Hi guys! Some of you might have known that my mom and brother came to visit me in Hong Kong recently🙌🏻 It was a really pleasant week to have them in town and tbh I was quite sad when they left on the last day😢 During their stay, I managed to bring them to places that I also want to go. I purposely delayed my visit to those places during my first 1 month and a half because I want to go there with them. And one of the places is... *drumroll* BIG BUDDHA!
The bronze statue of Big Buddha (天坛大佛) is the second biggest outdoor-sitting Buddha statue in the world (after Taiwan) and the main centre of Buddhism in Hong Kong. It is located at Ngong Ping, Lantau Island. It's very easy to get there. Just take the MTR to Tung Chung station and go to exit B. There we can choose either to take the bus (Lantau Bus 23) or take the cable car from Tung Chung Cable Car Terminal. Both choices will bring you to the Big Buddha. We opted for the second option.
However, we went out quite late and just arrived at Tung Chung station during the lunch time. So first thing first, we need to fuel up ourself! We had a quick lunch at The Spaghetti House inside Citygate Outlet (Tung Chung station Exit C) first. We ordered appetizer, lasagna and half rack pork ribs. Quite pricey, but comes in the proper quantity and quality compared to the price.
However, we went out quite late and just arrived at Tung Chung station during the lunch time. So first thing first, we need to fuel up ourself! We had a quick lunch at The Spaghetti House inside Citygate Outlet (Tung Chung station Exit C) first. We ordered appetizer, lasagna and half rack pork ribs. Quite pricey, but comes in the proper quantity and quality compared to the price.
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| My first proper western meal in HK!😋 |
After a satisfying lunch, we rushed to Tung Chung Cable Car Terminal. For the cable car itself, there are two options: the standard cabin and the crystal cabin (with glass bottom). We took the standard cabin which cost $185 per person for round trip. Unfortunately, because we went there during the public holiday, there were quite number of visitors and it took almost one hour for us to queue for the ticket and get to the cable car. During our waiting, we saw that the crystal cable car got separated line and it was not that crowded. It costs $70 more ($255) but we thought it would be much better to take the crystal one as we could save more time. I also shortly noticed that there's another pax with half trip standard cabin and half trip crystal cabin for (if I'm not mistaken) $240. I didn't know such package exist until after I bought mine.
We share the cable car with the other 5 visitors. The trip was about 20 to 25 minutes. From the top, I could see the airport, some buildings and our eyes were also refreshed by the green sceneries of Lantau island. Luckily, the weather was perfect when we were up there. It was not sunny and quite windy. We could feel the breeze of the air inside the cabin!
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| Hiking track seen from the top |
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| Can you spot the Big Buddha? |
After we off from the cable car, we entered an area called Ngong Ping Village. The village was designed with Chinese ambiance with several shops along the street designed in Chinese typical design. There were some shops where you could grab refreshments. You may expect to have traditional snack, but they also have those fancy modern shops like Starbucks, Honeymoon Dessert and Subway. There were also quite numbers of attractions that you can visit which we decided to skip because we only interested to see the Big Buddha (see the details here). I really love the homey and comfortable atmosphere there. They got plenty spots for pictures too!
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| Do you remember in my hiking post, I managed to see an ox walking freely? I saw some as well here! |
After a 20-mins walk from the main entrance with some photo-stops, we can finally see the access stairs to the Big Buddha. My mom said that she won't go up as it was a lot of stairs ahead us but my brother and I insisted to go up. So we split-off, bro and I went up, mom stayed downstair wandering around. I started excitedly climbing up the several first stairs and ended up running out of breathe in the middle. Blame my zero sports skill.
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| Taking picture as an excuse to stop and breathe |
If you're hungry and tired after climbing up and down the Big Buddha's stairs, you can visit the dessert and snack store/cafe near that area (different from the ones in the entrance area). The special feature is (as they claimed it to be), it's vegetarian dessert and snack! The cafe sells ranges of snacks like pineapple bun, mochi and deep fried sesame ball (onde-onde in Bahasa Indonesia). They also sell bean curd dessert with ginger soup (Tauwa in Bahasa Indonesia). I usually don't like bean curd with ginger in Indonesia, because the ginger is too hot (spicy) for my liking; but their bean-curd is sweet and the ginger was just perfect. I can eat happily eat it :)
It was about 5 PM when we started to make our way back to the cable car terminal. What welcomed us when we almost reached the entrance area was really shocking view: a very long queue of people! I wonder why we need to queue a lot that day😂 I think we queued for more than an hour to get to the cable car. When we were up there in the cable car, we can hardly see anything because it was already dark.
Overall, we think that the visit to Big Buddha was really relaxing and fun. Actually there are more things that you can do once you get to Ngong Ping, but we were constrained by the limited time. Perhaps, it means we will have the next chance to go back to Ngong Ping again? 😝
That's all for this post! Hope you guys enjoy the reading and see you in my next post! xx
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