Saturday, January 29th, Lantau Island.

Greetings!

What has only 88,000 people living on it, is bigger than Hong Kong Island, and everyone who's been to Hong Kong since 1998 has visited it?  Lantau Island is the home of the HK Airport, has the longest suspension bridge carrying cars and trains in the world, and also boasts the largest sitting Budha in the world sitting on top of one of its mountains.

Since China wouldn't include it in the treaty which gave the British control of Hong Kong in 1842, it remained undeveloped until the territories were reclaimed by China in 1997.  Now, Hong Kong is trying to provide their nearly seven million residents with a relatively unspoiled open space park, funded by an airport, a Disney Resort, and an awesome skyway cablecar to the island's inland.

After a full day on the Island, we returned to Kowloon, had dinner at a very upscale YMCA, and saw China's first rock musical (The Monkey King) at the Kowloon Cultural Center.  It was two and a half hours of excellent surreal story-telling, dance, martial arts, gymnastics, big drums, and rock.


Here's a link to the complete album of photos for today: Lantau Island


Gregory