Our last day in Hong Kong... at least for this leg of the trip. We had an action packed day and a deadline to get to the airport for our flight. Turns out we had plenty of time... I'm a nervous traveler.


Our first stop was the 10,000 Golden Buddha Monastery. We started out being slightly deceived (and passing an IKEA- WHAT?!?!? Hong Kong really is a dream) by what turns out was a Buddhist crematorium, but it was pretty cool.



In typical Hong Kong fashion it was built UP. This picture is me trying to show that, but we were already like 5 levels up at this point.





Soooo many people had their ashes there.. it was pretty cool, until we saw THIS:








UMMM first that sign, second it's an empty cage, what am I to understand by this? Where are these monkeys???

After stopping Chad from trying to take a delicious-looking banana, we proceed to what is actually the Monastery. It was pretty cool to hike up past thousands of full sized Buddhas. I took tons of pics but here's a few of my favorite views and Buddhas. (Can you have a favorite Buddha???)




Animal lover... right??



Most pictures were taken like this: Chad runs ahead, Michelle poses, Brent wanders then is called to attention and a better second picture is taken

I guess this is a real problem

So it's called the 10,000 Buddha Monastery because of the actual temple, not the path up. If you look at this super bad picture (you couldn't take pictures inside) you can see tiny Buddhas in the wall. That's where the 10,000 were... the hillside was just a lead up.





We also found the monkeys. As you can see I'm not very fearless around wild animals... I think it's a healthy respect but anyway, even after that I guess I still was not the monkey's favorite person.


I seriously did not like turning my back to a monkey

 A few minutes later I started to walk to somewhere, I thought I was giving the monkeys a wide berth, but one did not agree and totally charged me hisisng and showing his teeth. I did want any rational living thing 10 times the sizes of it's attacker would do... ran away screaming. Yeah, I screamed at a nice, peaceful Buddhist temple because of a monkey the size of my calf. Anyway, fearless Chad got these awesome pictures of my attacker and some other monkeys that were around.




What?
Do you see that baby???


This gem is mine... the monkey going into the trash where it belongs. Taken a good distance away utilizing my zoom

After a bit more Buddha peeping (that sounds dirtier than it should) we decided to check out the LDS temple in Hong Kong.





 We totally forgot church clothes so we couldn't go in, but we walked the property in about 1 minute, because, as you can see, it is TINY!



Pretty sure this says "More Holiness to the Lord" in Chinese... I was the only one in the group that found this to be cool


The temple is in a reallllly nice neighborhood (surprise) and we passed all these cute Hong Kong kids going back to school after lunch. There was one school where it's all little girls and they were all wearing red peacoats, white tights and patent leather Mary Janes... I almost died of all the cuteness. I didn't take a picture though because I felt too creepy in my casual clothes (EDIT: or in general, regardless of apparel, because taking pictures of unknown children is creepy).


After all those adventures we headed off to the airport. I gotta say it was a pretty nice one. Quick check in lines and these beauts in the bathrooms.



Off to Thailand we go!!