Paradise and Pizza

I should start by saying I have now caught up with my sleep! YAY! This has certainly made the last few days a bit easier and we've had an amazing few days exploring the country. Firstly we decided to go and see the Tian Tan (Titan) Buddha on Lantau Island at the other end of Hong Kong.

It's 30m tall and weighs almost 300 tonnes. To be honest though it's just a bit of a tourist trap. It was only built in the 90's and although it's impressive I can't imagine it's really very important to Buddhists. What was amazing though was Lantau Peak sometimes known as Sunset Peak, a fairly big mountain that towers over the statue.

It's only 923m tall, so not incredibly high but it is really really steep. So steep that the "trail" up is more of a staircase than a trail. Also we now know that midday was not the best time to start climbing on a clear sunny day. Several breaks and a couple of bottles of water later we eventually made it to the top. The eagle eyed amongst you may have noticed that we didn't start from sea level and that the Buddha is actually half way up the mountain. Well, to be honest it was a really hard climb and well boo hoo. Anyhoo the view from the top was amazing!

Well after the painful walk down and the awful rush hour MTR ride home we sat down for a slice of the best pizza in the world "Paisano's" in Sai Kung! Well earned I think.

So how could we follow the mountain adventure? Well I think we did quite well. We hired a couple of Kayaks from the beach club and paddled out into what looked like Ha Long Bay or whatever it's called off James Bond. It was a stunning day, and despite an entire bottle of suncream being used we still got burnt. We found a deserted beach on a tiny island and stopped for lunch.

It really was like being in the Carribean or some other tropical paradise, the water was so warm and well obviously the sun was a little too warm. No wonder the Hongkongers never go on holiday or leave the country, with all this only a short train ride from the city centre it really must be an amazing place to live. The other thing is, on weekdays all these places are deserted because everyone is working. I don't think we'll ever bother doing this sort of thing at the weekend because it seems half the city comes out to the country park to do something. Also the prices seem to skyrocket at the weekend, for the kayak hire it would have been almost 3 times as much at the weekend.

In other news, we are still waiting for visas. It's only been 18 days now and on average takes 30 so still a bit of waiting to be done :-(  But on a good note we are moving to our permanent flat today out of this mice infested one. I'll let you know how the new flat is at some point. Anyhoo I better get packing.

Bye xxx