The Yee’s Have It – Lantau Island again
Day 6 of this vacation, Good Friday, and we were heading back to Lantau Island – again.
After spending the first 3 days of this vacation on Lantau Island, you would think that we had no need to head back there again! For anyone staying at Disney – there is definitely more to Lantau than the Resort and the Airport. Last night on the bus ride home, I’d found out that Mrs Angel and our TA friend were very keen to head out to visit the Tian Tan Giant Buddha at Ngong Ping. Mr Angel opted to stay back at the hotel when he realised that we planned to set out early.
We’d arranged to start at 7.30 am as I figured it would take us some time to make the trek out back to Lantau. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Mrs Angel, my parents and our TA friend all made it down by this nominated time.
From the Hung Hom MTR station, we caught the Tuen Mun line out to Nam Cheong (pink line). We interchanged to the line heading in the Tung Chung direction (yellow line). Our destination was the Tung Chung station. Our travel time was about 40 minutes.
For anyone at HKDR, catch the train to Sunny Bay and interchange to the line heading in the Tung Chung direction (yellow line). It should take you about 15 minutes (or less) to get to Tung Chung.
When we got to Tung Chung, we took the Ngong Ping 360 exit to get out. I swiped this one from DH's set.
You can catch a taxi, a bus or the cable car to get to the top of Ngong Ping. I had been dismayed to find out that the cable car service had been closed for maintenance for about 2 months in February. The scheduled opening date had been ‘early April’ but I hadn’t counted on that being a firm date. Over dinner last night, S told us that she had seen that the cable car had reopened the day before. It had made TV news as on reopening day, there had been a technical hitch and some passengers had been stuck on-route for over 2 hours. Despite that glitch, it seemed like the cable car was back up and running….hence why we had decided on heading out this way today.
The cable car station is maybe 250 m away from the train station. You walk across the concourse and up some escalators to the ticketing booth. The last time my parents and our TA friend had come this way, they had to queue for 30 minutes just to buy a ticket. Because we had started out early, there was hardly anyone else in line. You may want to check opening times for the service before you go. We were heading out on a public holiday and knew that services would start at 9 am. I believe they might start running at 10 am on a standard day.
For anyone wanting to head out this way…before you go, you might want to consider on what type of experience you might want to have at the top.
There are a number of bundle ticket/offers that are available at the ticket booth. Some include the two ‘shows’ available at the Ngong Ping village; others include tours out to Tai O fishing village. All bundles are available on the standard cable car cabins or with crystal cabins.
The other thing with the ticketing is that until the end of 2012, if you have already purchased a ticket for Madame Tussauds, The Peak Tram, Ocean Park, the Hong Kong Wetland Park or the Ngong Ping Cable car, show that ticket and you will be entitled for 10% discount on any of the other 4.
It had been a drizzly morning so we ruled out tours heading to Tai O fishing village. I was not keen on a repeat of the day before and none of the others were really interested to see the fishing village.
We settled on the Journey of Enlightenment package. It cost us HK$290 per adult, about $35 in our money. I can’t remember exactly but I think this package included return trips on the crystal cabin. If it didn’t, we must have upgraded our tickets.
We got in and headed out!
Crystal cabin? Take a look at the floor….glass bottom!
I started to take a look out and noted that there was a lot of drizzle!
I guess it’s all about perception and decided that a few grey clouds couldn’t stop me from focussing on where we needed to head to. The cable car journey takes about 20 minutes to get to the top. It heads towards one mountain and spins around it, heading towards the second mountain where the Ngong Ping village is.
Before you cross the first mountain, you’ll get a view of the Airport.
And if you take a look back, you’ll see Tung Chung.
The crystal cabin floor provided fantastic views straight down. For me, I thought it was worth the extra money.
Before we even got to the peak of the first mountain, you can get a sense of what an engineering feat this must have been to actually lay the cable. It sure is a long line!
For anyone wanting to, you can actually hike up. I don’t know if the path goes all the way to the top but it did follow the cable car route for most of the way.
Some rather pretty countryside below, which we could enjoy courtesy of the glass bottom!
Our day did not look very promising after we passed over the first mountain peak. This is the view we had for most of the way up to the second mountain.
Take a look at the cable wire behind me. Visibility was not good at this stage.
I was beginning to think that we would not be able to see the Big Buddha even if we walked right into it!
(Continued in Next Post)
) I'm not as adventurous with Asian cuisine as American! I'm just not into cities and shopping so I wouldn't have been into that day. Although on the other hand if there were bargains to be had, FRAN would have been all over it. However I suspect that being downtown there weren't many bargains. We prefer thrift stores and warehouse deals.
that cable car ride looks too cool lol!!)
Makes me really glad that we set out as early as we did then.
