Thanksgiving, Macau, Kowloon or The New Territories

by chris cunningham

In case you didn’t know, Sha Tin Wai is not the same as Wong Tai Sin. In fact it’s no where near it. The “Temple of 10,000 Buddha’s” actually has 12,800. They really need a new ad agency. You can taste the air today. Imagine licking a window sill that you haven’t dusted in a long while. That’s about the taste. Lunch seemed mentally expensive when it’s $35HK. But that’s only $4.50 US. Which in turn makes the ferry to Kowloon only .21 cents.

Got up this morning and used Skype to call home to check on the Thanksgiving festivities at my Aunt an Uncle’s. Most of the regular suspects were there and I got to chat with a few.

So the goal today was to get to Macau. I ferried it over to Hong Kong then walked over to the high speed ferries to Macau. I walked up to the counter and bought a ticket, or so I thought. You have to have your passport on you and the guy got all pissy at me a because he printed out the ticket. Ugh, alright I’ll try it tomorrow. Will anything go right???! The backup plan was to head over to Kowloon and out to The New Territories to see the Temple at Wong Tai Sin. First though a stop at The Temple of 10,000 Buddhas. I got off the train and there was a sign pointing down the road for the Monastery with 10,000 Buddhas. So I start walking and pass an IKEA and then suddenly nothing is in english and there are no more signs for the monastery. So I’m kinda lost and finally just stumble across the steps to the temple and start climbing. Finally there’s an escalater and I go up and guess what? Yeah, there’s 12,800 Buddhas. OK, so there was a bunch of little Buddha’s all over the wall. That was pretty much it. So I left. That was not so interesting.

Ok, on to Wong Tai Sin. Problem was that I was supposed to be in Macau today so I didn’t write anything down. So in my head when I saw Sha Tin Wai written on the train map I was actually thinking it was Wong Tai Sin. Nope, not even close. I got off the train and started looking around but there was nothing there. Just people hopping on their bikes to go home. Now what? I just sat down. Ha ha ha pathetic.

After getting my determination back I got back on the train and finally realized I’d mixed the names up in my head. So I had to change trains again and head east now. I arrived and the temple was right next to the station. Finally! It was actually a very interesting temple in that there are a bunch of fortune tellers along the outside. You can rent this can full of sticks and shake it while praying and a stick will eventually work its way loose. Each stick has a number on it and you take that to the fortune teller and she tells you you’re going to die or something. I’d had such bad luck with plans since I’ve been here I didn’t want to push it.

And that’s all folks. Went home and listened to some music on the computer for a few hours and looked around the web for awhile.