Our last day in Hong Kong, and the last day of our holiday.
We took the subway to Lantau Island, where we met C and M and got on the bus for a hairpin climb to the temple of Po Lin, at the feet of its giant Buddha. We climbed the steps and found some statues which I found far more moving and memorable, six kneeling deities making offerings to the Buddha. Their fingers in particular, were so graceful I was transfixed.
(No, that’s not me being transfixed, that’s some other bald guy.)
The price of admission to the exhibition under the Buddha’s pedestal included a fine vegetarian meal in the monastery itself. No menu, you just sit down and eight or nine unidentified but excellent dishes are brought to your table. Everyone gets the same. After lunch I was amused (simple thing) by the blurb on the hand-drier in the toilet. ‘Robust! Accurate! Dependable! AUTOMATIC!’
On the way back, I asked M about a large complex of buildings nestling in one of the bays. Is it a holiday resort in the making, I asked. A long-stay one, said M, Lantau Prison! (In fact there are four prisons on the island.)
Back at the subway terminal, C took us to a great end-of-line clothes shop, and we then returned to the Ladies Market for some last minutes present-buying. It was Sunday, where the population of the markets is swelled by thousands of Filipino nannies on their one day off, and it was hard to move at all.
At the airport we met M and C one last time, in an Irish pub (!), and set off for our overnight flight to Heathrow.
.