Last Sunday I went to the Po Lin Monastery on Lantau Island where the "Big Buddha" is. I went with Brian and a couple other of his friends from the States. There is a train stop at the base of the mountain that has a cable car that goes strait to the monastery. We, however, decided to take the long route which turn out to be a mistake. We first took the train from CUHK to the tip of Kowloon to find the ferry to Lantau. We discovered that the only place to get a ferry to Lantau was at the Central Piers on Hong Kong Island. So we took a ferry across to Central and then figured out which boat we needed. We waited 30 minutes until the ferry we wanted arrived. The boat ride was then about an hour long. Once we got to Lantau we had to take a bus to get to the monastery. This was another hour long ride. The reason the bus took so long is that Lantau is very mountainous. Even though the length of the bus ride was a little annoying, it was neat to go through the mountains and forests on Lantau. That day was very very cloudy and the mountains were so high we drove up into the clouds. We were pretty happy once we got to the monastery since it had taken us about four hours to get there. Unfortunately, since it was so cloudy we could not see much. There were stairs that you had to walk up to get to the Buddha, but you couldn't see the top of the stair case. Once we got to the top, we could only see the outline of Buddha, but that in its self was neat. Inside the Big Buddha was a museum. It had all kinds of neat artwork but everything was explained in Chinese, so I have no idea what it actually was. We then walked back down to the monastery to get lunch. It was all vegetarian but very good. We explored the temple nearby for a little bit before deciding to head back down. We did not want to spend forever getting back to CUHK so we took the cable car. The cable car ride was actually a lot longer then I had expected, about 45 minutes. By that time it had gotten so cloudy that if another car was coming the other direction you could only see it for a couple of seconds, not to mention for the most part you couldn't see the ground. Near the end we descended enough to be outside of the clouds. We got a very high birds eye view of the Hong Kong Airport which was neat. Once we got back on the ground we took the train back to CUHK.
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Showing posts with label bus. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bus. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Yangshuo: Day Four
One our last day in Yangshuo, we decided to split up. Chase, Mandy, and Kalen wanted to ride scooters to a place that was advertised as having "minorities." I on the other hand wanted to relax in the city and explore a couple of the extremely well maintained parks in the town. Before splitting up we had breakfast together at the same restaurant we went to the day before. We were the only patrons there and the whole staff was watch Brittney Spears music videos at 11am. After breakfast Chase, Mandy, and Kalen found the tour guide from yesterday and hired her again. I spent the rest of the day wondering around the town, watching boats as they came in on the river, and looked through all kinds of neat little shops that were hidden. At one point while I was near the pond, one of the local fisherman came out with his birds to catch fish. He had maybe 8 birds that he released into the pond. Each one had their necks partially tied so they wouldn't sallow the fish. These birds swam very well. While floating in the water they would all of sudden duck down into the water and shoot across the pond. Their bodies moved as if they were a seal or some other water mammal. They could stay under water for quite some time and go under and around rocks and crevasses. The fisherman, an old man, would stand on his little bamboo boat and direct the birds. He would tap (or hit) them on their head to make them dive. Then he would bounce up and down on the boat an yell. I'm not sure what that command was but it seemed to help get the birds back. We met back up at around 6pm and then got a quick dinner before having to leave for our bus.
The bus was a sleeper bus. It had three rows of bunk beds with two aisles. The beds were not very comfortable. They were at an angle so your head was above the feet of the person behind you. It wasn't a continuous angle either. It slanted a little then leveled out, then slanted a little, then leveled out. They were short and narrow too. I can't imagine the beds being longer then 6 feet and the bed was about as wide as my shoulders. They also sold the aisles. There were people sitting and sleeping in the aisles where people walk. This was illegal as it was over boarding, but we were in China. At one point we stopped and there was a lot of shouting from the driver. The people in the aisles quickly got up and ran off. We drove for about 20 minutes before picking them up again. Apparently they had a van waiting to drive these people a certain distance. There must have been a security check point or something that the bus was not able to pay off.
In any case, I did not sleep on the ride home. It was suppose to be 10 hours to Shenzhen but it took 11 (everything leaves on time, nothing arrives on time in China). The ride was through the night but I was still able to see a lot of China most people don't. It is the part of China that tourist don't go to. There were rows after rows of concrete slab buildings. All exactly the same which perhaps some Chinese writing on them. Each building had a metal door in the front like a garage door. That was it for the first floor and it wasn't much wider then that door. There were no colors. If I had driven through this place during the day it would have looked the same. Gray is gray. There were some people outside. All seemed depressed and disconnected. The streets were absolutely filthy. Many of the streets could have just as easily been a garbage dump, but the concept of "garbage" seems to have been lost. At one point we stopped for a bathroom break. The place the bathroom was located was disgusting. It was a simple square cement block building with a wall in the center to divide between men and women's restrooms. Inside there was no lighting or ventilation. Instead of toilets there was one continuous ditch with very short walls to create "stalls." There was the sound of water which I assumed was to run through the ditch, but the smell suggested it has been years since it had been cleaned.
