Lantau Island & Tian Tan

Following my race in Meizhou, I travelled to Hong Kong for the next race held a fortnight later.

I got to enjoy some of China's differences to Australia further.

They clearly don't understand negligence law the same way as we do. We packed 10 or so bike boxes into the corridors of a bus, then onto the seats and finally on top of the seats. Had the bus come to a sudden stop, someone would surely have been decapitated.

Apparently buses don't come to a complete stop though, they just keep driving. I couldn't see where we were driving, but given one of the Aussie girl's constant gasping down the front every time we came to an intersection, our driver owned the road and everything got out of his way. It's hardly surprising that a country so in touch with moving in synergy would also be able to drive this way.

I actually got off my flight landing in Lantau at some time around midnight and began my taxi ride to the hotel my brother and I were staying. The airport is on the north of the island and our stay was on the south. There is only one road and it goes straight up and over the mountains that essentially make the island.

In Australia we occasionally have road signs that indicate gradient and might state the actual gradient, but in Hong Kong there are constant reminders. Being a maths teacher, numeracy is something I think about regularly. Most people I know are innumerate. Here's a test for you that I enjoyed about Lantau: If the road signs indicate the road is at a gradient of 1:10, 1:8 and 1:6, how steep are each of those segments? Because 1:10 was almost the average!

After being dropped off in a taxi that advertised that for each bird or animal it transported, you would be charged $5HKD, into a back alley under someone's house's awning my brother helped me back to our room at around 1am with me telling him how we had to stop on the road for a while for a feral buffalo. Welcome to Lantau!

It didn't improve much as the next day we discovered the walls were paper thin and aside from having to put headphones on for each visit to the toilet, the neighbours were doing their best effort to break the bed.

I had the ability to train though, which I should be thankful for and there was also western food that my diabetes wouldn't be copping surprises from.

Our accommodation was a bike and footpath away from the beach, with a big section (120ish x 60ish) cordoned off for swimming and there was a 4 x 25m pool a five minute walk away. The beach left you smelling like rotting seaweed, so I tried to go to the pool as much as possible. Often it'd be really peaceful being the only person in the pool, but even though I was informed by the manager that I wasn't allowed to use a pool buoy or paddles as it would endanger any other swimmers. Hmmm.

Riding was…interesting. I had about 3k of flat road to play around with, the rest was the 10%, 13% and 17% climbing I mentioned. My 30mins easy was 8k. My hour out, hour back was 42k. I would be lying if I said it wasn't fun though. The sights (when the pollution didn't get in the way) were great. The feral cattle droppings all over the road didn't smell much worse than Karana Downs and the traffic saw you as an equal. There was one hairy moment when I had to choose getting in the way of a bus rather than a feral buffalo, but the climbing and descending were great fun.

I even managed to find somewhere to run intervals, but not until I got attacked by wild dogs for the second time in under a week!

The highlight of the time between races was definitely the trip up to "Big Buddha" or Tian Tan Buddha. My brother and I had planned to ride up to this monument together, meeting my girlfriend at the top who would take the bus there. But due to him being sick he caught the bus.

Yes, I am breaking a cardinal sin by wearing tri gear, but I just rode there. I'm sure this guy over my shoulder would have forgiven me ;)

The statue is 34m tall, made of bronze and sits atop a 450m mountain peak. While it is overshadowed by Lantau's highest peak of 950m, as I rode past the reservoir, it stood out magnificently and drew my attention away from everything else in the world. It is such a marvel. It even made me briefly forget how odd it was that they had built a prison at the bottom of the spillway from the reservoir.

The image below are the stats of my ride out and my ride back. There was a moment where the auto pause kicked in and I had to start zig-zagging up the final climb. As I sat at the gateway to the Tian Tan Buddha grounds ruing the decision to ride and the hurt that I had put myself through, my brother strolled over from the bus declaring "I am so jealous of you right now". My sentiment exactly!

We were lucky to have arrived early enough in the morning to beat the tourist crowd that cemented our decision to leave when we did. The discouraging thing about the tourists were the trivialisation of Buddha's own teaching by the way they traipse around the site ignoring just about every sign put down for tourists. I like to think that after the deep suffering I experienced getting up there though, I had learnt my lessons from him (he searched for a an answer to the meaning of human suffering) as my ride home featured far less suffering and my trip time was almost halved :D

I did a few other touristy things not worth reporting on once April arrived and I did come to enjoy the relaxed nature of the little town we were in. Lantau isn't exactly a place ready for tourist travel. It's a great place to escape for a day on the weekend if you are sick of the hustle and bustle of Hong Kong Island or the Kowloon Peninsula, but apart from Disneyland it's just not ready for us yet.