10,000 everything (except Buddhas)

October 8, 2007

We have a long list of things we’d like to see in Hong Kong this trip, and one thing on the list was the 10,000 Buddhas Monastery. It’s in the New Territories (the burbs), which is a direction not really on our path for the rest of the trip, so we multi-tasked and added other destinations that were on the way.
We had no idea how appropriate the concept of 10,000 would be for this excursion. First, it was another day of seemingly 10,000 degree sweltering, nasty humid heat… Our first stop was Mong Kok, which, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, has the highest population density in the world. High heat and high numbers of humanity do not go well together…

We were headed to the flower market and the bird market. It took us a while to get there since we started by going in the wrong direction off the MTR and ended up in a bit of an industrial district. Factories and warehouses right in the middle of all of the high-rise apartments. Noise and pollution being the only things we could really focus on. So, it was quite a contrast when we finally worked our way back around and found the flower market. The street smelled and looked beautiful. It was surreal seeing the sheer quantity of orchids of all sizes and colors. And it was almost a relief to see that they were asking a decent amount of money for the Orchids, although still cheap by our florist standards. I think the most expensive we saw was a pot of about 40 orchids for a cost of around $265 US.

Our next stop was the bird market (or bird garden as it is called here), which is right beside the flower market. Once again, a completely surreal experience of quantity. There were all sorts of song birds and parrot/cockateal birds caged up and ready to be taken as a most convenient pet for the congested living quarters of Hong Kong. Overall, the bird market was fascinating but also a bit depressing for me, seeing all those birds in tiny little cages in the heat. The people were pretty fascinating too. The competition for getting the best bird seemed pretty high. Everyone was eyeing what everyone else bought as they passed each other. We even saw a so-ugly-it’s-cute baby bird.

Our last stop of the day was the 10,000 Buddhas Monastery. We took a train a few stops out into the suburbs (which was populated more sparsely…more like Manhattan…) We trekked the short distance from the station to the monastery, looked up at all of the steps with overheated intimidation, and then saw the escalators (whew!). Here’s a picture of the layout…in the picture, the lower left is where we started, with the escalators leading up about halfway. Our goal was to get to the tower in the far upper right of the photo.

So, based on the title of this blog entry, I’m guessing you knoiw something went awry with our plans. The monastery was very interesting. As you make your way up (travelling by actual stairs at this point rather than the blessed escalators), different levels have different pagodas, and lots of graves (?) where people come to pay homage to their relatives. There is paper money burning on each level in big furnaces. So ashes and heat add to the quietness of the monastery. Well, we got to the highest point in the picture that still shows the white buildings, but apparently, the path from that highest point to the even higher final pagoda (the one with the 10,000 Buddhas) was closed due to renovation. There were no signs (not in English anyway) letting us know this small detail. We slowly marched our grumpy hot selves back down the mountain and got to the central pagoda where a lady was selling water. I asked her how much the water was. She didn’t speak English and didn’t understand my question. Instead, she handed me a small laminated piece of paper that said “Sorry. This is not the way to the 10,000 Buddhas. Go back down to main entrance and walk around construction to find path up.” And that was the end of that excursion.