Peak-A-Budda

Yesterday for us (Wed) was a day of Hong Kong sightseeing. We started by heading up to Victoria Peak on Hong Kong Island.   It is up on the top of one of the surrounding mountains of Hong Kong... you can see all of Hong Kong harbor. The weather was excellent as you can see from our photos. The actual observation deck is on top of the 'rice bowl' building that you see in the pictures.

After coming down from Victoria Peak, we headed to see the Big Budda.... yes, that's the actual name "Big Budda" I wasn't as excited about this as the students... I already get to see that every morning in the mirror :)  The Big Budda is on Lantau Island west of Hong Kong Island. It is about a 30 minute ferry ride out through the harbor to Lantau Island. We then took a bus from the pier to the Big Budda. For those of you familiar with "The road to Hana" in Hawaii... This is similar. It is a very very very windy road up and over mountains and through little villages etc. The speed limit is posted as 30 km/h, we are pretty sure that the driver only hit 30 km/h when dropping someone off the bus.... what a roller coaster ride!  We arrived...whew! Everyone (but me) walked up to the Big Budda... the bus ride had left me a bit queazy.  I decided to get some cold green tea to settle my stomach, so of course I bought a cold bottle of what was green in color thinking it was 'green tea', popped the cap and took a huge gulp... YUK!  It was horrible... needless to say it didn't help me settle my stomach. We then all loaded into the bus for the return ride (if you could call it that). We got back to the pier.... I was so close to losing my lunch... but we ran to catch the next ferry that left in 15 minutes. We made it... only to now have a half hour of rocking back and forth through the harbor... When we docked I ran off the ferry emptied my shopping bag of the stuffed Panda for my daughter Aisya and quickly stuck my head in it.... It was a very proud moment for me as all the students immediately gathered around to share (or laugh) in my misery. I am proud to stay.... I kept it down!

From there we walked up and had dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe (since the one in Seoul was torn down). It was a great dinner to end a great day. They even had a band that played while we were there. The funny thing was we were seated at two tables of 10 and I let all the students go first and I followed them to our tables... what did I see when I got there?... one table of gals and one table of guys. It was hilarious... but its also created for some very fun moments... like a table of GFU gals singing backup to the band.

Finally, we called it a day and headed back to our hotel. We took the Star Ferry across the harbor so everyone could see Hong Kong by night... it is amazing how the cover of darkness can make any place look beautiful :)

Today is a free day for the students... we will meet up again later this afternoon to go on a Seafood Market Tour and Dinner Cruise on the harbor.

Yesterdays Photos: http://bwilson.cs.georgefox.edu/GEED365/May-9/album/