Day 61 Glass bottom car, big buddha is watching you, path to wisdom and another Michelin star!

Fri 2nd March
We got up and had breakfast in the hotel before heading out to Causeway bay MTR station.
By 0940 we were on the MTR, it took about an hour to get to Tung Chung, and then even with Karen pre booking with Klook it was a good hour of queuing to get on the cable car ride.

While we were in the queue we downloaded an audio guide to the cable car journey to listen to on the way up.

we'd gone for the glass bottomed cable car which cost a little more

By the time we reached the village of Ngong Ping it was lunchtime.

big Buddha on the hill behind us

12 statues lined the walkway, one representing each Divine Chinese general and the zodiac animals as well as a particular 2 hour period in the day. 

people stood in the centre of this to offer their prayers. There is a strange effect of the circle which was to make the sound appear as if it was echoing inside you

incense sticks of all sizes were being lit and placed in holders

We headed up to the vegetarian takeaway in the Po Lin monastery, and asked them to make us one with everything. Just kidding, we ordered a mixed vegetarian and a plate of fungus noodles.

We're not sure what the mixed vegetables were but we did scoff the lot.
We then had a wander around the monastery, including visiting the hall of the 10,000 Buddha's. no photographs were allowed of the inside though.

beautiful carvings 

orange trees were throughout hong kong in celebration of the New Year like we would use Christmas trees. 

We tackled the steps up to the big guy next. At 34 m tall he is the biggest outdoor sitting Buddha in the world.
It's quite a climb! Some people were stopping to kneel and pray on the way up.

the view was great

around the Buddha on the lower levels were statues

After we'd walked back down, we went in search of ice cream before heading out to the path of wisdom.

lucky cat

The walk to the Path of Wisdom goes through a derelict place called the tea gardens. We guess that it went out of business with the opening of Ngong Ping. It's a peaceful walk through greenery out to where the Path of Wisdom starts.
The Path of Wisdom is 32 carved pillars with the verses of the Heart Sutra carved on them, arranged in an infinity symbol that curves up the hillside.

There was a plaque that explained the meaning and symbolism of the message on the pillars  (not shown) which was profound but seemed to boil down to people being responsible for their own lives by the actions they took in life, to change your life you needed to change your actions. From here there were walks that went across the Island including one that was 43km long. A warning at the beginning of the walks reminded people to wear insect repellent against dengue fever.

viewing spot 

We walked back through to Ngong Ping, taking a bit more time to look at the statues and the ferral cattle, and then took the cable car back down.

these wandered freely around the site and weren't above pulling out the contents of the rubbish bins in search of food.

This is the one for the Rooster which we both fall into

Once again the views were fabulous, right over the airport and the mountain. We could see the path that people can walk along to get to the Big Buddha although it would take several hours to do this, most of it climbing or descending steps. We did see a couple of people on the route though.

                                                   some of the cable car journey back

                            view through the cable car floor leaving one of the towers on the way back

When we got back to the bottom of the cable car, we decided to wander through the shopping centre to see what was there and to see if there were any phone shops, since my phone was becoming even more of a problem. We found some phone inspiration in Fortress, and we also encountered dragons put up for the New Year.

each dragon had a colour and was related to different emotions or states

We headed back to our hotel to put our feet up.
After some blogging, a bit of phone research and a bit of aimless searching for food, we opted to hit Din Tai Fung again. After all when a Michelin starred restaurant was on our doorstep for just a few pounds each a meal why wouldn't we go back? We had a short wait to be seated but by the time we came out lots of people were queuing to get in. We had just about timed it right.

just some of the dishes we had.

After dinner I persuaded Karen to head out to Fortress to get the phone I'd seen. Although in the end we bought it for a kiosk next door for HK$90 less than we'd seen in Fortress, and we got a case and a screen protector and unlimited data for Hong Kong thrown in.
Of course the phone needed to update firmware as soon as it got wifi, so it had to sit unused until the morning.