Ngong Ping

I landed in HK at night on November 1st and made my way to the Regal Airport Hotel where I had booked a room with American Express points that I was unlikely to use otherwise.

On the morning of November 2nd, I checked out and left my larger backpack with the concierge. Walking out of the hotel, I found the bus stop easily and hopped onto a bus to Tung Chung. The bus journey took about 15 minutes. Crossing the bridge into Tung Chung, I saw the cable car station and immediately alighted.

There was a bit of a queue for the cable car when I got there at 9.45am, which was just ahead of the operating hours which start at 10am. I bought a standard cable car ticket for HKD210 (about USD30). The line moved quickly and I was on a cable car by 10.10am. The cable car journey took about 25 minutes, climbing up some very steep mountain sides. It was hazy, but I could still get good views of Lantau Island, the airport, and a huge infrastructure project - a bridge linking Hong Kong to Macau and Zhuhai.

The cable car deposited me at Ngong Ping Village which, not surprisingly, turned out to be a tourist trap. I wasn’t there for the touristy stuff anyway. I walked through the village and found my way to the Tian Tan Buddha, which was a big and very impressive sitting Buddha atop a long flight of stairs. There was an exhibition hall underneath the Buddha but it wasn’t well annotated so I didn’t learn much from it.

After visiting the Buddha, I went to Po Ling Monastery. The monastery grounds were nice and shady and there were a couple of impressive halls. I had a good lunch at the vegetarian restaurant on the grounds.

After lunch, I sought out the Path of Wisdom, located about 15 minutes walk away from the monastery. The Path of Wisdom has a series of halved tree trunks with wise sayings carved into them. Unfortunately, I didn’t come away from this walk any wiser because I couldn’t read the inscriptions, which were in Chinese.

After a very pleasant few hours atop the mountain, I took the cable car back down, boarded a bus back to the airport, retrieved my bag, and checked in for my onward leg to Singapore.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/tian-tan-bu…

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