Great China Adventure (part 2)

Still in Hong Kong then (happy Mr Mogg?) we spent a very pleasant day on Lantau island where there's a cable car ride up to a giant bronze Buddha on top of a hill. I was slightly disappointed to find out that the Buddha is a new addition (1993) to the Hong Kong scene, rather than an ancient monument, but you can't have everything...
View of Lantau from the cable car

The bronze buddha

You can climb right up to the Buddha (and, in fact, there's a small museum inside the base of him.) This is the gorgeous view from the top.

The main statue is surrounded by goregous larger than life bronze goddessesIn the south of Hong Kong Island, there's a pretty little seaside town called Stanley with a reasonable beach.

Lots of businesses in Hong Kong have these small shrines outside the entrance

Next stop was Chongqing, back in Mainland China. Apparently, despite the British handover in 1997, Hong Kong is NOT part of China - something my mum found out when we were at the airport to fly to Chongqing and she wasn't allowed on the plane cos she had already used her China visa.

Luckily the HK authorities were very good and issued her with a new Chinese visa within 6 hours - she didn't even have to leave the airport! She caught an evening flight and the lovely Victoria Jenna (river boat) waited for her before setting sail down the Yangtze.

One of the gorges along the Yangtze

More lovely scenery (you can see the flood line where no vegetation grows.)

Chinese sampanThe most popular part of the Yangtze is along the 3 Gorges - there is a tributary off this section where you can sail on a smaller boat to see the 3 mini gorges (actually more beautiful than the main ones!) This is one of the mini gorges.The lovely Victoria Jenna

Our cabin - complete with French windows and private balcony
Sampan driver
These two photos are of the same cliff. In the first one, it's much easier to see the cave with a wooden coffin inside. In the second picture, look near the top to see the same crack with a row of caves. These coffins were put there by the Ba people, who lived in the area around 200o years ago.
How they got the coffins, bodies and grave goods there in the first place is still a mystery...