Hong Kong day 4 – Lantau Island & Tian Tan Buddha

As already mentioned in the previous post Orlando and me got on very well and we decided to spend another day together today. I read, that local people in Hong Kong would have Dim Sum for breakfast, so I asked Orlando, if we could do this for breakfast before heading to the Buddha. He agreed and I was really happy about it, cause he is from Macau and therefore speaks Cantonese (the local language in Hong Kong) meaning besides being good company he brought in the extra plus to be the perfect translator.

I really enjoyed the food. You get a card where you pick from several dishes (dumplings, noodles, rice, meat, seafood etc) and hand it to the waitress. You then sit down and wait a couple of minutes until you get the food ordered. People also have tea with the food and it’s fairly cheap. We had a lot of food and only paid 50 HKD each (4 GBP/5 EUR). After we finished the food we head of to Tung Chung station, where a cable car took us to the Tian Tian Buddha on Lantau Island. 

view out of the cable car

view on the Tian Tian Buddha out of the cable car

We had to climb 260 steps, which was quite exhausting at a temperature of 25 degrees and humidity of 85 percent. The Buddha is really impressive with its twenty-something meter height, however, there are bigger Buddha statues elsewhere, but apparently these are not seated, outdoors or made of bronze.

view over the island from the plateau of the Tian Tian Buddha

After we had seen the Buddha we took the bus to Tai O a small fishermen village 30 minutes by bus away. It was so cute with its tiny alleys, little houses and boats. We had a stroll along the market and could see the local people selling fish. After an hour of walking we sat down at some small restaurant with an awesome view on the river to have some tofu and seafood. I totally trusted Orlando on this, cause he is at least more local than me and speaks the local language (if you haven't read the previous post; Orlando is from Macau). I don’t know, if he could read my mind but he just ordered the right things and I really enjoyed the food. We then had a little walk around the village and went back to the bus station. Unfortunately, the last bus back to the cable car was already gone and the queue for the bus back to the MTR station was ridiculous long. I somehow remembered, that there was a ferry service from the Island to Hong Kong as well. So we checked times and were lucky that both bus and ferry were still running. I think at around 8pm we arrived back in Hong Kong.

remember the last post? I love this sugary tofu!