June 9, 2008
This Monday was the day after the Tuen Ng Festival and was a Public Holiday. Due to excessive amounts of rain and the Public Holiday, Fluffy has not be able to get to the market yet! :(
On the previous Saturday, 16.5 inches of rain fell in Hong Kong. That is not a typo! There were quite a few mud/rock slides and the road to the air port was blocked for the better part of the day. Thankfully, the trains were running.
The skies cleared for a few hours, so we headed over to the Ten Thousand Buddhas Monastery in Sha Tin (that's in the New Territories). First we finally located the correct sidewalk and then up, up, up the stairs we went. There are over 500 steps to reach the top and there were Buddhas lining the entire walk. Here is Fluffy with her new pal Punkie Dominoes getting to know one of the Buddhas - he was kind of quiet! When you finally reached the temple area, it was really a sight to behold.
Although it is listed as having 10,000 Buddhas, actually that's not true - there are over 13,000. My guidebook says that the Chinese use 10,000 as another way of says just lots and lots! The Buddhas were made by Shanghai craftsmen and donated by worshipers.
This is just one side of the temple. The other side was like this - just as many lighted Buddha statues. The central section was a little different - more ornate and includes the mummified corpse of one of the monks.
This pagoda structure included Buddha statues in all of the windows. You could even walk up several stories.
You could walk to another section of the monastery where the mausoleums were located; these contained many more statues.
Fluffy and Punkie enjoyed watching the monkeys - there were several running back and forth on the side of the steps. Actually, I think the monkeys enjoyed watching all the people.
Well, that was about it for this adventure.
