Today a few people from school went to see the bronze buddha statue at Lantau (a tiny island next to Hong Kong). Gloria - who went to Stuy and is now at LBS - and I were a little behind so we only ended up eating lunch with the group and seeing the buddha on our own. The Tian Tan buddha is the largest sitting bronze buddha in the world (lots of modifiers there) and was built less than 20 years ago. But it was pretty amazing to look at, and the Po Lin monastery nearby was also quite pleasant. Similar to the candles in catholic churches, people light incense sticks and put them in large metals burners or these metal racks outside the monastery. We saw a row of sticks that were a foot in diameter - we didn't even recognize what they were until a huge piece of ash fell of the top of one!
To get there you can take this 25-minute gondola ride over the water and mountains, which gives you a bonus view of the airport. Apparently after their last maintenance check of the gondola, while they were doing a dummy test run of it, one of the cars fell off (breaking into a million pieces, of course). Luckily I was already slightly scared by the recent memory of the Blackcombe gondola breaking, so this information barely phased me.
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