Hong Kong
We arrived in Hong Kong on February 9, 2006 after a 13 hour plane ride from Buenos Aires to Los Angeles, a 3 hour wait in the Los Angeles airport and then a 15 hour plane ride from Los Angeles to Hong Kong. We thought we would be severely jet lagged by the time we reached Hong Kong, but surprisingly were only a few hours out of wack. After we got ourselves situated….we started hitting the tourist venues.
Here’s the world famous view of Victoria Harbour and Kowloon from Victoria Peak. Absolutely amazing. As always the pictures don’t do it justice. Seemed to be a never ending stream of skyscrapers. Has to be one of the most impressive sky lines in the world.
And this is what the streets are like around Soho on Hong Kong Island. There are stores, signs and people everywhere. All of the mom & pop stores that we walked by were very interesting. We would have loved to know what they were selling in the rows of jars with unidentified objects. The smells indicated that there was a lot of fish product involved! It was so interesting to walk around and see markets like this in some of the side streets with massive skyscrapers in the backdrop. Hong Kong is an interesting mixture of new and old world. It is a world of its own.
The second day we made our way to the Big Buddha on Lantau Island (a two hour combination subway and bus ride from Kowloon). Apparently it’s the largest outdoor Buddha in the world. I guess that means there is one massive Buddha inside somewhere. One of the weird things we noticed is that the Big Buddha has a Swastika on his chest. Seems a little strange and we need to research the background on this.
Nearby the Big Buddha we paid a visit to a monument to the Heart Sutra. It’s in the shape of a figure eight which is supposed to represent the perfection of wisdom. The Heart Sutra articulates the doctrine of emptiness to attain perfect harmony and bliss. It was all very mystical apart from the monk sitting on a stone to the side talking on his cell phone! I thought he would be reflecting on the Heart Sutra.
The last day in Hong Kong we made our way to Ocean Park. We rode a roller coaster, watched a dolphin and sea lion show, saw some sharks and stared at the laziest panda bears on the planet. The frustrating thing is that the main reason we went to Ocean Park was to see the panda bears and they just did not co-operate. Oh well, at least we got to experience population density at its worst. Imagine Disney World in the summer when the kids are out of school times 10 and then you will come close to understanding the crowds we battled.
Here’s the world famous view of Victoria Harbour and Kowloon from Victoria Peak. Absolutely amazing. As always the pictures don’t do it justice. Seemed to be a never ending stream of skyscrapers. Has to be one of the most impressive sky lines in the world.
And this is what the streets are like around Soho on Hong Kong Island. There are stores, signs and people everywhere. All of the mom & pop stores that we walked by were very interesting. We would have loved to know what they were selling in the rows of jars with unidentified objects. The smells indicated that there was a lot of fish product involved! It was so interesting to walk around and see markets like this in some of the side streets with massive skyscrapers in the backdrop. Hong Kong is an interesting mixture of new and old world. It is a world of its own.
The second day we made our way to the Big Buddha on Lantau Island (a two hour combination subway and bus ride from Kowloon). Apparently it’s the largest outdoor Buddha in the world. I guess that means there is one massive Buddha inside somewhere. One of the weird things we noticed is that the Big Buddha has a Swastika on his chest. Seems a little strange and we need to research the background on this. 
Nearby the Big Buddha we paid a visit to a monument to the Heart Sutra. It’s in the shape of a figure eight which is supposed to represent the perfection of wisdom. The Heart Sutra articulates the doctrine of emptiness to attain perfect harmony and bliss. It was all very mystical apart from the monk sitting on a stone to the side talking on his cell phone! I thought he would be reflecting on the Heart Sutra.
The last day in Hong Kong we made our way to Ocean Park. We rode a roller coaster, watched a dolphin and sea lion show, saw some sharks and stared at the laziest panda bears on the planet. The frustrating thing is that the main reason we went to Ocean Park was to see the panda bears and they just did not co-operate. Oh well, at least we got to experience population density at its worst. Imagine Disney World in the summer when the kids are out of school times 10 and then you will come close to understanding the crowds we battled.
posted by The Adventures of Rena & Wade | 8:19 AM
1 Comments:
Well I guess that would make better sense. Will do some research....perhaps that Buddhism course will shed some light.
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