Lantau - The Buddha On Sale.

On Monday I went to Lantau island. My old guidebook doesn't mention it at all, but apparently in the past fifteen years since the great seated Buddha was built there, Hong Kong has made a real effort to turn Lantau into a tourist attraction of sorts. It's smart, I suppose, -- it is near the airport, Disneyland Hong Kong is on the island already, there's not a lot of space that can be turned into business land or residential buildings anyway, etc. Plus, it's beautiful.

Still, the result of the attempt to make Lantau a tourist hot spot is a little garish.

I took the MTR down to Tung Chung, the final station, and took the bus from there to Ngong Ping, the small town near the great Buddha sculpture. He's quite impressive, towering in the distance. His trappings, however, detract from the effect as you draw closer.

While on the bus, I kept having a strange feeling of Deja Vu, and I finally figured out that Lantau is the sort of iconic south-Pacific island that the game Far Cry is directly modeled on, I'd never been to Lantau before, and yet I felt as if I'd crawled all over the place (and shot quite a few mercenaries there, I might add). The vague sensation that I needed an assault rifle, a pair of binoculars, and a backpack full of ammunition might have also detracted from my feelings of wonder, I'm not sure.

Anyway, when the bus reached Ngong Ping I found out it was closed. I'd managed to catch the 8:30 bus, and since the Tram to Ngong Ping (the route 98% of the tourists take) didn't start running till 10, nothing really opened up (including the Buddha statue) until 10AM. Since the bus trip deposited me there around 9:15, I took some time to wander through the shuttered village. It's a kitschy, artificial thing. Think "Mulan reaches Capitalist Enlightenment and opens a competitor to Disneyworld." They have a replica of the Bodhi tree there. I'm 99% certain it's entirely plastic. You can see it in the foreground of this picture.

After wandering through the little space, I thought the best summary I could manage was this photograph. There isn't much more I can say, and I think it conveys the overall feeling of Ngong Ping quite well. In the dark part of my mind I think of Jesus and the moneylenders and I imagine the Buddha astride a table, striking shopkeepers with a chain whip and shouting criticism in an ancient Indian dialect. It's quite an image.

However, Lantau has its own quiet and majestic beauty that seems to shine the brighter, not because of Ngong Ping, but in spite of it. I wandered past the Buddha and out into the hills, stumbling across three tiny (and obviously older) shrines that have fallen into disrepair. The ruins were much more serene than the chaos of town. When I was done there, I wandered down past the old Tea house (closed that day) and the ruins of outbuildings to the start of Wisdom Path. It's a small loop that takes you near the base on Lantau peak. In fact, Lantau peak itself is only a few kilometers away, and if I had more time and had felt better, I would have climbed it. Still recovering from the sinus infection and previous days failure to find those friggin' gardens (not that I'm bitter) I decided against it. I did walk the Heart Sutra though, a sort of monument to the simplicity of being, a calligraphic work inscribed onto twenty foot half-trees, planted in an infinity symbol at the top of a hill. Beautiful stuff, and rich with meaning for the people of Hong Kong.

After that, I walked back and found out they had finally opened the Buddha. I went to the top and took the requisite picture. I also took one with me IN the shot.

Yes, I'm wearing a mask. Yes, it probably looks freakish to you, but let me tell you, these people are serious about not spreading whatever they have, and there isn't enough space here to skirt around sick people, so if you're sick and in public, you wear one. I had picked up a few the night before, and when I started sneezing and sniffling, midmorning, I slipped one on. It might be a practice I bring home with me, we'll see.

After I was done with the Buddha, I headed back to the bus terminus and caught a bus to Tai O, the fishing village on the end of Lantau. It's hella photogenic, so I took a few shots, but for some reason they all came out looking like an amateur photographer's day trip to a quaint little Chinese fishing village--go figure--so I scrapped most of 'em. Lots of quaint little boats and houses on stilts though. There's also a Shaolin training ground there, founded in the early 2000s as a chance to bring Wushu to Hong Kong. Seems like a pretty neat place. I found out they do one day training classes (and walking tours of Tai O as a package deal) on Saturdays, which unfortunately I missed. Maybe next time. It sounds like it would have been good fun.

I caught a bus to Mui Wo, intending to take the ferry, and discovered that my decision to risk the day with very little money had left me about 5 HKD short on the ferry ride back to Central. I had been banking on the buffer built into Octopus Cards, but either it doesn't work on Lantau island, or the policy has been changed, because it failed me. So I wandered around until I found an HSBC branch, kicked myself for not bringing all the cash I needed to change, since there was a HKD $100 charge on the service for non-bank-members, and bought my freedom. By the time I'd finished that transaction, I'd missed the 4PM Ferry and had to wait an hour, so I settled in, read some of the novel I'd brought along, and waited.

I took the ferry back to Central, and caught the MTR from there back to Mong Kok. By then it was 6 pm, and I was not feeling up for any more walking. I headed back to my room, dropped off my stuff, and lay down around 7 to catch a nap. My plan was to go back out that night and catch a movie (Blood - The Last Vampire), but I slept right through my alarm and only woke up at 9PM when a new person arrived in our room. So I rolled over, went back to sleep, and slept until almost 5 the next morning.

Up next: Blood and Chocolate, and Salsa!