Hong Kong - Day 4 (Lantau/Tung Chung)

Bright as sunny day! We thought that we should have chosen today to go to Disneyland instead of yesterday... but came to think of it... its Hong Kong/China National Day today... most probably the park will be flooded by tourist... so today is a good day to stay away from the city, Lantau (Tai yu san) here we come :)

Recalled my dad saying that there were a lot of food shops in Tsim Sha Tsui so we headed there for breakfast. We were there around 10:00am... seems pretty quite and nit many shops were opened yet... we wondered around behind the Giordano Concept store and found shop selling Roast Pork (char siew). We forgot to take a photo of the shop but it has a light greenish signboard :)
We ordered Roast pork and dumpling noodles (char siew wanton mein) and a roast pork rice (char siew fan). The portion was pretty big but we somehow managed to finish all up... maybe we walked a lot...
OK... the noodles came first, the wanton was filled with fresh juicy prawns, the noodles we springy and crunchy. The char siew had this mild pork taste... maybe its immersed into the soup therefore diluted the sauce covering the char siew, overall, good dish :)

Then came the char siew rice... seriously a lot of rice but there was also a handsome amount of char siew to go with. This dish tasted a lot better. The char siew's sauce and oil blends nicely with the rice, the meat was lean and surprisingly juicy! We finished the rice :)

You will need to head back the same route as per Disneyland but instead of interchanging at Sunny Bay, you go all the way to the last MTR station at Tung Chung. There are actually 2 ways to get to the Giant Buddha and the Po Lin Monastry. One is by bus, another is via the new Ngong Ping 360 cable car. Upon reaching Tung Chung, we proceeded towards the bus terminal looking for bus 23. You will notice a lot of bus services along the way, some requires you to buy ticket, etc... we did not bother as the people seemed like touts... we walked all the way to the end of the terminal where bus 23 is located. Since it was a public holiday, the fare was HKD27.50 instead of the normal HKD17, we used our Airport express passes. The bus route is a series of winding roads, similar to that of Cameron Highlands. The ride will take slightly more than 30 mins. Along the way, we got a glimpse of the cable car route, most probably the ride will be exciting as the cables are hung from hill to hill, very high up indeed :)
Down the hill, there's a new tourist village called Ngong Ping village. At the other end of the village should be the cable car terminal coming from Tung Chung.

Looking up the hill, sitting there was the Giant Buddha... Magnificent :)

On the right will be a short climb to the Giant Buddha, on the left is the Po Lin Monastry. Before going up the steps, there will be counters selling coupons for HKD60 whereby you get to visit a small museum underneath the Buddha plus a vegetarian meal at the monastry.

Of course we walked all the way up, great view of the monastry from the top :)

There were some souvenier stalls underneath the Buddha. We bought some stuff for our family members. It was very sunny that day and most of my photos are overexposed...

It was very hot so we did not spent much time there. On the way back to the bus terminal, my wife saw some shops selling toufu fah, so we gave it a try. It was not as smooth as the one we had in Mongkok, maybe because its processed via the traditional method using a stone grinder as we saw one there. Its pretty similar to the ones we have back home. You can take the same bus back, same price, same duration or via cable car. We slept all the way back to Tung Chung :)

Now... for some shopping! Tung Chung Citygate Outlet is the largest consolidated factory outlet/warehouse in Hong Kong. It holds brands from Joy and Peace, Nike, Adidas/Reebok, A/X, Timberland, Esprit and luxury brands like Burberry, Polo Ralph Lauren, Coach, Bally on the upper levels. The designs and fashions are a bit off season, some are from previous years. But if you don't mind the fashion, most probably you'll be spending quite a lot (of time and $$$) here :)
Can you imagine an original Polo T for only HKD420?!

We had a quick lunch at McDs, it was a public holiday so, every shop has a long queue... We shared a Shogun burger, interestingly the burger came with pork patty and an egg, similar to Chicken McMuffin with egg :)

We did not buy anything there as there were too many people... the fitting rooms was seriously packed! Some designs was kind of old... I am sort of a Timberland guy, the plain coloured long sleeve shirts are a bargain... unfortunately my wive bought me almost every colour available back home, so we skipped that... Another surprising thing is that we saw was Timberland actually sells women apparel! And Joy and Peace sells men leather shoes :)

We headed back to Mongkok for dinner since today is the only day we actually had a bit of spare time to roam around the vicinity of our hotel. This is also the first day where I did not carry anything, that includes my camera... dang! Why? Because we had waxed meat claypot rice (lap mei pou chai fan) for dinner. I should have taken photos of this meal as it was really delicious! I didn't expect to be able to eat this dish as its usually served during winter period! The rice was cooked in a claypot with Chinese sausages (lap cheong and yun cheong) and some duck meat if not mistaken. We were given this say sauce to pour into the claypot, you can hear the rice sizzling with the sauce creating a mouth-watering aroma! I don't quite fancy yun cheong but this one was great :)
It was a bit oily but we washed it down with a glass of iced lemon tea (dong ling cha)

Since it was early, we went back to the hotel's shopping mall. My wife got a pair of very nice high heels from Joy and Peace with a National day discount of 15% which came out to be around HKD700, and I got a Nike back pack, with 10% discount as well, around HKD450 :)

Well... another day gone... 2 more days to go... how time flies :(