Big Buddha

Yesterday I went on another tour offered by Lingnan to see the Big Buddha on Lantau Island. Constructed in 1993, the Giant Tian Tan Buddha weighs 250 tons and stands at 98ft tall is the second largest seated outdoor Buddha.

To get to the Buddha we took the Ngong Ping Cable car. A 25-minute ride above and over the mountains provided a gorgeous view of Lantau Island, HK airport, as well as the Big Buddha.

The cable car dropped us off in Ngong Ping Village; a small little tourist village lined with a variety of restaurants and shops. I walked off with some other exchange students, Anna, Anna and Alexa and we ended up exploring the Po Lin Monastery before heading up to the Buddha. The Po Lin Monastery is over 100 years old and is home to three Buddha statues, representing the past, present and future. While we were meandering around there was a constant chant being said so we were on the search to find the monks chanting only to find out it was a recording.

We finally ventured to the Big Buddha. At only ~260 steps from the ground, it wasn’t a bad hike up, in fact a lot of young kids were running up. When we reached the top we walked around outside for a while before heading inside/underneath the Buddha to check out the stores. There is a restaurant inside the Buddha, which we had wanted to go to but you had to purchase a meal ticket at the bottom and we didn’t so we were out of luck. So instead, we opted for ice cream.

Before leaving the top we all took pictures of each other in front of the Buddha.  It was struggle fitting the entire Buddha into the picture but I think we all got it to work.

We ate lunch at a Middle Eastern/Meditterean restaurant and basically feasted on a variety of foods before walking around the Ngong Ping Village for shopping.

We took a bus back to the MTR station to get back to Lingnan. One the ride back to the MTR station though, there were so many cows just chilling on the side of the road. There was one at the bus station an Ngong Ping and it roamed around while we were there. It was quite a site to see.