peng chau, mui wo, ngong ping

Posted on | October 23, 2008 | No Comments

we had a wonderful final day in hong kong.

first up was to take a small local ferry across to peng chau.
this was less than fifteen minutes across glass-like sea.
peng chau is just charming….small, sleepy, quaint, and the locals claim it is the last bit of geniune old hong kong anywhere.
we walked through the fish market, sat in the little square of park, strolled the narrow alleyways with the mad little shops, and enjoyed the architecture.
there are no cars on the island and it is simply marvellous.
peng chau waterfront:

peng chau shops:

roadworks:

from peng chau, we caught another ferry to mui wo, back on lantau island.
we had just enough time for iced tea at the china bear cafe on the waterfront there, before taking the bus to ngong ping.
incredible bus ride…we passed some very fancy homes, some rundown shophouses, some runs of ashes up a hillside, a water buffalo on the footpath, a reservoir that overlooked a bay, and too many other strange things to list.
commuter parking at the mui wo ferry landing:

catching out first glimpse of the big buddha was jaw-dropping.
he really is magnificent, and there he is perched on a mountain top that you can clearly see from miles away.
amongst the predictable big-buddha-theme-park-circus were some genuine devotees.
we did not climb the 268 steps up to the buddha…we were on a schedule culminating in an international flight.

we took the cable car back to tung chung.
on the way we passed over a couple of elaborate grave sites, set in madly inaccessible places high in the hills.
heaven knows how they got the building materials all the way up there…but what a wonderful view for all eternity.
over the last hill and looking down on tung chung:

a final bus ride with school kids and commuters, all plugged into cellphones and ipods and blackberries and we were back in discovery bay, in time for one last dinner with the cousins.

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