The bus finally made it to Shenzhen and it was early Tuesday morning. The problem was the bus basically dropped us off outside of the main city along the highway. They told us this was our stop and we got off and they disappeared. Fortunately we were near a regular bus stop. We walked over to that stop and had Mandy translate the bus schedule. We figured out what bus we needed to get back to the boarder crossing. It was another hour before we were back at the boarder. At that point I was pretty happy to be back in Hong Kong.
The bus was a sleeper bus. It had three rows of bunk beds with two aisles. The beds were not very comfortable. They were at an angle so your head was above the feet of the person behind you. It wasn't a continuous angle either. It slanted a little then leveled out, then slanted a little, then leveled out. They were short and narrow too. I can't imagine the beds being longer then 6 feet and the bed was about as wide as my shoulders. They also sold the aisles. There were people sitting and sleeping in the aisles where people walk. This was illegal as it was over boarding, but we were in China. At one point we stopped and there was a lot of shouting from the driver. The people in the aisles quickly got up and ran off. We drove for about 20 minutes before picking them up again. Apparently they had a van waiting to drive these people a certain distance. There must have been a security check point or something that the bus was not able to pay off.
In any case, I did not sleep on the ride home. It was suppose to be 10 hours to Shenzhen but it took 11 (everything leaves on time, nothing arrives on time in China). The ride was through the night but I was still able to see a lot of China most people don't. It is the part of China that tourist don't go to. There were rows after rows of concrete slab buildings. All exactly the same which perhaps some Chinese writing on them. Each building had a metal door in the front like a garage door. That was it for the first floor and it wasn't much wider then that door. There were no colors. If I had driven through this place during the day it would have looked the same. Gray is gray. There were some people outside. All seemed depressed and disconnected. The streets were absolutely filthy. Many of the streets could have just as easily been a garbage dump, but the concept of "garbage" seems to have been lost. At one point we stopped for a bathroom break. The place the bathroom was located was disgusting. It was a simple square cement block building with a wall in the center to divide between men and women's restrooms. Inside there was no lighting or ventilation. Instead of toilets there was one continuous ditch with very short walls to create "stalls." There was the sound of water which I assumed was to run through the ditch, but the smell suggested it has been years since it had been cleaned.
The bus finally made it to Shenzhen and it was early Tuesday morning. The problem was the bus basically dropped us off outside of the main city along the highway. They told us this was our stop and we got off and they disappeared. Fortunately we were near a regular bus stop. We walked over to that stop and had Mandy translate the bus schedule. We figured out what bus we needed to get back to the boarder crossing. It was another hour before we were back at the boarder. At that point I was pretty happy to be back in Hong Kong.
Sunday, February 1, 2009
Taipei: Day Two
On the second full day in Taiwan we decided to go to one of the outlying cities, Keelung. We went to the train station, which was conveniently located across the street from our hostel, to figure out how the train system works. The station was pretty simple but had a sense of grandeur at the same time. The board displaying the train times seemed out dated as panels flipped rapidly to change information. We eventually bought our tickets and went to the platform to wait for our train. All the platforms were underground, and after our train left we were still underground for quite some time. When we emerged, we were in a much more rural part of Taiwan. I saw shacks with small vegetable gardens around them and lots of other rural poverty. Probably the strangest thing I saw was a half completed high rise that seemed abandoned for some time. Surrounding the building was shacks and lots of vegetation. The exposed steel framework looked rusted and it was clear construction stopped long ago. We reached Keelung after a little more then an hour train ride. Keelung is a shipping port on the northern tip of Taiwan. It seemed small for a city but there was plenty of activity. 
