A trip to Zen and dinner with the fam

Monday, 16 July, 2012

Waking up without an alarm or any disturbance was definitely a welcomed feeling. 11:00 on the dot, my eyes opened to Anders slight snoring on the other side of the bed. I lightly tapped him and told him the time. We both realised, as good as sleeping feels, we needed to get up if we wanted to remotely do anything in hk today.

I rang my friend Elaine and my cousin Karey to figure out our appointments today. The original plan was to meet Elaine for lunch, but her work got in the way of things. She suggested drinks tonight, but I told her we have dinner with my uncle's family at 8:30, so not going to be done till 10...maybe too late. Her response was, not by hk standards, so we're meeting up tonight. I haven't seen or barely spoke to her since my last visit in 2008. She's a friend that I met in PwC New York.

At 1pm, we were finally ready to leave the hotel. We decided to give the WSJ #1 pick for dim sum a try before going to Lantau Island to see the Tian Tan Buddha Statue.

The restaurant was called City Hall Maxim's place. It was a rather classy place with huge chandeliers and view of the harbor. The serving style was traditional carts, but if you want something they're not carting, you can request for it. I was happy to get my gwon tong gow (a dumpling in a soup). Anders tried his first dow fu fa (silken tofu in sweet ginger syrup). We ordered lots of dishes and Anders is starting to realize what good dim sun taste like. It was definitely good and a bit cheaper than yesterday's. I'm continued to be amazed how English is becoming so standard here. Even the old carting ladies can speak English!

By the time we were done, it was already 3pm. To go or not go to the Buddha...that was our dilemma. It takes around 45mins on the MTR and then a 25min scenic cable car ride. From what I remembered, there wasn't much to do besides the cable car ride and the Buddha, so we gave it a go.

The MTR ride was around 40mins out to the area where we caught the cable car ride. As we exited it started to rain and black clouds hovered above us. Not a good day to check out the scenic view. We were determined to give it a go anyway, so off we went to the ticket office. There was a white guy with a camera around his neck, clear signs of a tourist, just exiting...so I stopped and asked him how the conditions were up there. Could we even see the buddha? Granted it would be hard to miss anyhow. I think it's the largest Buddha statue in the world. He assured us the fog comes and goes, so we should give it a go given we were already there. He was nice, even though he was french :-)

There were two ticket options standard or ohh la la "crystal" class. It was around 100hkd difference per person, and the real difference is the glass floor on the cable car. As Anders have a huge fear of height, the glass floor would have terrified him, thus we went for the standard. Lucky us no one at that time bought the standard car, so we had it all to ourselves. It was indeed very cool and a bit romantic to be on the cable car alone. Anders freaked out a bit when it was windy. He started to imagine what will happen if the floor dropped and we had to sit the whole 25min ride only on our seats. Silly to even think of it, but scary if it did happened. One of the main attractions of the ride is to see the Buddha from a distance, however the fog / clouds completely blocked the view. We just had to wait for the up close and personal view.

On arrival, we had roughly give or take 1.5 hours before we had to head back to get ready for dinner with my cousins, aunt and uncle. Without wasting time, we headed towards the Buddha, but got distracted by some ancient fighting performances and funny wall stands where you put your head on to pose for a photo. It took a good 30mins before we we we're back on track. We climbed up like 300 steps to say hello to buddha. On the way we took some photos of us imitating Buddha, which caused some frustration. Between the fog casting over buddha every now and then, the many tourists trying to get by, and Anders not being able to snap a good photo, there were definitely a mouthful of complaining on my part. All in all, we survived the trip to zen. On the way out we stopped by the monastery and some ice cream (after many requests from Anders). Anders thought the monastery was very tranquil, it was the first time he stepped foot into one. I'm glad to hear he preferred it over a church.

The rush home and out again was challenging. We ended up being 15mins late to meet my relatives, but they seemed ok with it and just glad to see me. We went to a shanghai restaurant in TST. It was very refreshing and clean. Food in hk is just so good. There were good laughs during dinner. My aunt kept on feeding Anders and he kept on saying, "sure I'll take it." Maybe he's too shy to refuse as not eating will be a big no no in Chinese culture...or maybe the food is that good and he wanted to eat it. I also went through the whole process of explaining to him that this veggie he was eating was some sort of seaweed, to just realize later it was a type of mushroom. Oops! Dinner lasted until 10:30 and my cousin offered to go out with us. However I denied her since I I knew she needed to work at 8:30am, and she still had an hour ride home on top of four more work days. Apparently the state required holidays is only 7 days a year, my youngest cousin had that and the oldest had 15 days...not anything really comparable to Norwegian standards! Anders quickly reconsidered his toying around idea of moving to hk for a year or two. After we said goodbye, we gave Elaine a call and found out she was still working and was uncertain when she would be finished. We agreed for lunch tomorrow.

Anders and I decided to take a wander ourselves to find a bar, was not too successful, so we went for a nice stroll in TST to admire the beautiful skyline. It was really nice and we captured some cool photos. The self photo of two of us was not that successful though. We then tried to go to the mandarin oriental again...and was not very successful again! I led Anders out one station too early and then couldn't find an underpass through the highway, so we gave up and called it a night.