college) but if you were to ask me something specific about SF (or maybe SJ even), I probably wouldn’t be able to answer in such detail. Anyways, I swear this man (who was a retired executive of a big company) used to work as an actual tour guide or something since he knew so much about Hong Kong. It was cool though because he was pretty nice and informative. We finally made it to the mountain after about 25 minutes on the cable car, but then once we got off of the cable car and thought we were going to part ways, Anthony kept following our group. Not in a creepy way though, just like in a way where he was kind of integrated into our group now? To be honest though, our group was kind of weirded out since we literally just met this guy and we didn’t want to be rude and tell him that we wanted to do our own thing since he was so nice and just provided us with so many cool facts about HK. So after we got off the cable car and walked around the mountain, Anthony stayed with us. He took group pictures for us. He kept telling us more facts and history of the island. He was literally the DAD of the group. So that was that. On the mountain itself where the Big Buddha was located, there were a bunch of little shops and food places (tourist-y stuff) where we walked around for a while. Pic of an aesthetic Chinese New Year’s fortune tree that I took on the walk:
There were also random cows that would approach us and it was fun because we got to pet them and stuff (so cute!!).
After walking for a while, we finally made it to the Big Buddha area, where we had to climb up 200 steps to the actual statue. The area consisted of the Po Lin Monastery and of course, the huge Buddha statue. At the area, you could see a lot of people praying and/or placing incense outside of the monastery. At the top of the 200 steps, it was a beautiful view of the rest of the island and surrounding waters.
After we finished looking around and taking pictures and such, we hiked back down. Okay, at this point, we thought Anthony was going to leave us and take the cable car back down, but NO…he hiked back down with us. He told us which trail to take and knew the exact estimated time of arrival back down to the MTR station. This hike back down the mountain was at least 1-2 hours, and it was already getting dark soon. But Anthony just kept following us so it we were all just like okay then… On the way down, he, again, pointed out viewpoints/other monasteries along the trail and talked to us. We finally got back down in I think 1.5 hours, and to get back to the MTR station, we needed to take a bus. However, the buses would only come every hour (since it was late already) and we JUST MISSED THE LAST ONE by like 5 minutes. We asked Anthony how long it would take to just walk to the station and he said at least 45 minutes. So we were like “ok let’s just wait for the bus then.” But then, after waiting a while, we just decided to walk anyways. Before this, Anthony told us he was tired and wanted to take the bus (ok, for a man his age, it is SUPER FIT because he was able to keep up with us the entire day and like…we walked A LOT!!) so we totally understood. But at the same time, our group faced the conflict of whether or not to keep including Anthony in our group activities because we didn’t want to be mean and tell him that we wanted to do our own thing. But yeah, we decided we wanted to walk back to the station, and then Alvin braved it up and said to Anthony, “I think we are just all going to walk down to the station!” At this point, our group assumed that we would part ways with Anthony here since he said he was tired and wanted to take the bus. BUT NO………WE WERE WRONG ONCE AGAIN because Anthony was down to walk with us even though he was tired. Our group felt so bad about this, but on the bright side, because we started walking, Anthony found another bus stop closeby that had more frequent buses coming by that could take us back to the station. We ended up waiting like 5 minutes for the next bus to come, and then we hopped on it and took it back to the Tung Chung MTR Station. On the bus ride, Anthony was talking to Liya and asked about our group’s dinner plans after…..basically HINTING that he wanted to eat dinner with us as well. Liya responded and said that we would be going back to our dorms because we had other plans with other hallmates. This was a total white lie LOL, but our group just wanted a break from Anthony after spending the whole day with him. THANKS LIYA FOR TAKING ONE FOR THE TEAM. Don’t get me wrong though, Anthony was a cool man. But at times he was a little rude with his jokes (honestly mostly due to culture difference in my opinion) and the way he talked, and our group just wanted to spend the rest of the night to ourselves. We were extremely thankful for him nevertheless because he was so open and nice about sharing all these facts and history about HK. When our group and him finally parted ways at the MTR station, we were all a little sad even though the whole day we were constantly wondering why this man was following us around. But honestly, I enjoyed having him as part of our adventure for the day and I’m glad he was placed in the same cable car as our group. THANK YOU FOR EVERYTHING ANTHONY!!!
After we got back to the station, we took the MTR back and stopped at Central to get dinner. We went to this restaurant called Tsim Chai Kee, which was famous for its wonton noodles. Each bowl was about $4 USD, and after a long day of walking, the food was just good for the soul.
We ended the night by getting Ten Ren next door; some of us got milk tea while others got ice cream. I love Ten Ren at home, but this Ten Ren was even BETTER!! I didn’t even know that was possible but it was. Sweet ending to another great day exploring HK 🙂