China; Saturday, 11 April, 2026

Thursday was Hong Kong, Friday Kowloon, So Saturday should be the New Territories and after breakfast I caught the aptly named Tung Chung metro line to the end of the line at Tung Chung from where it was a short walk over to the Ngong Ping 360 Cable Car. The cable car runs for around 5Km from the waters edge in Tung Chung up into the hills above and the site of the Po Lin Monastery and Tian Tian Buddha in Ngong Ping, taking about 25 minutes to make the journey, the last 10 or so being into the misty cloud that had descended over the peaks, making it difficult to see more than a few meters ahead.

Thankfully Ngong Ping is slightly lower than the highest point of the Cable Car so visibility was back up to a couple of hundred meters when we reached the village, but the head of the Buddha was still hidden within the clouds so after a quick wander around the village – less village more shopping centre, nothing existed here apart from the temples before the creation of the cable car – I headed over to the bus station to pick up the bus back down the hill to the coast and the fishing village of Tai O.

Tai O is a very picturesque little fishing village, with none of the skyscrapers of Kowloon or Hong Kong, but the one thing this place isn’t is a hidden gem, It appears on every itinerary of things to do in Hong Kong and even has direct ferry and bus connections to Tung Chung, as well as appearing on many a day tour itinerary. Thankfully I appeared to be ahead of the crowds as when I arrived into town there were only a handful of people wandering around.

I had either 20 minutes or 90 minutes until the next bus back up the hill to Ngong Ping, and hoping that the weather might improve I decided to go for the later bus so I spent quite a bit of time wandering around the village, heading out to the temple on the edge of the village and out the viewpoint at the end of the island that the main part of Tai O sits on. By the time I made it back into the village centre the rest of the tourists had turned up and it was absolutely heaving, taking me the best part of 5 minutes to walk the 200m or so from the main square over the bridge and to the bus station fighting against a constant flow of tour groups going the other way.

Though as I’d been so early, and not many other people had had the same idea, the bus was pretty empty on the way back up the hill, so I didn’t have to worry about fighting for a seat on that, which I had thought could have been a problem. It was also pretty obvious as we climbed back up the hill to Ngong Ping that the weather hadn’t improved with the mists still as low as they had been.

I decided to head to the Po Lin Monastery first to have a look around that, taking in the two very impressive halls, including their own Grand Hall of Ten Thousand Buddhas, before heading down into the grounds and grabbing a very nice and filling lunch from the temples canteen which is open to visitors serving vegetarian meals – mostly wheat gluten based.

After lunch I headed over to the Tian Tan Buddha, a gigantic 34m high bronze statue located on a plinth at the top of 268 steps. The weather clearly wasn’t going to get much better, but there were short period when the clouds would briefly rise enough to bring everything into focus and make the head visible, so I decided it was probably as good a time as any to make the climb up. At the top you can enter into the base of the plinth which houses a small museum (and gift shop), before being able to climb up inside to reach the base of the statue itself for what must be on a clear day excellent views out over the monastery and surrounding countryside.

I descended back down from the Buddha and headed back to the Cable Car, at which point it became obvious that many other people had had the same idea as the queue was at the 30 minute to wait from here sign when I joined it. In the end it only took about 25 minutes to get into a cable car, but from leaving the Buddha to reaching the metro in Tung Chung took well over an hour.

After catching the metro back into town I headed back up through the Central-Mid-Levels Escalators to the top and then made my way back down via the Glenealy Footbridge and Gorge to the city’s Zoo and Botanical Gardens. I wandered through the gardens and then down to the centre of Central and to Admiralty to pick up the metro back over to Kowloon and out to the Nan Lian Garden.

Much like Macau, many of the gardens in Hong Kong are open until late in the evening, in the case of the Nan Lian Garden only to 9pm, but that’s still late enough to be able to enjoy walking around them in the dark with key plants and building picked out by lighting. I spent a good hour or so wandering around before heading back over to the hotel, grabbing a bite to eat in a nice restaurant near to the hotel before turning in for the night.