Well, that was not ideal

Well, that was not ideal...

I found another exchange student who does not have class on Mondays and we decided that we should meet up and explore the city together on these days.  I looked at my list on TripAdvisor and suggested a place for our first adventure and thus Sakura and I met at the subway at 9:30 Monday morning and set off to visit the Ten Thousand Buddhas monastery.

Step 1: Figure out which direction to go when you leave the subway station 

The subway stations here tend to have 7 or 8 different exits so that, if you know where you are going, you can choose an exit that puts you on the right side of the station.  Having never been to this station before, we just took the first exit and once outside used my phone to try to navigate.

Step 2: Navigating the outside world

The station was basically two minutes away from the temple.  We still got lost.

The yellow is where we wanted to go.  The red is where we ended up. Oops.

As we approached the road turnoff we saw the gate of a temple beside the road and figured that this was just another way into the monastery.  Turns out it was an entirely different temple.

Step 3: Ooh and aah

The temple we entered to begin with was lovely.  It began with a garden and then consisted of a) 6 flights of stairs or b) four escalators.  We opted for the latter. 

The apparent entry to the temple

The view once we walked through the front gate

Apparently this temple includes a turtle enclosure 

 

Modern technology is wonderful.  It had never occurred to me that temples might have escalators but it makes so much sense.

Step 4: Look around the temple

We walked around the temple and while it was lovely we soon realized that 95% of it was graves.  Rather than headstones there was room after room lined with memorial plaques.  I did not take any photos of this as it is considered very disrespectful.  Confused I pulled out my phone, found a photo of the path lined with 10,000 Buddha statues and showed it to the workers there.  Despite the language barrier we managed to understand that we were in the wrong place and had to go down to the bottom of the hill to locate the right path.

What a pretty place to accidentally encounter

I love finding new styles of artwork

Initial thought: are these the 10,000 Budhhas?

This made the temple visit worth it

Step 5: Trying again

And so down the hill we went.  Once at the bottom we managed to walk around in circles looking confused enough to inspire one of the locals, who had absolutely no knowledge of English, to point and gesture us to the start of the path.  We grinned in thanks and set off.  Apparently they are familiar with lost foreigners.  This time we got the right path.

More along the lines of what I was expecting

Step 6: Miscalculation

My miscalculation was simple: I am still expecting Hong Kong to be like Manhattan.  In other words, I am still expecting it to be relatively flat.  It is not flat.  It was also in the upper 80°s and although the humidity level was only at 50% we were still soaked within minutes. We made it halfway up that hill (no escalator option this time), stopping frequently, before we decided that we had got the gist of the temple and turned around.

I did not take a picture of how steep this path was because I was too busy trying not to die but, as you can see in the above picture from the beginning of the walk, the sidewalk is divided into stairs and a smooth area.  It was impossible to walk either up or down on the smooth area because it was too steep.  It felt somewhat like this.

Step 7: Recovery

Sakura and I stumbled down the path and into a nearby shopping center to recover before heading back to the subway station.  We found an open Starbucks and ordered cold drinks and rested in the air-conditioning for half an hour before heading out.

So wonderful after the heat

Lessons learned

1. Friends who will trek in the heat with you are to be treasured
2. Expect everything to be uphill 
3. Some activities can wait a few weeks for it to get cooler