we left shortly after 9am from Tin Hau MTR station to make the journey to Sha Tin station; this involved changes at Admiralty, Mong Kok and Kowloon Tong, the first two were quick cross-platform changes and the third was a long walk punctuated by escalators.
Our guidebook said that to find the temple, all we had to do was follow the signs from Sha Tin.
We searched the information map and looked around all the station exits to no avail.
Soon we saw two young men who looked like visitors, who told us they had just returned from the temple and pointed out the way to us. "The sign" was at least 400 meters from the station!
The weather was drizzly, but mild, which was not a problem as we had 400+ steps to climb!
On reaching the top the climb had certainly been worthwhile! Some fabulous decorated buildings, including the main temple, which apparently does have more than 12,000 miniature buddhas decorating the (not to be photographed) walls.
Unfortunately, we were unable to fulfil Graham's request for some mist-less views from the top!
We had some tea and vegetarian snacks at the top and then made our way back down via the bus station of course, where there were various buses on display.
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Back to Central via the same route to do some shopping and once again, all of the connections took less than 5 minutes, but all the trains were very crowded.
We finished off with a visit to the Victoria gardens flower market, which is set up for the lunar new year.
There were hundreds of stalls and thousands of people milling about, with all manner of floral offerings and other goodies to enhance the celebrations.
When we arrived back at our room Peter's wallet was missing, presumably "lost" on one of those very crowded MTR trains. Fortunately there was very little cash inside and only one debit card.
But a 30-minute phone call was needed to navigate the tortuous process required to report this to the bank, which insisted on transferring us three times and putting us on hold despite the fact we were making an international call from a mobile. The call probably cost more than the value of the lost items!
A complimentary bowl of fruit from the Hotel manager was a welcome gesture.
Now a Police report form needs to be completed (on the internet).
Tomorrow we visit the Big Buddha at Lantau and will try to keep all our possessions intact..
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