The Big Buddha

Today was a training exercise for the wife as we traveled to Lantau Island and the Big Buddha to begin motion-sickness conditioning and get a little religion in the process. We begin a very long cruise on Saturday and we had to start the training program today. Our training today consisted of a longish train ride which was the entire length of the Tung Chung Line, followed by a 5.7 km. ride up a mountain in a cable car with a glass bottom, punctuated by a visit to the Big Buddha (more on that later), followed by a bus ride down a very windy mountain road to the coast where we finished up with a mini-cruise consisting of a 40-minute ferry-ride back across the China Sea to Hong Kong. She passed! Not one barf bag was opened.

Our respite at the Big Buddha or Tian Tan Buddha included a visit to the site of the Po Lin Monastery and the village at the top of the mountain. The village is really kind of a tourist trap which in my mind takes something away from the presence of the large bronze Buddha. But I think that the proceeds of the tourist dollars spent up there must in part go to the monastery or they would not allow it.

You can get up close to the Buddha by scaling 268 stairs that lead up to the base of the throne on which the Buddha sits and then once you are up there you can go inside the buddha and make an offering which allows you to see the religious relics inside. So a couple of the fringe benefits from our little trip today included some exercise and a little Buddhist grace both of which could benefit us in this life or the next.