The first stop of the tour was the Avenue of Stars which has hand prints and placards in the walkway of famous Hong Kong movie stars. I guess it was opened in 2004 or so which means the Bruce Lee placard had no hand prints. All the same there were placards or hand prints for a few people I recognized such as Jackie Chan of course, and Jet Li, Michelle Yeo, Sammo Hung and Steven Chow. There was also a fairly good statue of Bruce Lee there. The stop wasn't long but it was nice out if there was a bit too much haze still.
The second stop was at a Hong Kong jewelery factory named TSL. It was a brief tour of what they do followed by a bit longer stay in the shop for people to buy stuff. I am not really interested in jewelery and my brother works for a jewelery company besides so this stop was really not up my alley at all. After the tour part I pretty much just waited for the store part to be over. While waiting I started talking to one of the other tour members. Her name is Kate and she's German but living in Australia. She's in Hong Kong for a few days on holiday before going back home to Germany. We ended up hanging out together during the tour and got along pretty well.
After the jewelery store we had a 45 minute ride to Lantau Island. The guide told some stories along the way and the ride was not bad. It was basically the reverse of the taxi ride I took to the hotel on my first night and I even recognized some of it. The bus dropped us off at the Ngong Ping cable car ride which takes you up over the water and some mountains and around to the giant Buddha statue. You have two choices of cable car: standard or crystal. The crystal cars have glass bottoms. I had chosen the crystal car because I use these moments to face my fears of heights. Kate had bought her tour remotely rather than at the hotel like I had and she wanted to try the crystal car when she found out what it was and she got the tour guide to change that for her which was cool. Of the tour it was us 2 and a couple from England in the crystal car and all the rest were on standard car. The ride takes about 25 minutes and I really enjoyed it. The glass bottom was really neat. The cars do get up fairly high at times too. Since we left first we had to wait for the rest at the top before the tour could continue.
The tram basically puts you right in the temple and giant Buddha statue area. We got a tour of the statue but unfortunately we could not go inside it. It looks a lot like the one I visited in Japan in Kamakura which we were able to go inside and I suspect you can in this one too but it was not part of the tour. After a brief stop for some pictures we were supposed to meet with the guide to head over to the temple and monastery. One pair of the tour was late by about 15 minutes in getting back to the meeting point and this made the guide agitated a bit. We took a short bus ride to the temple and she tried to tell us about and bring us in but there was a ceremony going on so instead she told us about it off to the side then we had our vegetarian lunch. The lunch was served family style and was a soup starter followed by many different types of vegetarian dishes and a bowl of rice on the side. All the food was very good and there was a fair amount of it. I think the only thing I didn't try was the spring rolls because they ran out before the dish got to me on the lazy Susan. All the same I was happy with the meal. We had free time after eating to check out the temple and the immediate surroundings. This time another couple was late to the meeting point and our guide got even more agitated. This couple was French and apparently didn't speak any English. After waiting more than 15 minutes the guide called in and it was decided to leave them behind.
The next stop was a fishing village down the mountain. This was actually a neat area with a lot of tiny little houses on stilts over the water. The place was fairly run down as you might expect and there were all sorts of shops selling dried and live fish and the like. I thought the village was really cool. There were different sights and sounds and scents around it. The guide told us various things about it along the way but I was more into just looking around. This time no one was late returning to the bus and we got back up the mountain to the Buddha area where we were given half an hour of shopping time. Kate and I walked around and looked in a few shops but didn't buy any souvenirs. During the wait we found the French couple so they were able to get back to their hotel through the tour which was nice. It is too bad they missed the fishing village but them's the breaks I guess.
We rode the crystal car back down to the base after that and then the bus took us home. During the ride Kate said she was taking the same company's tour to Macau tomorrow and asked me to go along. I told her I would try to buy the tour when I got to my hotel. I was last stop of course just like being first picked up. I got up to the room and got cleaned up then headed down to the concierge and booked the Macau tour for Sunday so hopefully that will be as fun.
I have to say our guide could have been better and she was the first that was adamant about not having her picture taken so I don't have a picture of her, but I had a lot of fun on the tour. The trainee was a really nice guy and knowledgeable but it was his first time on that tour and he wasn't allowed to say a lot as a trainee he told us. It seemed like he was the guy that had to look for the late comers. The only bit I could have done without was the jewelery store. Other than that I had a lot of fun. It was a very full day.
After getting my tour for Sunday I opted to jump into the mall and eat at the Freshness Burger to compare it versus Japan and it was fairly good. Better than McDonald's for certain but not maybe as good as the ones in Japan. The mild complaint would be the thickness of the grilled onion slice but I enjoyed it anyway. After eating I headed back up and my coworker was in the executive lounge so I grabbed a drink and hung out and chatted for a bit before heading in for the night. The Macau trip is going to be even longer than the Lantau trip so I figured it best to get to bed sort of early.
The pictures from today can be found here.
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