First of all big shout out to my cousin for showing me around Hong Kong. If it weren’t for him I would probably be lost in Hong Kong during my visit. He taught me the basics like riding the different transportations, showed me the landmarks, and of course where to shop in Hong Kong. Same goes to his family, my relatives, who also was there to take me to places to eat and such. Hong Kong is a place of real economic development compared to its mainland, China. But China itself is currently going through an economic boom itself and might emerge as a super power country. But enough about economics, I have to deal with it when I go back to school…now about why my neck hurts. Due to Hong Kong also being a major port for imports and exports, it also became a mecca for really tall buildings due to all the businesses that work there, so this resulted in me being the dumb tourist craning my neck to look at them while standing in the middle of the sidewalk blocking people while taking pics. But its not just buildings…apparently Buddha is up there as well as I visited the biggest Buddha statue in all of China (btw I am a non-religious person but Buddhism is a religion that I practice but only during those times of the year like Chinese New Year’s and when I visit my deceased relatives).
This is Hong Kong during the day, check out all those signs of the big corporations that are from practically everywhere but China lol.
Night is a different story, if you walk along the path where I took these pics, you would see a bunch of young adults maybe age 15-25 hanging out and just watching the buildings neon lights. Madness…but its what they do and are used to doing so I can’t say anything..much anyways.
Buildings are seriously tall due to the limited space in Hong Kong so buildings like below are built to usually 30-50 stories.
But there are those “extreme” buildings like the one below which is 88 stories but I forgot the name of it. Look as the building reaches into the heavens (clouds), to be honest it was pretty cloudy that day so I don’t think its always in the clouds. It looks cooler at night though, like a giant and long….pencil with the eraser on top.
If you plan to visit the Tian Tan Buddha like I did, you can either take the bus or taxi from the bottom of the hill (my cousin told me people get sick from all the twists and turns and that a giant puke trash can on the bottom. He himself went on the bus before the skyrail was finished and said he too felt sick when they reached the bottom, but not to the point of puking), walk (btw its an extremely long walk if you do and cold so best to pack a jacket), or do what I did which is probably the fastest and least crazy which is the Ngong Ping 360 skyrail which can be a bit rocky if its windy and is really high off the ground. The view is great though, especially of the airport lol which is chibi when you are that high off the ground.
The chibi airport
The skyrail is so high off the grounds that I met up with clouds 1/4 of the way to see Buddha, this is what clouds look like lol
If you wanted to walk, I saw a few people walking, you can walk on the mountain path as seen below. Whats interesting is that I saw a few grave spots on the way up which is off the path and made me wonder how people would visit let alone make a grave all the way up there.
The little city, I forgot the name of it, next to the tall buildings is the original village…kind of sad how the two are so different yet next to each other
Everyplace that generates high traffic will result in businesses showing up in the middle of no where, this was no exception as the “tourist village” had desert shops, chopstick shop (really silly), candy shops, restaurants, even a 7-11 which incidentally was the 700th 7-11 in Hong Kong. I believe these kinds of places shouldn’t belong in a very spiritual place like where Buddha is, but I can’t control these kinds of things….yet.
The worst place in all in the village though I think was the Starbucks…thats just really wrong.
After going through the “tourist village” I went to climb the 268 steps to visit the Tian Tan Buddha (the biggest outdoor bronze Buddha in the world), which everyone should do as a more spiritual thing when you visit even if you are not a Buddhist, it was really humid so when I got to the top so luckily there was a drink vending machine at the top. Below is the view from the bottom of the stairs then the top.
On a clear day you can see Buddha from really far away, even on the way to see him from the skyrail like this
This is what I saw
Tomorrow I will cover the food and transportations I took while in Hong Kong
Nice pics. Some of the horizontal pics seem cut off by your template ^^;
Lol, ya…it happens with blogger. I could put the smaller size pics but it just isn’t as easy to view on the page but the majority of it shows which is what I really want. Maybe I will move to wordpress or something later on to prevent something like this from happening.