Ngong Ping 360

My room (sometimes) has wi-fi access. It's really easy to lose track of time and browse the web into the small hours and that's exactly what happened last night. If I'd remembered the "junk" boat trip I'd booked for 10am then I would have forced myself to sleep a little sooner.

So I hardly bounced out of bed but was up nevertheless by 9am. What makes getting up tough is the fact my alarm clock (my phone) still shows UK time, so when it rang it showed 1:30am. Sigh.

The junk boat ("Duk Ling") is an original 1955 fishing vessel and features in numerous postcards. I'd had the trip booked for a few days now, and since it only runs twice a week and can only hold 30ish people at that, I didn't think it was worth missing. However, I'd already taken in the south Kowloon and north Hong Kong Island shores, and had already gone out on the sea on the Star Ferry over to Hong Kong Island, so this trip didn't really add much value to my stay. What it did leave me with, however, was a strong feeling of sea sickness.


Being off the boat and in the Central district on HK island at 11am meant I was in a great position to fill my day. I shot off to Tung Chung on the tube and boarded the "Ngong Ping 360" cable car. Now, for me, this is a big deal. Huge. I'm scared of heights. I mean, really. Have been for a few years and my fear is getting worse with time. I nearly screamed like a girl on the flight over here (read the hidden message in my post describing the flight). I faced my fear head-on and boarded the 5.7km-long cable car ride. If you research Ngong Ping 360 on Wikipedia (Martin) you'll read about the incident that saw one of the pods fall off the wire and plunge 50m to the ground. Knowing this beforehand didn't really work in my favour. But hey, I'm a stubborn bastard.

Some might say that the scenery was beautiful but I was too busy to notice. In my head, I was curled up on the floor, desperately holding on to the pole in the middle of the car, wishing for the ordeal to be over. I captured this image of fishermen directly below.




Ngong Ping is a village on Lantau Island. Also on Lantau Island is the international airport. Hong Kong, incidentally, is made up of 270-ish islands in total. At Ngong Ping, I visited the giant Buddha (the world's largest sitting, outdoor, bronze Buddha statue) and saw a short movie. I contemplated taking a cab or bus back to Kowloon but decided the cable car would save time (up to an hour) so did that instead. Idiot.


An image captured while out and about this evening: