Toothbrushes and Lantau Island

(Drew)

I woke up at 6:30 to take a shower before heading to our breakfast in the hotel. The view from the breakfast room is absolutely breathtaking. As we sat and devoured our western style breakfast we overlooked the channel between Kowloon and Hongkong. Massive cruise ships and barges passed through the narrow channel.

During breakfast Ric had some news for us. A sigh of relief followed by a celebration with fireworks and a marching band (slight exageration) came when team China heard that Mitt Romney had dropped out of the Presidential Race. Nick and I have clearly not adjusted to the water situation. Everything must be bottled water. After Breakfast i heard a loud yell from the bathroom in our hotel room as nick announced that he had forgotten to use the bottled water to wet his toothbrush. Nick then rinsed his toothbrush again with bottled water. I commented how bad we are at remembering to use the bottled water. Nick nodded in agreement as he proceeded to put his toothbrush under the tap water again... another loud yell of frustration from nick and i was on the ground laughing hysterically. Only 5 minutes later i used the tap water on my own toothbrush. We have work to do.

We took the MTR to Lantau to take a lift up into the hills and see the "Big Buddha". The ride up gave us a panaramic view of all of Hong Kong and Kowloon. We arrived in the village at the top that was more of a
tourist attraction than a real "village". The "Big Buddha" was biggerthan i even imagined it to be. Many flights of steps led up to the Buddha which towered over its observers at least 40ft. At the base insence filled the air around Po Lin Temple. Many worshipers lit insence of all shapes and sizes. The outside of the temple was covered in stone work of what looked like chinese scholars and dragons. The trip was very well documented on the cameras the group brought. Unofortunatly the temple and the large Buddha seemed to be more of a tourist attraction and a good photo than a place of real worship. I found my self being rather hypocritical when i commented on everyone taking pictures of everything rather than really enjoying what was there. Of course that was what i had been doing the entire time.

We entered a tea shop before departing from the village. The tea shop showed us the traditional way of serving tea and all the items needed to prepare for it. We were given a list of many different types of tea to choose from. Our group was split in two, our group (me,nick and emily) ordered the famous Dragon Well Tea from Hangzhou. The cups given to us were similar to the size of thimbles so we must have gone through about 25 cups of tea each. It goes without saying, it was delicious. Team China are tea addicts.

We took the cable car back to the base of the hills on Lantau. The group decided that taking the ferry back would be more fun than the MTR so we preemtively boared what we thought would take us back to
Hong Kong. Unfortunatly we were quite far away from our intended destination and had ended up traveling north to the western part of Kowloon.

By the time we got back to Hong Kong we were absolutely starving and some of us (not mentioning names) were grumpy. Some honey glazed pork, garlic chicken hot pot and noodles quickly fixed that problem.

Our adventures in China have been everything i expected so far. Hong Kong is so full of life but enough places speak english so the culture shock has not killed me yet. My legs are completely dead after each day, but the girls just keep going and going. Our hotel room can be a relief at the end of the day.