The Hong Kong Continues...Day Four

Day Four- Temple of 10,000 Buddhas and Market time

For breakfast we decided to stop at this place called Yoshinoya which seemed to be Japanese chain of fast food. I got like a chicken and vegetable bowl. It was pretty much chicken, rice, vegetables and their version of teryaki sauce. The chicken they serve in China is quite interesting. They pretty much use all parts of the chicken (including the feet) so you have to be careful which dish you order. This was just dark meat chicken but it had skin on it. So I think I ended up eating like 1 of the 8 pieces. The vegetables were good. I also had a Pepsi with ice. We were told the water and ice is okay to drink in Hong Kong but not in mainland China.

This day was really Julie's day to choose the activities because I chose to do Macau and that didn't turn out too well. So she wanted to go to the Temple of 10,000 Buddhas. It was in Hong Kong but we had to take the East Rail Line to get there so it was a little on the outskirts. We got off at the Shia Tian stop and we actually saw a sign for it. So we had read that it was like 400-500 steps to the top of this temple. We went in the direction it pointed and along the way ran into two other Americans who were looking for it too. We walked up a hill to the large complex on the hill and figured it was it. We took escalators up which we thought was weird. We were walking throughout, taking a couple of pictures and then started to notice how much it looked like a mausoleum. We eventually asked and this lady pulls out a laminated piece of paper that basically said she didn't speak English, that this wasn't the temple of 10,000 Buddhas but that we were very close and it gave directions how to get there. We just started laughing because for this woman to have a laminated piece of paper stating this, she must get tons of people coming in there doing what we did. We eventually went in the direction she gave and man was it a trek. Julie was kind of hauling ass but me and the two guys were taking our time. All along the way up the steps were these statues that were supposed to be like wannabe Buddhas in all these different positions and with different features. When we got to the top there was this temple building and then all these other statues spread throughout like a guy riding a giant blue dog and other random ones. Then in the main building there were all the Buddhas. Apparently there are more like 13,000 Buddhas. They range from little one inch ones to ones that are like 1-2 feet tall. They are all along the wall up and down and then there are these giant ones in the middle. It was very impressive. We roamed around a bit and even went up higher but that just looked like a place where the wannabe Buddhas went to retire because there were a bunch of busted ones.

Eventually we headed back down the hill and decided to head for lunch. Our days usually consist of eat, activity, eat, activity, eat, sleep, and I think you see where I'm going with this. We were recommended by the Renaissance a restaurant in the Chinese cultural center for some dim sum. We headed in that direction. We saw a sign that said something about 2080HKD so we quickly decided to eat elsewhere. We wandered a little and found a museum cafe to eat at. Both Julie and I got chicken in soup with noodles. So it was basically a peppery broth with cabbage, red peppers, and slices of noodles with stringy gross chicken. I just ate the noodles and cabbage mainly. At this point I decided that maybe chicken wasn't the best option.

From there we sat at the harbour and planned our next event. I read in one of our books about a flower market so we headed to Mong Kok to go there. It really wasn't that impressive just a group of shops selling flowers on the same road. It was a nice smell for a change. When I was checking a map I looked down and noticed these two people holding a child and another one was holding a bag beneath it. So basically the kid was peeing on the streets. That was a sight. After the flower market we wandered into a bird market/hangout or as I call, the place to get Avian flu. It was basically a bunch of birds in cages for sale and a couple of locals hanging out with their birds. From there we headed to Goldfish market which was conveniently located down the road. It smelled so bad that we could barely go a block down the road so we took a couple of pictures and headed out. Then we went back down the main street Prince Edward West and saw another market for shopping. It was basically comprised of designer name knock off clothes, shoes, underwear, socks, bags of designers like Dolce and Gabbana, Guess, Burberry, Paul Frank, and tons more. We even saw a jersey that said 50 CENT on it. After that we decided to head back and take a nap and were planning on going out to the Temple Street Night Market and maybe a bar but never made it.