The Big Buddha Lives Up To His Name

I really liked the Tian Tan Buddha Statue and Po Lin Monastery. You would think that with my "Chinese in a Week" book and CD that I could tell you what Tian Tan means--and yet, I cannot. For all I know it means Big Buddha. The books all refer to it as the Big Buddha so I do not feel disrepectful calling it such myself.

He is big. Impressively so.

To get up to the Big Buddha, one takes an aerial cable car for almost 6 kilometers (wouldn't that be about 4 miles?) and that in itself is quite spectacular. I was in a cable car with a Chinese family: Grandparents, daughter and grandson. The little boy was maybe 3 years old and clearly was in an english-speaking school because he knew all sorts of little songs in English and he spoke English amazingly well and with an American accent. He was very funny. His grandparents would say something in Chinese that must have been to quiet him down (he sang very loudly and proudly) and he would respond with "What's the matter?" and then go on in Chinese. When you alight from the gondola you are led to a very tastefully tourisyt village, and then on to the Big Buddha.

The quality of this photo isn't the best. The day was not actually quite this grey, although it was decidedly overcast, but a) it was taken through the gondola glass and b) I had forgotten to reset my camera settings after last night's photo taking at the peak. You can see the Big Guy in the background which gives you a litte scale reference and you can see the gondolas.

I really like this photo of Buddha--I really like Buddha to be honest. There is something wonderfully calm and benevolent about him. It was lovely to see how many people were there to see the statue and monastery because of their devotion and not because they were mere tourists.

The monasterey was much the same. Despite the number of people, despite the tourists, it was calm and welcoming and peaceful.

When I got back from the Buddha, I meant to work of my capstone but I wound up napping. I actually am really interested in my topic but I guess that jetlag was catching up with me. I cannot complain though, I have adjusted to the time change amazingly well...I have struggled more with daylight savings time.

This evening I went to the Temple Street Night Market which was much like any market but not during the day. I did get little gifts for Tara and Margaret, and a suitcase to replace my defective one that I brought. That was the other part of the rough start to this trip--I was having suitcase issues. But now I can rid myself of the horrible purple trunk monstrosity and work with the new basic black, faux "Victorinox" which I successfully haggled down to $38.

I hate haggling. This wasn't so bad since the woman was a bad haggler--she started out telling me that she would give me a discount and then, while I was just pondering if I wanted to bother with dragging the bag back to my hotel tonight, she kept lowering the price. I really cannot claim much credit for my dealing skills since all I did was stand there quietly.