Hotels.com and Cheaptickets helped me to organise the trip.
On our last day in Hong Kong we took the MTR Orange Line to Tung Chung to take the cable cars up to Tian Tan Buddha and the Po Lin Monastery and on the way I managed to take some cool snapshots:
Weird looking grave yard.
Above most be the MTR red line, but I am not really sure.
When we arrived at the cable car station we found out that it is still broken after the crash from a month ago. We were really disappointed, because we did see that it was running when we take the Airport Express into the city 2 days earlier. Must have been just some testing oh well. Here is a video I snatched of the Ngong Ping 360 Skyrail off youtube:
So sad … not fair.
Oh well, instead we got to enjoy:
waiting for an hour for the bus (#23)instead and on top of that experiencing the most scary bus ride my life. That bus driver was just plain out of control! Yikes! Well we survived.
Spotting Tian Tan for the first time from the bus while screaming out loud in pure horror, because we barely just missed running of the road!
We are getting closer.
Before I continue here are some information about the Tian Tan Buddha.
The Buddha is 34 meters high and weighs 250 tonnes and it is the (now listen carefully) tallest outdoor sitting bronze Buddha in the world! You have to climb 268 steps to get to the Buddha and was completed in 1993.
And here he is:
Impressive, he? Before you can take the steps up there you have to pay a small fee (wikipedia is not up to date, they it is free) to get up there and it includes a bottle of water and an ice cream which you get inside of the Buddha. You can also buy a vegetarian meal from the Po Lin Monastery. If you take the bus or the cable car I recommend having lunch there. But even better is to hike down back to the MTR station and get lunch in one of the small monasteries on the way down (I will post more information about that in my next post). That hike down was an experience I will never forget but you have to wait for the next post I am afraid 
Getting your picture taking from the stairs in front of the Buddha is very popular as you can see.
Mike being all Buddhish!
Buddha getting praised and getting offerings (one statue is holding a lotus flower):
Tian Tan Buddha from the side:
More snapshots:
View from the Buddha in the above picture.
And a Po Lin Monastery pictures taking from the Buddha.
Back down again and above you can see the gate to the Monastery.
More information about the Tian Tan Buddha.
neoauteur wrote,
Wow. The statue is huge. Thanks for sharing.
Link | August 12th, 2007 at 4:45 am
RGS wrote,
Neauteur, yeah it was pretty breathtaking …. I didn’t expect it to be this tall .. but when I was standing in fron of it … WOW.
Link | August 12th, 2007 at 9:16 am
Tony wrote,
Great post and beautiful pictures. I look forward to your additional posts about the trip. One question… what’s with the swastika on the chest of the Buddha? I know the Nazi’s probably perverted an existing and longstanding peaceful religious symbol but now I will have to go and do some personal research to find out “The Rest of the Story” as our beloved Paul Harvey would have said
Any helpful pointers you could give would be appreciated. Oh, and I reserve the right to post a link back and reference to this post.
Link | August 12th, 2007 at 3:29 pm
RGS wrote,
Hello Tony,
thank you for your comment .. I was kind of shocked to (esecially me boing German) to see that symbol pretty often (more in the next post) on buddhist sights. It is mirror flipped though and apparently the Nazis took it from the Buddhist … and I am curious about it as well how this relates. If you find something out please post a comment. Also I edited your post and removed the hyperlink in your comments … your nickname already leads right to your blog .. .. RGS policy!
Link | August 12th, 2007 at 8:00 pm
Tony wrote,
No problem on the edit out of the link, RGS, I fully understand. I am sure between us we will come up with some very interesting information on the topic of the swastika on the Buddhas. Dank je wel, mijn vriend.
Link | August 12th, 2007 at 8:36 pm
Hong Kong: Po Lin Monastery | Random Good Stuff - The Entertainment Blog wrote,
[...] our visit at the Tian Tan Buddha we walked 268 steps down again and walked over to the Po Lin Monastery. If you bought a lunch [...]
Link | August 13th, 2007 at 6:37 pm
Tony wrote,
Swastika – Chinese called it, “WAN” Zi, Japanese named it “MAN” Ji, Tibetan read it as “GYUNG-DRUNG” or GEG-GSANG. The word swastika is derived from the Sanskrit means, “conducive to well- being”. S-vasti in Sanskrit is “It’s well”
Swastika is a symbol of prosperity and good fortune and is widely dispersed in both the ancient and modern world. It originally represented the revolving sun, fire, or life. The swastika was widely utilized in ancient Mesopotamian coinage as well as appearing in early Christian and Byzantium art, where it was known as the gammadion cross. The swastika also appeared in South and Central America, widely used in Mayan art during that time period.
And much more information on the use of the swastika in religion and culture at http://web.singnet.com/~sidneys/Swastika.htm.
Link | August 14th, 2007 at 3:54 pm
RGS wrote,
Tony …. awesome research. Did you figure out why the Nazis snatched it?
Link | August 14th, 2007 at 4:00 pm
Tony wrote,
There is so much more information about the swastika and religion than I had anticipated. It is actually a very interesting subject and one I may post about sometime in the future. As to how the Nazi’s adopted a version of the swastika for their emblem I found this on Wikipedia…
The use of the swastika was associated by Nazi theorists with their conjecture of Aryan cultural descent of the German people. Following the Nordicist version of the Aryan invasion theory , the Nazis claimed that the early Aryans of India, from whose Vedic tradition the swastika sprang, were the prototypical white invaders. It was also widely believed that the Indian caste system had originated as a means to avoid racial mixing. The concept of Racial purity was an ideology central to Nazism though it is now considered unscientific. For Rosenberg, the Aryans of India were both a model to be imitated and a warning of the dangers of the spiritual and racial “confusion” that, he believed, arose from the close proximity of races. Thus, they saw fit to co-opt the sign as a symbol of the Aryan master race. The use of the swastika as a symbol of the Aryan race dates back to writings of Emile Burnouf. Following many other writers, the German nationalist poet Guido von List believed it to be a uniquely Aryan symbol.
Link | August 14th, 2007 at 5:02 pm
Hiking Down Ngong Ping - Lo Hon | Random Good Stuff - The Entertainment Blog wrote,
[...] seeing the Tian Tan Buddha and the Po Lin Monastery we decided to hike down back to the MTR Sation (mostly because we [...]
Link | August 15th, 2007 at 6:44 pm
Prince Siddhartha turns in to Buddha | Random Good Stuff - The Entertainment Blog wrote,
[...] Did you miss out when I visited a Buddha? [...]
Link | October 14th, 2007 at 1:02 pm