Our last day in Hong Kong. Boo! Overall a great day, though it suffered from some poor planning on my part.

We decided to get a bit outside the city so took the MTR out to Lantau Island. Daniel (our food walk tour guide) had recommended taking the cable car up to Ngong Ping, where the Po Lin Monastery and Tian Tan Buddha are located. What we didn't know is that the line would be absurdly long. Apparently if we had just bought tickets online we would have waited like 10 minutes. Instead I think we waited the better part of two hours. Blah. Still worth it, I think, but I wish I had planned better.

While waiting around in the line I took a few pictures of our surroundings. One thing I found really interesting about Hong Kong was how dense it was even in the "suburbs." And how immediately it transfers into basically undeveloped land. Around MTR stops you'll have a little island of high rise apartment buildings and only a few hundred meters away it will all be vegetation. Really interesting and visually striking. I imagine it's a consequence of the geography: mostly islands with very steep hills.

Apartment buildings.

Up close of another building. I was trying to spot hilarious things in the windows but didn't find any.

More apartment buildings, with a fancy swimming complex in the right foreground.

The cable car. So close (but so far away)!

Finally, we reached the end of the line, got our tickets, and hopped in the cable car. The view was fantastic and the ride was a lot of fun, but poor planning struck again when our good camera ran out of batteries. So most of the pictures are from my phone (still pretty decent quality, but no analog zoom is pretty limiting).

I still get a kick out of machinery, to Grace's chagrin. At least I can bond with my nephew. Who's two.

Setting off!

Cable car selfie I.

Cable car selfie II.

The view looking back.

Lots of construction going on. I think for the Hong Kong - Zhuhai - Macau bridge.

Cable car selfie III.

Huge apartment buildings, but also lots of greenery.

Islands of buildings.

Quite the view.

Hong Kong International from above.

Apparently you can hike up. Maybe a fun walk in December. Not so much in July, I imagine.

Another view of HKI.

Our first sighting of the Tian Tan Buddha (top left).

Stairs and waterfalls.

Not the best shot, but you can see the bridge construction going on out on the water. Apparently the longest segment will be 18.4 miles!

Sighting the monastery.

Monastery and Buddha.

Arriving at the end of the cable car ride was a bit strange. In addition to the Buddha statue and the monastery there is a touristy recreation village area. We didn't spend much time there (though to be fair it was stupidly hot out and we bought some ice cream later on, so I guess I can't complain too much about commercialization).

Buddha from the tourist village.

It was incredibly sunny, so this is hardly the best selfie.

They had a store with dozens of different crazy chopsticks, including these.

After leaving the village we headed towards the Buddha statue. As huge as it was, it's actually pretty far down the list of statues by height. For reference, it is 112 ft, whereas the Statue of Liberty is 151 ft and the tallest statue in the world, the Spring Temple Buddha, is 420 ft. Not much to say about the Buddha statue, really. It was cool, but pictures are more interesting.

I've been to 2/5 of these. I think Grace has been to all of them. I need to step up my game.

Yeah, it's still really sunny.

Grace's impersonation of The General Makura. Water bottle substituting for axe.

Pre-climb selfie.

Stairs leading to the Buddha.

Cool bronze (?) piece.

Mid-climb selfie. Do we look tired, yet?

Buddha.

Not sure who these are. They're presenting offerings, and were quite photogenic.

Tea?

Incense?

Not sure about this one. I don't think it's a hip flask. Monastery in background.

I didn't quite get the memo on this selfie.

Toilet for fancy, behatted people only.

The lighting was, unfortunately, much better on Buddha's back than on his front.

Presenting the offerings.

View of the monastery from above.

The monastery up close. A lot more colorful than the Chi Lin Nunnery!

Monastery selfie.

We briefly visited the monastery afterwards, but the day was getting on and we were getting hungry so we decided to head back down the cable car and into the city.

Our walk from the MTR stop back to the apartment was interrupted by a pretty sizable Falun Gong march. Not something you see every day. We stopped to watch and take some pictures. If nothing else, they were very colorful and well-organized.

The juxtaposition of the march in front of fancy stores and alongside luxury cars was particularly interesting.

There were a lot of police keeping order.

It's hard to see, but the march goes all the way to the end of the (visible) street and much beyond.

More police. And gavels.

Strange to see so many swastikas without the Nazi association.

Note sure what this banner is all about.

The most colorful part of the parade (that we saw, at least).

For dinner we revisited The Diner, as we were pretty exhausted and it was only a couple steps away from our apartment building. Yummy burgers, though the fries and milkshakes stole the show.

We got up super early (boo!) for our flight the next morning. We were both really sad to be leaving Hong Kong. It's a pretty fantastic city and I'd love to spend some more time there, though it might be a little overwhelming (not to mention expensive) to actually live there full time.