From Central I took the MTR to Lantau Island, where I was immediately bombarded with advertising for Ngong Ping 360 and all the wonders they make available. Sky-Land-Sea Adventure! Guided tours! Culture and heritage! Local delicacy!

I opted for a round-trip cable car ride across the mountains to the Buddha statue. I spent an extra US$11 for the Crystal Cabin, which has a glass floor. The ratio of standard cabins to crystal is 2-1, but the line for the standard looked about ten times as long. Plus you get to look down. Well worth it.

Some of the other cars looked a little spartan.

The ride is about 3.5 miles and takes 25 minutes.

Eventually you see Mr. Buddha off in the distance.

The cable car deposits you at Ngong Ping 360’s photo center, where you have the opportunity to buy the photo they took of you when you departed. Then you exit through the gift shop into the Ngong Ping Village, which is a long avenue of shops and restaurants that leads to the temple. It’s basically a shopping center that’s made to look like a village. Kind of like Disneyland’s Main Street USA, but with a Chinese flavor. And Starbucks. With Christmas decorations. And numerous displays that feature a cartoon Koala who is somehow associated with the Korean company Lotte. There was also a display of cable car cabins from around the world.

It was at this point that my camera battery died.

I skipped the temple and walked up the loooong (and really crowded) stairway to the statue. The statue itself is the largest outdoor seated bronze Buddha statue in the world (presumably he would be taller if he stood up), and was made by China Aerospace Science and Technology, although I don’t know what prompted them to do so. The statue has three levels, but you have to pay to go to the top one, which I didn’t. I was allowed to visit the gift shop, though.

The view from the top is nice, and worth the climb, but there isn’t much of a reason for a non-Buddhist with a dead camera battery to stick around, so I went back down to the village and got a mediocre donar kebob at Ebenezer’s Kebabs and Pizzeria. Then I took the cable car back and missed another opprtunity to buy a photo of myself.

Once through the gift shop, the Ngong Ping people are done with you, and you go down an escalator to the street below, where you have to negotiate your way through through traffic to get back to the train station.

When I got back to the room, I fell asleep until nearly 4:00. No time to go up on Victoria Peak, so I took a harbor cruise. It was relaxing and the engines worked the whole time.