Mass, Mahjong & Big Buddha

August 28 -

Today Mark and I went to mass at a local school in Tuen Mun.
The mass was conducted in English and Filipino.
Most of the household help in Hong Kong are from the
Philippines and their only day off is on Sunday.
I chatted with a girl after mass who was telling
me she is in Hong Kong on a 2 year contract.
She is given a one week vacation at the end of the 2 years.

Mark taking pictures after mass.
Mark is an Orlando-based photographer hired by Disney
for the Hong Kong Disneyland project. He
loves shooting pictures on his own time, as well as for work.
I have a link to his blog...you should check it out.

After mass one of the ladies from the church invited
us to visit the "prayer room". It was a classroom that was setup
as a chapel. The choir was practicing...we sat in for a while,
took some pictures and learned a line of the song they
were rehearsing. Repetition, repetition--
they were pretty tickled when we joined in.

Mickey and a few other characters were in the
tile floors around the school.

We came upon a group of men playing Mahjong as we
were walking to the bus stop to catch the 962 to get
back to Gold Coast. It reminded me of how Cubans get
together to play dominoes.

Clothes hanging out of apartment windows

Me, Trish, Sherry and Joan
We piled into a taxi and headed to the ferry pier.
Mark took this photo from the front seat of the taxi.

In the afternoon we took the ferry from Tuen Mun to go to
Lantau Island to see the Tiantan Buddha at Po Lin Monastery...
also known as "Big Buddha".

Fisherman off the Lantau Island ferry dock

I have never been so happy to see a sign!!
We had instructions on how to get to the Big Buddha from
the Tuen Mun ferry (2 sources - guidebook & Gold Coast concierge).
Turns out none of our directions were quite right.
We arrived at the ferry dock and the bus we were supposed to
take was not in the lineup of buses listed. Then we
decided to walk not knowing if we were headed in the right
direction. We found some people who directed us to a mall
area with a bus depot...there we found this sign.
We were so happy!

Photo by Mark

Monk on his way to the Po Lin Monastery.

Vista from the bus as we took. The bus trip was via very steep,
winding, narrow roads to get to the Big Buddha

Temple gate at the foot of the Big Buddha

Big Buddha is 85 feet high. There are 268 steps
leading up to the Buddha.

View from the top level

Me, Sherry, Joan, Trish and Mark

Thanks for visiting the Big Buddha!