Monastic Beach

Picking up where I left off in the previous post, we headed to the Po Lin monastery at the bottom of the hill from the Buddha statue. One of the first things we came across on the grounds was a courtyard-type area where people were buying and lighting incense, and leaving it in a series of large pots as offerings.





After that, we continued on inside to another courtyard where the main hall was located. At the bottom of the steps were several fountains with small statues of Buddha. Adherents would take a spoon-like device, fill it with water from the fountain, and symbolically and literally bathe Buddha.







At the top of the steps was a porch area extending along both sides of the main entrance doors. The balcony was lined with flowers I couldn't identify, and a series of columns featuring dragon motifs were on the outside wall.







Although signs didn't say so, we got the impression that photography was prohibited inside the main hall and some of the other buildings that were open to the public, so there are no shots of any of the altars or Buddha statues or paintings we saw, which were pretty spectacular.

We wrapped up our visit of the monastery and asked for directions to Chang Sha, a local beach where a friend of Joe's recommended we eat lunch at a restaurant called the Stoep, which specializes in (oddly enough) Mediterranean and South African cuisine.

We got on the bus and during the course of the ride, a downpour of near-Biblical proportions began. UPDATE: I forgot to mention before the fact that a few rows in front of where we were sitting, an old woman was practically hacking up a lung or kidney or some other internal organ very loud for pretty much the entire ride. Natasha smartly plugged into her I Pod and turned it up to 11 for a (somewhat) blissful ride to try and phase out the racket up front. Joe and I just tried to focus on other things and ignore what was going on, pretty unsuccessfully I should add.

We got to the stop and made a mad dash for shelter of the roofed outdoor dining area of the restaurant. After waiting several minutes for a table to clear, we sat down for lunch. The food was amazing, and every few minutes, one of the local dogs would make his/her way between the tables and occasionally make a racket. There were several tourists in bathing suits there, probably crashing at one of the several local resorts. We were there for about 2 hours eating and waiting for the rain to calm down so we could head back up to the main road and wait for the bus to make our way back to Hong Kong.