Day 14 - Lantau Island and Hong Kong Park

I went to Lantau Island in the morning to see the large buddha and Po Lin Monestary. I had accidentally bought a ticket downstairs from an independant company for the cable car ride and to the top and a bus ride back. On the cable car ride I figured out that the bus would take hours to get back and the cable car was only 25 min. So I ended up getting a ticket to come back down on the cable car.

Today ended up being incredibly hot at about 30 C and Lantau was really busy because it was a public holiday. The view from the cable car is amazing. Directly underneath the cable car is a path you could walk up to the mountain. I actually saw a few people using it on the way up. In some areas the path is so steep its insane. Its like climbing a ladder but people will still take the trek up. The fact that the cable car takes 25 min, you would have to guess that it would take at least 3 hours for someone to walk up to the mountain up the narrow, but well maintained path.

I went back to Hong Kong and went to the Aviary at Hong Kong park. At this point I was exhausted from the heat and climbing so many sets of stairs. It took me forever to get to Hong Kong park. I could see it but I couldn't get to it because Hong Kong is full of pedestrian overpasses. You cannot just cross the road to get to the other side. You need to find the right overpass going the right way in the right building or you end up somewhere else. It's actually quite confusing. This city is definitely not made for people in wheel chairs that's for sure! When I finally reached the aviary it was pretty cool, its an outside aviary enclosed in a net that housed 600 species of birds that are allowed to fly around freely with elevated walkways for viewing them.

For dinner, we headed out to Shek-O on the other side of Hong Kong island. Its a weird but interesting little town. It's like a hippie town full of stray cats, surfers on the beach and older people playing mah jong in the back of restaurants. The thai food was very good. I finally had an alright tasting green papaya salad (I really need to learn how to make this in Thailand!).

I ended up having drinks in the Soho District in central Hong Kong. This place is awesome! I totally know why people don't ever want to leave here once they start to live here. This area was full of expats, travellers and an excess of cockroaches all over the streets at night. What a great city!