Walking with Buddha

The class gathered in the lobby at 9:45 this morning to walk to Kowloon Park to have our first official lecture. We all introduced ourselves and found out about each other’s backgrounds. Many of the Singapore students are of Chinese descent which was really interesting. It was also interesting to find out the difference between Chinese studies and China studies at NUS! After lecture we all walked to a mysterious basement where we ate what else but dim sum. Uncle Graham’s treat! The restaurant was huge. We kept “generously” giving away the food we ordered to the other table whenever we couldn’t finish it :P Henry told us about Chung King Mansion (a supposedly shady 60s shopping area where Brandy urged us NOT to wear flipflops to). 10 of us decided that we would like to visit this shady side of town a few blocks away from the Y, however when we got there we just saw a lot of African people and a lot of Indian people. I wonder why they’re all here and why they’re all gathered over at the Chung King mansion. There weren’t really any interesting stores there so we quickly left and headed for our day trip over to see the big Buddha! We took the Skyrail up to the mountain. It was so gorgeous! When we got to the temple we walked a lot of stairs and we saw so many statues. It has been the most touristy thing I’ve done so far in Hong Kong and it was great. We then caught the last bus back winding through the narrow streets along the mountainside. The bus driver drove REALLY fast. We were all grabbing on the handle for dear life. I think it was comparable to a roller coaster except we’d be thinking about our traveler’s insurance midway. It was so cool when we had to slow down because a herd of cows were standing in the middle of the road! I even saw a hazard sign to watch out for cows. We decided that the bus ride was one of the best parts of the day haha. We then switched over to the ferry which felt like a massage chair the whole way. We all became immersed into the 2 cockroaches that were scrambling about a few rows away. We kept our feet up and tried to scare each other. Some of us even took photos of the cockroaches. You can’t get much more tourist than that. After we got off the ferry we found a random street restaurant and sat down to have a late dinner where we discussed the issues of Hepatitis A and B. A couple of us brought their own chopsticks while others dunked their utensils in hot water. Trevor’s theory though is that if you eat the dirtiest thing as soon as you get there, you’ll be fine the rest of the way. We had another long and full 12 hour+ day. It was great to visit a temple and experience the serenity of it.

Graham: "My face is white, but my heart is yellow."

Jenn: "I like to call myself a pineapple. Brown and spiky on the outside, yellow on the inside."