One day excursion

Well, my typhoon signal finally escalated from 1 to 3. I'm happy. And now I have a greater understanding of what it must have been like in Louisiana. Our windspeeds were (well, still are) around 70-100km/h. There were many a broken umbrella today.

Today was our "One Day Excursion" for $160, we got on some coaches and went to see a couple of bridges, the world's largest outdoor seated Buddha, and Tai-O Fishing Village.

The morning started off a little badly. The bridges would have been neat and pretty to watch... If you weren't fighting to stay on your feet. The wind was howling and breaking every umbrella in sight. Also, along with the strong wind came strong rain, and coupled together, we had some horizontal rain. Thank Buddha I brought my rain coat from Vancouver... I was able to bundle myself in it, saving my umbrella and keeping relatively dry. The rain was coming down in sheets. It was crazy.

The next stop on our itinerary was the Big Buddha on a mountain on Lantau Island. The ride there was beautiful - the scenery was amazing. It was a nice change from the city. You could actually forget you were in Hong Kong for awhile.

I have to admit, the Buddha was surprisingly large. You could see it a mountain top away. Anyways, that's all there really was to the Buddha. You could walk up by its feet and see some things in the hall underneath it, but I don't know what I was looking at and it wasn't terribly interesting.

There was a small temple at the base of the Buddha's stairs where we went to eat a vegetarian lunch at afterwards. It was pretty, and not too touristy which was surprising given the celebrity status of the Buddha statue. The meal was fantastic. I could have done without some of the company though. One Californian dude kept mentioning about how he'd have to go order some McDonald's when he got back, because he needed the meat. Puh-lease. Eat the food and shaddup. I think he was trying to be funny, but he failed miserably. My fave dish of the meal? Deep-fried Tofu in sweet and sour sauce. Mmm. Tofu.

Next stop was the Tai-O Village. It was a tiny village on the water's edge. It was very rural... Now I have an idea of what rural China must be like. Everyone lived in little hovels. It was interesting, but we only had 40 minutes to hang there till we had to get back to the bus.

Although we didn't really do much all day, we were all worn out on the bus ride back. I slept nearly the entire way. Gah. So sleepy. But now I must go find some food (gonna have to venture back out into the rain). Toodles!

P.S.
Could somebody please write to Hong Kong and inform them that club sandwiches do not contain eggs and/or cucumber? Someone neglected to inform them of that when they brought the recipe over.

A few nights ago I went to CitySuper (a grocery store) and I just about started jumping up and down from excitement. They sell Doritos! And nachos and salsa! OMFG! I was so happy to see that. They aren't dill pickle chips, but they come in a pretty close second!

Ooh. I'm also happy because when walking around the Avenue of Stars yesterday, I found Andy Lau's star! I think he's a fantastic actor (he's one of the 4 Kinds of Hong Kong Entertainment)! So I got my photo taken at his star. Hee! I also saw Jackie Chan's and Jet Li's stars, but they pale in comparison to Mr. Lau. (If you don't know who he is, check out the movies, "Running out of Time" or "Infernal Affairs.")