Viswanathan K's Thoughts

Another popular tourist spot in Hong Kong is the Big Buddha. Constructed only recently (1993), the Buddha sits ensconced on a lotus. Surrounding him are six bronze statues offering flowers, incense etc representing various virtues. It is called the “Offering of the Six Devas”. Getting to the statue involves either a bus ride to Lantau Island or a cable car. We took the cable car – it is faster and more scenic. Plus, the one we took had a glass floor, so we could see the water and greenery below on the trip.   I have now seen a few such massive Buddha statues now – at Wuxi (China), two in Ladakh, and now the Big Buddha. All of them have steps leading up to the statue, though there were few steps in Ladakh. This one has 268 steps. The Po Lin monastery is nearby, quiet and serene.   For a popular tourist destination, the entire place is surprisingly quiet and uncrowded. Nice place to go to for the statue, the view, the quiet. ~~   We didn’t have any clear plans f...

The next item in Hong Kong was Disneyland – our 14 yo daughter was fast approaching that age beyond which Disneyland would not attract her. Of course, she’d been to other amusement parks like WonderLa in Bangalore and Universal Studios in Singapore, but Disneyland is the bigger brand. Also, we’d been putting off a Disney visit when our daughter was still small, fearing she wouldn’t remember anything and/or be too short for most rides.   The rides at this Disneyland were pretty tame – no roller coasters, for example. Which was a good thing for me, since I am more terrified than thrilled in the rides. Though my daughter would have enjoyed it more if the rides were wilder.   We’d bought the fast-track tickets to go faster through the queues. Unfortunately, those tickets are applicable for specific rides only, not the entire park. The queues being as long as they were (but they are still much better than the US, I am told), we went to whichever rides those tickets entitled u...

We went to Macau the next day. Like Hong Kong, Macau is a handover (from Portugal) and thus is treated as an SAR (Special Administrative Region) of China. Like Hong Kong, it has its own currency (Macanese pataca)! The Chinese yuan is accepted, but the Hong Kong dollar is preferred. Like Hong Kong (but unlike China proper), Macau too drives on the left. And you need to clear immigration to pass from Hong Kong to Macau and back. China with SAR’s is complicated.   Macau is famous for its casinos. If you thought Macao is the Las Vegas of Asia… well, actually, Macao is a much larger gambling market than Las Vegas – it crossed Las Vegas’ gaming revenue numbers as long back as 2010. That said, a lot of things are indeed copied from Las Vegas, including the name (Cotai Strip where the luxury themed casino resorts are located). The Cotai Strip has Londoner, Parisian and Venetian themed resorts – the collated pics from the Net will help get an idea of what that means: We walked around...

For this vacation, we went to Hong Kong with a day at Macau. But before I go into the details of that, some assorted titbits on the Hong Kong.   Hong Kong is an SAR (Special Administrative Region) of China ever since it was handed back from the UK in 1997. It is governed under the “one country, two systems” principle, in line with the 1984 agreement with the British which was made prior to the handover (China guarantees Hong Kong's economic and political systems for 50 years after the handover).   As a result, you have this weird situation where Hong Kong has its own currency (Hong Kong dollar). While the Chinese yuan is accepted, it is not the preferred currency. Lastly, Hong Kong drives on the left unlike China (proper) which drives on the right!   Hong Kong is the world’s 3 rd largest financial hub (after New York and London). The biggest Chinese tech companies, from Alibaba to Baidu to TenCent (WeChat) are all listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange. ~~ ...