Blogging...better late than never: Part One

So I attempted to write this blog before I went to Japan...epic fail I suppose. So unedited and unfinished here's the post you should have gotten like two weeks ago:

Well, it appears that I've done a fairly poor job with this blogging thing since I've been back in HK. Not enough time really to do any writing. So, I'll give you all a summary of my travels so far.

My flight out of Vancouver took an extra 2 hours. Anyone who's ever taken a 14 hour flight anywhere, an extra two hours is not a fun time. Not too mention that sleeping on the flight was next to impossible cause of the two giggly fools sitting in front of me. I swear, every twenty minutes the one sitting by the window would open the shutter and then I would get slapped in the face with sunlight. After another hour and a half on the bus, I finally reached my HK home. So, all-in-all, I left Vancouver at 3:10pm Monday and arrived here at V's house at 12am Wednesday.

Since I had been travelling for what seemed like forever and since V was still working, I didn't do much the next day. Mostly, I slept, unpacked my stuff and watched hockey. I helped out with some house work too. Thankfully the apartment isn't too big. We went out for dinner that night ending up at a Chinese fusion restaurant called Red Ant. As with most of the food here in HK, it was really good. Didn't do too much after dinner. We wandered around and did some shopping for a bit, then hopped the shuttle back to the apartment and called it an early night.

The next day was the big day. Let me start by saying, that this is my fifth trip to Hong Kong. In all of those trips, I've done a lot of the touristy things and I've also ventured off on my own to explore parts of Hong Kong that many people will never see. Still, one of the things that I still hadn't seen was the famous Big Buddha (more formally known at the Tian Tan Buddha). Although, if you haven't heard of it till now, it might not be that famous. Anyways, Today, meaning Thursday, was the day that I would finally go see the Big Buddha. V's mom told me that I should go with V cause she has only seen it once. The funny part to stress here was that V's mom seemed more interested that V go see the Buddha for a second time than me seeing it for the first time. Not sure why.

So, we headed out early that morning and started out on our way. In terms of geography, V's apartment is at one end of Hong Kong, while the Big Buddha sits at the exact opposite end. Instead of taking the MTR (the HK subway system) we hopped on the good ol' E22 (you might remember that V, her brother and I had a bit of an adventure the last time I was here and we took the E22) and headed out to Tung Chung where the gondolas are. The gondolas travel across fairly mountainous terrain travelling up to Ngong Ping Village, which is like a super small Chinese Whistler Village. Basically, there's a lot of places to eat and tourist shops there.

Just a side note, there are I believe 4 major hiking trails in Hong Kong, the Hong Kong trail, the MacLehose trail, the Wilson Trail and the Lantau trail. As, I was saying before, the gondola travels up and over some fairly mountainous terrain. Below the gondola, is part of the Lantau trail. As, I understand it, if you wanted to you could walk up the mountains to the Buddha if you wanted to. As we soared over the Lantau trail, I looked down to see at my amazement an extremely old man hiking to the peaks of the trail.

End of Part One.