Adventures of Big Buddha

Do y'all remember that song "big booty big booty big booty ohhh big booty?" 😂😂 Well this day I kept thinking big buddha big buddha big buddha. No? Okay...Anyways. Keep readinggg lol.

It is better to travel well than to arrive.

Yesterday was an adventure with Josh (aka the man, the myth, the legend--Jmac). For our buddy date, we spent the entire day (we talkin 12 hours haha) at Lantau Island! Home of the Tian Tan Buddha, the one thing I've somehow been hyping up before I even left for Hong Kong. Let's just say today turned out to be suuuuper fun but not because of the big buddha. We started our day with a long MTR ride and wonderful convo, then ate at a really good restaraunt. I ordered the chicken tikka salad and oh em G it was the BIGGEST salad I've ever seen. Like YALL they went crayyyy on that one! Even I had trouble finishing it haha. We also got some fries ("fresh cut chips" teehee) and jalapeño poppers. The waitress probably thought we were so goofy because we asked for more water like five times haha.

Post-feast, we decided to go for a nice hike. We walked in the general direction of the hike and the sign said 1km and we laughed, thinking well shoot, that's a short hike haha. Noticing a little trail off of the main paved pathway, we decided to go for it and ended up along a new trail. We thought it didn't go anywhere past a waterfall, but we saw two women climbing to the top. The one lady had a cane and was climbing up some pretty steep slopes so Josh and I thought, why not keep going?! We saw the woman point to the trail and try to mime what she was saying since we didn't speak Cantonese. She kept pointing to her loading Google Maps page on her phone, trying to explain to us that there's a trail. We kept going up, and, well, kept going up!! Josh set a timer to see how far we went in case we wanted to turn around if it didn't go anywhere, but it actually went somewhere!! Our 1km hike on a flat, paved road turned into an hour-and-a-half hike through nature--and when I say through nature, I mean the bushes and foliage were brushing my shins and neck with every step. I loved the hike and the spontaneity of the whole adventure!

We passed some people on the way and luckily they said we were close to the top (they thought haha, talking bout some 15 mins to a main road when there was no road at the top). We crested the hill/mountain and overlooked the HK airport and the town below. I love how the view wasn't necessarily the most iconic view ever, but the hike was such a surprise. Josh said we were only 1000 feet "as the crow flies" away from the place we needed to go, but that meant (in reality) going over a whole other mountain haha. The walk down was super fun and we ended up near the same spot we started, which was perfect! After, we called a cab and realized it was a wee bit suspicious since it wasn't well-labeled. The driver spoke perfect English, and said it would be 200hkd, then all of a sudden when we tried to negotiate lower than 180hkd he "didn't understand what we were saying"😂 Like boyyyy I know you lyin😂😂 So when we left the cab we gave him 150hkd--talk about a negotiation hahah. The ride over was so so pretty! Brought back memories of when we first arrived at the Hong Kong airport.

Since my phone was low on storage I didn't take too many pics and simply lived in the moment--I will share the pics of the big buddha tho! Spoiler alert, it's under construction so it's more like the covered-up buddha😂 I'm not sure why the blogs/articles online hype up how many steps to the top there are--I walk up more than that to get to my dorm everyday haha.

I laughed when seeing the sign saying maintenance cuz it's exactly how I felt.

Expectation:

Reality:

😂

You could still go inside a bit and look at everything, which was nice! Don't worry tho, we still made it a fantastic day!!

We smelled the smoke from two-foot-long incense sticks, gazed at the gold-adorned temples in awe, accidentally photobombed some lady's vlog to bang on some Chinese drums, walked on the "wisdom path" and found hidden trails and picturesque views, and laughed while eating some translucent mango jelly that turned out to be super good. We wanted to ride the cable car down but the wait time was 3 hours (what is this, Disney?!) and the bus line was just as long, so we walked down a trail for about an hour to get to the MTR station. Oh, and we saw tons of cows!

To be honest, I knew it was a tourist area, but WOW was it poppin! Even under renovation I was shook at all the shops and things. It's funny how it is such a cultural icon and then there are ads for shops selling drumstick ice cream and a Starbucks around the corner. Oh, to be in Hong Kong.

As usual, today was a day in the ZoZone. Can't wait to see ya next time for more adventures:)

xoxo