We wondered around for a bit. We went through a very crowed street market that sold mostly food. A scoop of snails or a tentacle on a stick were common items sold. We then went to lunch at a very small local restaurant. None of them spoke English and there was no menu so it took some creative communication methods to order. After trying to talk to each other in our native languages we ended up going to another patrons table and pointing at what we wanted. We each got a bowl of rice with minced meat (I'm fairly certain it was pork). It was NT20 each which is about US$0.60. It was very good. We then headed up the hill to a park that overlooked Keelung. It was an interesting view but nothing sensational. We didn't stay too long before deciding to try to go to the limestone cape in Yeliu. We had no idea how to get to Yeliu. We assumed by bus but all the bus schedules were in Chinese. After spending some time trying to figure it out we eventually just got on a bus that had a destination in English written on it that seemed close to Yeliu. The driver didn't speak English either so we looked at a map posted in the bus. That map was also not English so we tried to match it up with ours which was in a language we could read. We didn't make any progress as the map posted didn't have enough features for us to identify where we were going. Fortunately there was a woman on the bus who spoke English and recognized our problem. She told us that we got on the right bus and then told the driver to alert us when we got to the Yeliu stop. The bus traveled through the country side and stopped at all kinds on little towns. I wondered what it would be like if buses ran regularly through the country side in Ohio. It was about an hour before the bus driver started shouting to use in Mandarin that this was where we wanted to get off. 
Yeliu is a small harbor village. It only had a couple of streets but they were long and followed the shore line. It took us a little time to figure out how to get to the limestone cape. It's official name is the Yeliu Geological National Park. There was a long building that was a market we walked through. It turned out that was a mistake. It was a lot longer then it looked, poorly ventilated, smelled like fish, and at the end was the exit to the park. So we walked back around the building and found then entrance and paid the small fee it get in. Inside there were a ton of people walking around the strange limestone formation. The limestone formations are rather hard to explain. They seemed like giant mushrooms. 
I wondered around a bit looking for places there were not a lot of people and just generally relaxing by the ocean side. We stayed until dark at which point we walked back to the bus stop to figure out if there was a way to go straight from where we were to Taipei. The few signs were in Chinese so that didn't help. I managed to find an Indian man how spoke English and he seemed pretty confident that where he was standing was where the bus to Taipei stops. It wasn't long before a bus came but it was too full for Chase, Pierre and I to all go. We waited about 10 minutes before two buses came at once for Taipei which we had no problem getting on. It rained the whole way back to Taipei and took well over an hour. The bus stop we got off at was right by our hostel and we ate a quick dinner at Burger King since it was so late and then went to bed for the night.
(second half)
We wondered around for a bit. We went through a very crowed street market that sold mostly food. A scoop of snails or a tentacle on a stick were common items sold. We then went to lunch at a very small local restaurant. None of them spoke English and there was no menu so it took some creative communication methods to order. After trying to talk to each other in our native languages we ended up going to another patrons table and pointing at what we wanted. We each got a bowl of rice with minced meat (I'm fairly certain it was pork). It was NT20 each which is about US$0.60. It was very good. We then headed up the hill to a park that overlooked Keelung. It was an interesting view but nothing sensational. We didn't stay too long before deciding to try to go to the limestone cape in Yeliu. We had no idea how to get to Yeliu. We assumed by bus but all the bus schedules were in Chinese. After spending some time trying to figure it out we eventually just got on a bus that had a destination in English written on it that seemed close to Yeliu. The driver didn't speak English either so we looked at a map posted in the bus. That map was also not English so we tried to match it up with ours which was in a language we could read. We didn't make any progress as the map posted didn't have enough features for us to identify where we were going. Fortunately there was a woman on the bus who spoke English and recognized our problem. She told us that we got on the right bus and then told the driver to alert us when we got to the Yeliu stop. The bus traveled through the country side and stopped at all kinds on little towns. I wondered what it would be like if buses ran regularly through the country side in Ohio. It was about an hour before the bus driver started shouting to use in Mandarin that this was where we wanted to get off. 
Yeliu is a small harbor village. It only had a couple of streets but they were long and followed the shore line. It took us a little time to figure out how to get to the limestone cape. It's official name is the Yeliu Geological National Park. There was a long building that was a market we walked through. It turned out that was a mistake. It was a lot longer then it looked, poorly ventilated, smelled like fish, and at the end was the exit to the park. So we walked back around the building and found then entrance and paid the small fee it get in. Inside there were a ton of people walking around the strange limestone formation. The limestone formations are rather hard to explain. They seemed like giant mushrooms. 
I wondered around a bit looking for places there were not a lot of people and just generally relaxing by the ocean side. We stayed until dark at which point we walked back to the bus stop to figure out if there was a way to go straight from where we were to Taipei. The few signs were in Chinese so that didn't help. I managed to find an Indian man how spoke English and he seemed pretty confident that where he was standing was where the bus to Taipei stops. It wasn't long before a bus came but it was too full for Chase, Pierre and I to all go. We waited about 10 minutes before two buses came at once for Taipei which we had no problem getting on. It rained the whole way back to Taipei and took well over an hour. The bus stop we got off at was right by our hostel and we ate a quick dinner at Burger King since it was so late and then went to bed for the night.Album:
(second half)
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