Day 18: Seeing the Big Buddha

By Steve

So after two days of Disney excitement, we decided to explore as much of Hong Kong as the kids could stand. We had grand plans of going to a few of the different islands and exploring the cool parts of the city, but the kids have had enough of foreign cities for a while. Instead, we went to an area very close to where we already are. On the island of Lantau there is a giant bronze Buddha. It's 23 meters tall and is the largest outdoor sitting Buddha in the world.

We took the subway from Disney to a cable car that took us to the base of a little village right at the feet of the big guy. The cable car had special cars with glass bottoms that allowed you to see directly below your car. While paying an extra five bucks for such a privilege may sound like a ripoff, it also boosted us to a different shorter line that was way nice considering we had some fussy kids at that point. The glass bottom car was actually way cooler than I gave it credit for. One of Ben's favorite things to do was to lie flat on his belly and pretend that he was falling to the ground. WanYing was really uneasy about the floor being see-through at first, but soon she was able to walk from one side of the car to the other without quaking.

When we got off the cable car, we walked on the path that led up to the Buddha. There was a long stone path with shops on either side (Starbucks, Subway, 7-11) and then we got to the steps that led up to him. Sasha walked up the 200 steps all on her own. Inside his big bronzeness, there was a little museum. And more shops. This guy must have been all about people buying stuff. I think I remember some teaching of his about stuff being linked to happiness some how. After all the romping around his sitting largeness, we headed back to the hotel.

So after some quality naps, we spent the afternoon in the pool and hot tub. Being a Disney hotel the pool has a unique theme to it. This one is shaped like a baby grand piano and the music playing on the speakers is all oldies from the sixties. The kids liked going down the slide and playing in all the bubbles in the hot tub.

Now it's time to pack up all our stuff, and get back to Utah. Next time we hit U.S. soil, we'll have one more U.S. citizen with us.

Prayer requests: As one might expect, we are particularly nervous about taking WanYing on a plane for 14 hours. Prayers for an easy flight and easy to calm down little girl would be super.