Hong Kong Heritage Museum

The Hong Kong Heritage Museum is located near the Che Kung Temple MTR station.  The stated purpose of the Museum is as follows:  "To preserve, study, present and interpret the material culture of the peoples of Hong Kong for the education, inspiration and enjoyment of Hong Kong residents and visitors."  The collections of art and artifacts are relatively small but worthwhile.  The strength of the Museum is in its art collections of pottery and ceramics from ancient Chinese dynastic periods.  

Ten Thousand Buddhas Monastery

On Wednesday, we took the MTR to Sha Tin station in order to see the Ten Thousand Buddhas monastery, actually more than 12,000 Buddhas have been constructed..  The climb up to the very top was steep but we all persevered and made it to the top.  According to Kacy and Pat who are young enough to count each step and still make it to the top with aplomb, there were 593 steps.   There were also approximately another 72 steps that we took to get to the top of a pagoda on the temple grounds.  I cannot vouch for the count as I was just happy that I survived the climb, much less count each step along the way. 

Per Wikipedia, "The Ten Thousand Buddhas Monastery was constructed at the beginning of 1949. Despite his old age, Yuet Kai carried the buildings materials personally from the foot of the mountain together with his disciples to build the monastery. It took eight years to complete all the buildings and another ten years to finish the 12,000 Buddha statues. Construction was finished in 1957. Today, his preserved body is presented in the main hall of the monastery in a glass case, often the main attraction of the temple."

Here are some photos of some of the more interesting Buddhas (do not fret as I am not going to attach a photo of all 12,000 Buddhas) we saw along the way as well as sights on the temple grounds at the top.  You can see how high we were in one of the photos as the high-rises in Sha Tin are visible in the background. 

Spring Deer Restaurant

We had reservations at the Spring Deer restaurant on Mody Road. Although it definitely lacks any sense of ambience, the food is what attracts people there, especially the Peking Duck which I must confess is the best that I have had.  However, it is not exactly the easiest restaurant to find as you have to go through a small store/bazaar before reaching the steps that actually lead to the restaurant.  The last photo showed the bazaar that we had to go through before getting to the steps.  Alas, the shop had already closed by the time we had finished dinner.  Thus you cannot truly appreciate the labyrinth that we had to navigate before we found the steps.

Once there, you can almost savor the taste of the Peking duck before it even arrives.  The duck is carved by your table.  Once the crispy skin and thin duck meat are ready, you place them on a thin crepe, add a dash of plum sauce, and you are ready to enjoy a true culinary masterpiece.  BTW, we did have some other dishes as well. Our favorite was a plate of finely shredded spicy beef that we put into a pastry that was akin to a pita-pocket.

Dinner with the Relatives

As is our custom, we always treat all of our relatives to dinner.  Before dinner, they insisted that we eat some food even before dinner.  Thus we were already somewhat full before dinner even began.  However, we managed to at least taste every entree that had been ordered.  Among the dishes were roast suckling pig and roast goose as can be seen in the photos below.  By the end of the dinner, we were all very full and tired.  As this was our first night in Hong Kong (yes, my blog is somewhat out of sequence :-), we were extremely tired on the subway ride back to our hotel. One interesting note is that there were 3 young toddlers among our relatives, all boys.  Sean and Danielle are keeping the string of boys going as well.

 "Goo Paw", my Mother and Goo Paw's daughter

Po Lin Temple

After we enjoyed visiting the Big Buddha, we stopped by the Po Lin Buddhist temple.  While there, we made our offerings to the Buddhist deities by burning incense sticks.

On our way to the Po Lin temple with the steps to the Big Buddha behind us

Tian Tian Big Buddha on Lantau Island

Once we arrived at the top of the mountain, we proceeded to climb the 268 steps to the Big Buddha.  To be honest with you, I was more concerned with surviving long enough to make it to the top than counting the number of steps.  Thus I cannot confirm that there were actually 268 steps.  I am glad to report that we all made it to the top with no problem whatsoever.  Once there we toured the Big Buddha monument.  We also went into the temple itself to look at the Buddhist artifacts.  Alas, it was all in Chinese and even Teri was not able to read all of it as it was in archaic Chinese.

Once we were spiritually fulfilled, we enjoyed the ice cream and cold bottle of water that were included in our "donation" to the temple.  I like this combination of spiritual enlightenment with cooling refreshments.  :-)   Kacy chose an ice cream cone that she thought was interesting but it turned out to be a banana concoction that was not to her liking.  Fortunately, I chose the tried and true, vanilla ice cream with chocolate bits. As you can tell from the photos, it was rather foggy at the top with even the Big Buddha covered in fog.