I was on my own today as O had a busy university day and had slept in his dorm as his first class was at 9 am
The weather looked promising - the sky was at least blue!
I again had a stir fry breakfast! With a liberal sprinkling of coriander. It was very tasty.
My plan for the day was to head to Sha Tin which is to the north of where O am staying. This involved three trains - from Tseung Kwan O to Tiu Keng Leng, then changing onto the Kwun Tong line to Kowloon Tong and then another change onto the East Rail line to Sha Tin.
It sounds long and complicated but it wasn't at all.
My plan was first of all to visit the Ten Thousand Buddha Temple and then go to Ikea as O needed some more bedding.
Finding the temple was not easy. I knew it was behind Ikea as O had told me but there was no signage at all and as I have no data on my phone and it won't connect to public wifi I was struggling. I asked in the mall and they gave me a map and directions but I think they got their left and right mixed up as I ended up in this cemetery. Yes I went to virtually the top where you can see the tower before I realised this was not where I needed to be!
At last a sign! By this stage it was an hour since I had arrived! And I had an uphill climb to do.
At last a buddha - only 9,999 to go!
In some respects the temple and the surrounding parts were very simple - though with a fabulous view.
Built in 1957 there are in fact over 13,000 buddhas.
Most of them are really small Buddha's house in the main temple.
You can just make them out at the very rear of the temple in near rows.
There is also a pergola in the center of the main section of the area.
And as usual lots of incense burning.
There is more climbing to be done. Some sections though were closed off due to renovations.
There is also a shop where I bought some blessed charms for F and J! They were actually very reasonable at HK$20 each.
I sat down and just relaxed for a while - there were not very many people around - a combination of it being of the beaten track, to a very steep hill and there being less tourists anyway due to the current issues in Hong Kong.
I realised that I had in fact come to the back routes as the path down was completely different.
This path of over 420 steps (at least downwards for me this time! ) has buddhas all the way down.
Each one was different - they were really impressive!
I needed lunch and I thought the mall attached to the train station would be the best bet. It wasn't! It was one of those malls where there were no maps, the elevators were all offset so it was impossible to go easily from one level to the next and I struggled to find anything edible! Though I did see Snoopy world - a bit random and not looking particularly busy!
I decided to head off to Ikea as a better option. It was...
I had a veggie hotdog for the princely sum of HK$7 - less than a euro! I certainly needed it.
I managed to get what O wanted - a quilt, a quilt cover and a sheet. The cover was reduced (he said he didn't care about the colour -thankfully it was blue! )
Caffeine has been low today so I grabbed a cappuccino from the Starbucks in the complex and sat and read for a while.
I got the three trains back to the hotel arriving at about 4pm. I sent a photo of the haul to O.
A rest was needed after all that climbing.
At about 6 pm I had a wander around the local mall. I knew O wouldn't be coming back until about 9pm as he had a 90 minute midterm exam at 7.30pm.
There are bakeries everywhere - lots of bread products and some very pretty cakes - no ideas how nice they are and whether they actually live up to their appearance.
I met O off the train at 9 pm and we went straight to the Spaghetti House which had been recommended to O by one of his friends. We thought there would be lots of pasta options but there wasn't - and what there was was meat based.
We had onion rings to start.
I had crab cakes.
And O had fish and chips.
We decided we preferred Pizza Express! It came to about the same -HK$309
We came back to the hotel. O spent an hour writing up his notes and revising his chinese for his listening exam on Thursday. By 10.30pm we were ready to sleep!