Year of the Yat: The Beach, the Peak, the Buddha!

So . . . it's been WAY too long since we have posted, so we have a few different trips posted below:

First, we went to the Silvermine Bay Beach for a day of relaxing in the sun and sand. It was about a 45- minute ferry ride from Hong Kong Island.

Tiffany at lunch looking at the water . . . lunch was a bit . . . questionable?

La Playa!

Excuse us while we practice for an Eharmony commercial . . .

Sunset on the way home.

Here's our place. You really have to think more like "college dorm room" than apartment or house. Tiffany classed the place up with some lanterns.

Since our friend Kristen had not been to the Peak yet and we had only been at night, we ventured during the day to the Peak a few days ago:

This is the Peak Tram. A tram has been running this route since 1880.

This is still the Peak, but looking away from the city.

Our adventure yesterday was to the BIG BUDDHA! You get there by Cable Car! (Or, some brave souls hike about 4 hours on an old stone trail). It's on Lantau Island, which is the largest island in the Hong Kong SAR.

Pretty intense engineering....

Initial Views:

The 25 minute ride really was beautiful . . .

At the top, the little village was preparing for the Mid-Autumn Festival, which is a festival with LOTS of lanterns...

ABOUT TO CONQUER THE BUDDHA (it's about 500 steps total)

Tiffany and Kristen picked up some pretty sweet "rice paddy hats" for about $4 each.

Short, straight, to the point.

The walk up....

Another gate in the courtyard before the stairs up to the Big Buddha...

Before the climb, we decided to pump ourselves up with some moves. . .

And everybody was KUNG FU FIGHTING:

The race paddy hat makes these moves look more legit...

And here we go!

Half way up!

Little Buddha?

Views from the top. You also could go inside the Buddha, where we saw some artifacts and a crystal relic.

This little Buddha went to market, this little Buddha stayed home . . .

There was a combination of tourists and Buddhist coming for religious reasons. Here, they were kneeling in front of the door and chanting.

Of Course - the big Buddha also served ice cream sandwiches! Dear St. Louis Cathedral, consider ice cream sandwiches at the end of your tours.

HIGH FIVES!

Did we mention that Hong Kong is hilly?

There was a monastery close to the Big Buddha that we also visited while there. There were TONS of places to burn incense outside.

The monastery (there was some work going on - all that scaffolding = bamboo!)

FRIENDS! (Or really bad ninja turtle costumes)

Crouching Tiger

HIDDEN DRAGON!

Tiffany and I inside the temple. Unlike the Chi Lin Nunnery, you could take pictures in here.

They ring this bell 108 times, because the Buddhist believe there are 108 bad desires. You are supposed to reflect on each bad desire for each bell ring.

Big tablet. That's as much as we figured out.

Tiffany REALLY liked this sign. NO MEAT!

One of the monks taking a cruise.

We each found our birth year and did our best to imitate the statute. Here's mine: The year of the boar.

And Tiffany is the year of the rooster! GO GAMECOCKS!

You could see the Buddha from just about everywhere. Yes, that's Tiffany and Kristen in their "special" hats. I even caught a few Asian tourists grabbing a picture of the crazy americans in their hats . . . Tiffany swears they were all just jealous of her hat...

After the Big Buddha, we took a short bus ride to the Tai O Fishing Village. While a bit underwhelming after the Buddha and monastery, it was definitely seeing a different side of Hong Kong.

Pretty much all of the fishermen seemed to live in houses like this . . .

In a place where refrigeration is uncommon for food products, most of the shops sold dried seafood. There were also a few that sold live seafood in large plastic containers with aerators in them.