Ivan is a Palindrome: 9/23/11. Peak 3.

It’s hard to believe the Japan and Korea parts of the trip are over. This is usually when I start to get the "end-of-the-trip blues"...

After sleeping in a bit (we deserved it!) and getting ready, we headed to a dim sum place for breakfast. The place was decent, but my Chinese was not. That being said, it’s nice that most of the people speak broken Mandarin here or English, in addition to Cantonese. I don’t feel as lost as we were in Japan, and it was definitely a blessing to have Andy show us around in Seoul, on the language barrier front.

I don’t remember the name of the place we went to, but we’re saving Din Tai Fung for a meal with Lucy later on in our stay here. Lucy and I started at the same time, but in different programs at Stanford. You’ll “meet” her later :)

We headed to the jade market and picked up some more souvenirs – eight pieces of jade, two lapel pins, and 10 coin necklaces, to be exact. I think we did good on our bargaining because after we paid the man 600 HKD (about $70), his wife came out, they talked a bit, she in a progressively louder tone, and then she smacked him on the arm. Our win at the expense of the man made me feel kind of bad though. Hopefully his wife makes a bigger profit off of the next person who comes by :p

Leaving the jade market around 2PM, we headed to the metro and got off at Tung Chung to pick up a late lunch of buns, roast duck, apples, and chips before our trip up to the Big Buddha. I’m a sucker for local snacks everywhere we travel.

We had some time to kill, so we watched the kids play in the fountains (the midday humidity is no joke here!), and went into a mall. There was nothing worth getting, so we headed to the gondolas for Lantau Island.

The gondola system is the Ngong 360, and it’s pretty impressive. Anchoring points of the infrastructure are at intermediate summits on the way up to Lantau Peak, but there are some pretty long stretches where there’s literally separating you from the island below, other than the floor of the cabin. I’m really glad we didn’t opt for the crystal cabin, which has a glass-bottom.

The ride to Lantau Peak was pretty stunning, though, and it was nice to get a preview of the Big Buddha on the way up:

Even from afar, this thing is pretty impressive, and it makes you wonder how it was built/assembled on site. SCIENCE.

We finally made it to the top, and the first thing that hit me was how touristy and Disneyland-like the place was. For some reason, I was expecting it to be quieter and more peaceful, with monks walking around. In retrospect, this was pretty stupid, because the signs of the emphasis on tourism where all there from the moment we got in the gondola line.

I think we may have behaved slightly offensively, but discretely so. Something about the massive amount of tourism just made me feel a little bit less respectful, which I somewhat regret…but these pictures make me smile and I’m banking on the fact that most deities have a sense of humor.

PHOTOBOMBED:

The ride back down wasn’t as bad for some reason. We picked up some pastries on the way home for Carrie’s bible study, and then headed back out to meet Edwin, another one of my colleagues from Stanford. Edwin was in the structural engineering group, acronymed “SEG”, and has been working at a civil engineering firm out here. We headed down Ladies Street (not what you think – it’s a shopping district that was historically geared toward women, not a place to buy them), to a café for some baked dishes. I got egg, beef, and tomatoes over rice, and devoured it. It’s sad. Dinner was only a few hours ago, and I don’t remember what Edwin and Ghyrn got. I must have been hungry haha.