Day Four - Tour of Lan Tau

Jackie Chan's star on the Avenue of Stars
see all photos »

Today I took a group tour to Lan Tau Island which is the largest island in Hong Kong. It is also where the international airport is located.

We visited the Avenue of Stars in Tsim Tsa Tsui (the Kowloon waterfront looking towards Hong Kong). This is Hong Kong's rendition of the Hollywood Walk of Fame. There were only stars for local celebrities such as Jackie Chan, Chow Yun Fat and Bruce Lee amung others.

We also visited T.S.L. which is one of Hong Kong's top three jewelery design companies. After the tour they took you to the showroom of course, where you could buy some. I bought myself a cute little pair of 18K gold earrings for 150 bucks Canadian.

The view from Kowloon
see all photos »

It was then off to the island of Lan Tau where we hopped on a ferry.  Now on a clear summer day you are likely to see the famous Hong Kong pink dolphins, but since it is winter and the smog was quite heavy we weren't able to see much of anything. Thus, the ferry ride was somewhat uneventful.

We docked at a local fishing village which was interesting. This was a fishing village that didn't really survive on fishing anymore since the local waters are so polluted that the fishermen would have to travel all the way to Thailand to catch fish you could actually eat (scary to say the least). The mainstay for this town was obviously tourism.

Houses on stilts at the fishing village
see all photos »

We proceeded to a large monastery up in the mountains where the 'giant buddha' was located. This thing was huge. You could walk up or drive up to it. I chose to walk up and meet the rest of the group at the top.

Finally we got on the 360 Peak Tram which is over 5 km long with views, I'm sure on a clear day, would be breathtaking. It was very smoggy so you couldn't see very far. Jeez, Asia is really scaring me. The air and the water here are bad. My lungs started to hurt riding that tram. Ugh.

The giant buddha
see all photos »

After the tram, we were then shuttled off to our hotels. All in all it was an interesting day and it filled some time for me while Kong was at the office today.