Today is the last day in China for Courtney and me. We’re flying out of Hong Kong for the United States first thing tomorrow morning. It’s been a whirlwind of a trip, and it hardly felt like two-and-a-half weeks (more like one week). We arrived in Hong Kong yesterday from Guangzhou, with a messy, frustratingly complicated stopover in Shenzhen. Guangzhou was very fun and very tiring, as we spent five days catching up with relatives, all of whom treated us to sumptuous feasts. We laughed, we cried, we ate, we drank. It made me yearn to come back to Guangzhou soon, and definitely sooner than another 13 years.

Today, we signed up for a one-day tour of Hong Kong, which included the big Buddha on Lantau Island, the Tai O fishing village, and a couple other sights along the way. The sights themselves were pretty enjoyable, but the travel in between was a pretty second-rate operation. We boarded the tour bus at our hotel at 8:15 a.m. The bus then swung around to a couple other hotels in Kowloon to pick up tourists. Then the four of us and a couple others from the group were told that we will be changing buses to join up with a different group. So we got off on the side of a street, met the tour guide from that second group, waited for her bus to circle around the block, and hopped on.

That wasn’t the end of it. We then spent most of the next hour and a half going all over Hong Kong to pick up tourists from various hotels, including a stop at Disneyland Hong Kong. By 10:30, we had been on the “tour” for more than two hours, and only 20 minutes of it were for actual sightseeing.

The trek to Lantau Island had yet one more twist: Because land access to the island is restricted (the way I understood the explanation, it was to protect the elderly, I mean, the environment on the island), we had to get off that second bus and board a third bus, which has special access to go to the island and take us to the Buddha statue. As we switched buses, we were told that at the end of our visit, we will be taking a cable car ride back down the mountain, at which point a tour guide-to-be-determined will meet us and take us back in yet another different coach (or two coaches, depending on what the tour company can arrange, they said). The whole one-day tour thing seemed like a pretty second-rate operation, and I’m amazed they don’t lose tourists from the group on a regular basis. Or maybe they do, and the hills of Lantau Island are home to semi-feral humans who got lost from their tour groups.

Things improved once we stopped changing buses and actually got onto Lantau Island. Our bus took us up a steep, narrow, winding path barely wide enough for two vehicles to pass through. The scenery along the mountainside was beautiful, as we looked down onto deep gorges and open bodies of water. The residential buildings on the island, however, were pretty old and dilapidated. We are told that as part of the protection for the island, there are no plans to do any development there. Therefore, there are no job opportunities there, limiting the number of residents and forcing the young people who live there to eventually leave the island for jobs in the city.

Our first stop on the island was Tai O, an old fishing village dating back about three centuries. On the surface, the village was very charming in the “quaint old way of life” way, but in reality, fishing is a dying, and almost dead, industry for the people here. There are no fishing boats in the village and only three shrimp boats, and fishing barely provides a subsistence income for the people here. Nonetheless, there were a lot of seafood — both live and dried — for sale as we took a short walk through the village’s main market.

After a half hour at Tai O (and we could’ve stayed there for half the day exploring its many nooks and crannies), it was on to the Tian Tan Buddha statue. While the commoners have to walk up 268 steps to reach the Buddha from the parking lot, our tour bus had special access to take us up a side road right to the base of the statue. It was pretty impressive. Inside the structure are oil paintings depicting the Buddha’s path to nirvana, a hall of remembrance where people can buy a spot for the names of their deceased loved ones to be displayed, and two tiny bone fragments, supposedly part of the cremated remains of Gautama Buddha. After a short spin at the top, we rode back down to the monastery at the bottom of the steps, where we had a delicious vegetarian meal and then took some pictures of the statue from afar.

Intersection of Dundas Street and the Ladies’ Market in Kowloon.

Then came the really exciting part of the day — a ride on the Ngong Ping 360 cable car back down the mountain. The lift offers a 25-minute, 5.7-kilometer ride that goes over the mountainside, the bay, and finally the Tung Chung area on Lantau Island. It was an awesome and sometimes a bit frightening view as we glided high over the impressive landscape. The car was designed so that there are vents under the seat, and you can hear and feel the strong winds. The lift stations are designed so that each one pulls the car up before it goes into a descent, creating the kind of anxiety you get when your rollercoaster train is approaching the top of that first, humongous drop.

We got back to the hotel around 4 p.m., relatively early compared to other return times on this trip. We’ll take a stroll around the streets near the hotel tonight before turning in early so we can get up in the morning for a long journey back to the U.S.