Veronica C.
Yelp
Highly recommended. This was a totally unplanned trip for me, but I needed to kill some time while having a 10 hour layover in HK. After eating and exploring some of the downtown area, I figured, why not visit the Big Buddha. I've never seen it, and it's close to the airport should I need to hurry to get back. And due to the heavy rains, I knew the visibility would be difficult at Victoria Peak.
Without having done much research, I had seen in some brochures at least 2 options: Bus 23, or taking the Ngong Ping cable car. Not really knowing the difference besides the cable car being much more expensive, I'm glad I took the cable car. Although they temporarily stopped rides for about 10 minutes due to thunderstorms, the cable car ride still took longer than I expected! About 25-30 minutes. And as I was observing the beautiful views, sometimes blocked by clouds due to all the rain, I noticed the windy roads to get to the Buddha and breathed a sigh of relief, realizing that taking Bus 23 would have taken much longer, and not wanting to run the risk of missing my flight, cable car was definitely the way to go.
Being such a rainy day, I thought I wouldn't get any good pictures out of the trip, but it was beautiful. It was nice, though touristy, to walk through the little town leading up to the buddha, and then climbing 200+ slick steps to reach it, got some good exercise in, thoroughly soaked with sweat on the inside of the jacket, and drenched on the outside from the rain. I decided to add the vegetarian meal to my trip (otherwise, this portion of the visit would have been free). It wasn't worth the price (about 100 HKD?), but I figured it was a donation to the monastery. The food was okay, and there was way more than 1 person could possibly eat.
The neighboring monastery was ornately painted in classic colors of gold, red, and green. Overall, I'd recommend coming here if you have several hours to spend. I would have spent more time outside walking the trails, but with the rains, I ended up heading back to the Tung Chung MTR station to get dry inside the shopping mall there.