It’s hard to believe that today is our last full day of this vacation. We met in the lobby at 8:10 for our Lantau Island tour. Unfortunately this was not a private guided tour as we were joined with people from several different hotels. The process of picking everybody up and transferring to the ferry terminal on Hong Kong Island took almost an hour and a half.
We took the ferry to Lantau Island where we boarded a bus. Our tour guide, Ben, had a very monotone voice and it was hard to hear him over the air conditioning system on the bus. We asked him to turn the AC down and it was slightly better. The first stop on the tour was to Ceung Sha each which is the longest beach on Hong Kong. Unfortunately, we only had 15 minutes to spend on the beach.
The next stop was to Tai O, a unique fishing village where many of the homes are built on stilts. We took a short boat tour of the village and walked through their streets. Many vendors had dried fish out so it was pretty stinky.
The island was very lush and pretty and I enjoyed the drive around the island. Our next stop was to the Giant Buddha Statue. The bus parked at the top of the Buddha, but because we love steps so much we walked the over 200 steps down to get a view from the bottom and climbed them back up to get on the bus.
The bus took us back down and we ate a vegetarian Chinese lunch at the Po Lin Monastery. We didn’t realize the monastery was at the bottom of the steps we climbed down, so I guess we wouldn’t have needed to go down the steps to get the view we were looking for, but it wouldn’t be a part of this trip if we didn’t take the stairs.
The last part of the tour was a 25 minute cable car ride on the Ngong Ping Skyrail. This was an amazing cable car ride as none of us could believe how long it was, covering over 3 miles.
At the end of the ride we got back into a bus and began the hour and half process of dropping people back off. We got back to the hotel around 5:00 and decided to meet back up again at 6:45 for dinner.
Leah found a German restaurant that we went to for dinner. Leah’s and Lysette’s meals came out relatively quickly and Tom and I thought ours would be right behind them. At least 15 minutes after Leah and Lysette had their meals, our waiter told Tom that his steak would be out shortly. He didn’t say anything to me, but I assumed mine would come out with his. I was wrong! Tom’s food came out and I still had nothing. I asked the waiter and it appeared he forgot to place my weinerschnitzel order. Tom was practically done eating when I got mine, and Leah and Lysette were already done. The food was good, it’s just too bad the service was lacking.
We left dinner and walked to the night market on Temple Street. It was super hot and humid and it didn’t put us much in the mood for shopping, but we picked up a couple of things and took a taxi back to the hotel. The only thing on the agenda for tomorrow is the long travel day home.