Journey To The West

My recent work trip to Hong Kong was so so. Since I was working on night shift again, I am restricted from traveling if compare to my UK work trip. However, that doesn't mean I can't go venture around. My working place is at the Hong Kong International Airport at Chek Lap Kok. And Chek Lap Kok is located in Lantau Island (Tai Yu San). Hmmm.. You might heard of this Tai Yu San from any TVB series when any actors' mothers when they want pray for their missing son to return or eat vegetarian meal for one month in order for spiritual and internal cleansing.

Those day you have to take ferry to get there. But since they built this airport on reclaimed land and built the longest cantilever Tsing Ma bridge, the mainland is connected to the island directly. Those day you need to embark on a Fast and Furios cum Initial D driving skill of the local bus. Nowadays, you can take the Genting Highland like cable car aka Ngong Ping 360. It will bring you up to the peak directly.

Once there you walk through a modern village where there is Starbucks and some local shops selling souvenir. There's even a small Japanese like temple and there's even one shrine where you tied your wishing paper.

The effigy is enormously gigantic. It's so-called the biggest bronze sitting Buddha in the world. Take away the "bronze" and "sitting" and you are no longer the biggest. Just like the tallest "twin" tower in the world.

To be near with the Buddha itself, one find peace and calmness just by looking into the face of it. In the photo below, I was amazed that it captures a dragonfly too. Wow, that's how powerful our company's camera is!

Of all the angle I took, I found the one below is the most outstanding and funniest of all. Here, I manage to capture Buddha with his finger sticking out! It looks as if it's giving me the middle finger but definitely it's not what you think or see.

Actually, the bronze Buddha was only built a few years back. The main attraction of Lantau Island before the bronze Buddha sensation that hits the nation is, the Po Lin Monastery. Here is where all the Hongkies in the TVB series went to do prayers.

Well, there's no monk here. In Malysia, we try to limit the amount of joss stick because of air pollution. The normal 3 joss stick per altar was even changed to just 1 joss stick at one point which I normally against it if possible. But in Hong Kong, they sell you more than 50 joss stick and you can find not more than 10 altars to put it.

Worse still, they have a humungous urn yet only King Kong sized people can manage to put I assumed.

Just in case you can imagine the size. You need to observe from far serenity of the Giant Buddha statue sits on top of the peak. If you look clearly, it does resembled the Lord Murugan I have back in our very own Batu Caves.

The weird thing is the Hongkies put a staircase to lead you to the statue, but for Malaysian, the staircase has nothing to do to bring you to the statue. Maybe people assume we need to descend from the other side of the mountain to reach the statue.