23 January 2008: Think BIG

This morning, Brent and Ryan decided that they wanted to take it easy in the morning, so they went back to their hotel room after breakfast. Chris and I were off to see the Big Buddah, which is a giant sculpture / temple situated on the opposite side of Hong Kong island to where the city is. Getting there was most of the fun.
We took the subway to the furthest station from the city, then we had to catch a chairlift the rest of the way. The chairlift traveled up past the airport, over huge expanses of water, and over very mountainous areas. The trip in the chairlift took about 25 minutes each way.
Perhaps chairlift is not quite the right term, because the lift was not open to the air. You had to climb inside a glass capsule which you shared with 9 other people, and the capsule was moved in the same way a chairlift would operate.
Once we arrived at the Big Buddah, we took our time walking up to the Buddah. We stopped to watch some educational films about the origins of the Buddist faith, and stopped to do a little tourist shopping. When we did reach the Buddah, which is set atop a hill, we had a quick look around, and discovered that perhaps the statue is best experienced from afar. From the base of the statue, all that you could see was some giant brass leaves which he was "sitting" on.
On the way back I took some more photos from the chairlift, which was the highlight of today's trip for me. When we got home, I went to sleep for a couple hours.
Chris awoke me around 7.15pm. There was a laser light show on every night along the river at 8pm which we had planned to go to, so I had to get up and get ready.
We caught a double-decker bus down to the river, and caught all of the laser show. It was pretty cool. They had set up lots of the buildings along the river and through the city with lasers on top of the building, and they had many of the building's lights connected so that they could be turned on and off in time to the music. It was pretty cool. I think I have a short video somewhere... It was a little eerie, because you could see the path cast by the lasers through the heavy smog.
Following the light show, Brent, Ryan, Chris and I went to find some food. We found a nice little place that was on one of the smaller side streets near the park. They had one English menu, but other than that, didn't seem to be too westernised. The girl working there didn't have very good English, so we figured the food was going to be pretty good. When the food did arrive, it was really good! I would even say it was one of the best meals we had during the trip. (and, it was surprisingly cheap!)
To cap off the day, we revisited some night markets on the way home, and bought some more gifts for people at home.