Big Buddha

The last thing on our to do list was to visit the Big Buddha on Lantau Island. To get there you have to take a 20 minute cable car.

I believe it is the largest seated Buddha in the world.

This was along the path of enlightenment. It was all in Chinese so I didn't feel any more enlightened at the end.

It was nice to have my dad visit and fun to show off Hong Kong. I know it's very different from home. My dad came here from one of the most quiet and peaceful areas in Canada and was thrown into one of the most densely populated urban jungles in the world. I hope he could still appreciate it for what it is and get a good feel of how other people live in the world.

Now Jill and I still have a few days of our vacation to relax and wind down before going back to school.

Macau

Macau is about 1 hour from Hong Kong and shares a similar past. Instead of having a Brittish occupation, it had been occupied by the Portuguise since the 1600's. It was also recently given back to China. Macau is the only place in China where gambling is legal. Here you can find all the big casinos that are in Vegas as well.

The architecture is also very different. At some points you would swear that you were in Europe.


The fort
The ruins of St. Paul's Church

Dad couldn't pass up the free samples of cookies or beef jerkeyThere just happened to be a big festival going on at the time. I believe it is in honor of the goddess A-ma, the goddess of the sea. With Macua's fishing past, this is the most popular deity here. At the large A-ma temple we popped into a Chinese opera for a few minutes. Then my ears started hurting and we left.
Some of the temple

Macau tower. We tried to get dad to bungy jump from it, but he wouldn't........chicken!

Paragliding

We had a beautiful day to head to the mountain here in Ma On Shan for some paragliding. The wind was a little on the light side but it was still flyable. I had told my dad that he might be able to do a tandem flight if my friend Kit was there. Luckily he was and was nice enough to take my dad up later in the day. Unfortunately the wind was not strong enough for a long flight and he had a quick sled ride to the bottom. It was still exciting for him though.

My dad, Kit and I.

He had fun watching all the pilots flying. There must have been around a dozen people flying that day. I managed 3 flights myself.

That's me in the sky.


Getting clipped in

He looks so toughAll set and ready to launch
Up and run, run, run,

Here is a pic from the sky my dad took

I tried to take off right after so we could fly together but he was making his decent and heading for the LZ so I still took off and had a short flight, then landed at the bottom to help him pack up and get the bus back.

There was no shortage of people there taking videos of his flight. Kit said that my dad was his oldest passenger ever. Not bad at 63. In every video you can hear my friend Michele saying at the end "Is he strapped in properly?" It makes it sound bad, but everything was fine.

Dad' Visit

Well Jill and I just had my dad visit us for 9 days. We had a great time and managed to be busy almost every day. We saw a lot of Hong Kong and even made it to Macau for a day. We were lucky to have him visit on our last day of school before the Easter holiday so on Thursday he was able to come to school and see what Jill and I do all day.

He followed me for most of the day but popped into Jill's class a few times throughout the day to see her too. This happened to be a party day. The children were not in uniform and there was no lesson. Instead we did activities and played games. I think it was fun and I hope he had a good time too.


The next day was a bit cloudy and looked like rain so we didn't plan much. It cleared up mid morning and we went on a short hike over the mountain to a town called Sai Kung for lunch. We were contemplating a boat trip to a small island after lunch but the weather wasn't cooperating enough.


The fish market in Sai Kung. I bet he's never seen a market quite like this one before.

We ended up eating out a lot. I think I only cooked 1 meal at home the whole time. Fortunately my dad is an adventurous eater and loved the food. Using chopsticks on the other hand was a different story. He gave it a good go but decided using them like a shovel was the easiest way.

We found this little guy at the market. It holds the chopsticks in place and makes it easier to use. I think they are for children......or foreigners.

The next day we hit the city and headed to Kowloon. Dad got his first views of the Hong Kong city scape. We had pretty good weather too for the next few days.

We then went to the peak to get a birds eye view of the city. I love taking the tram up. It's such a steep ride.

When we got down we rode the island tram up and down the city then jumped on the Star Ferry to cross the harbor. Hong Kong has a lot of forms of transportation to use. Luckily they also have what is called an Octopus Card. You can put money on it and scan it to ride all of these. It also works in vending machines and at 7 Elevens. It made traveling so much more convenient.

We rode a lot of buses when he was here.

10,000 Buddhas monestary.

This is a little temple near our place.

Jill and I took the day today to hang out downtown. It's been a while since we headed there and we wanted to make the most of our weekend. We started off with Outback Steakhouse for lunch then took the ferry and headed to the park. It was a beautifly sunny day. Here is a panorama of HK island. This is a bohinia flower, it was constructed when the British gave Hong Kong back to China. In the garden we heard some drumming and went to check it out. Apparently, every Sunday from 2:30 to 4:30, there is a Kung Fu demonstration. We only stayed for about 30 minutes but someday I'd like to watch it all. The part we were there for was interesting.

Lion Dance

And some old guy doing Kung Fu: