cable car

I forgot to tell you that, last weekend, I was in Hong Kong again. Last time I was there, I told myself I'd make time to take the cable cars on Lantau Island to the Po Lin Monastery. There's a giant Buddha on the mountain with a swastika on it's chest (apparently the symbol's very Buddhist and not at all racist).

Whenever I travel, I try to do a bit of the pseudo-cultural, touristy thing. Partly because I like taking pictures of people taking pictures (tourists!). So this trip to the monastery was it. Also, I've never been on a cable car, suspended hundreds of feet in the air. I have a heights thing, a real fear of it, to be specific. So this was supposed to be cathartic.

And cathartic it was. We got stuck in mid air for what felt like an hour, but was most likely for fifteen minutes. It was a bit terrifying for me but we've been in tight spots before (elevators, during fire drills), and I was really laughing at the incredulity of it all. We even have a video of the event for posterity, and for leaving behind messages, just in case the cable snapped.

But we made it, we're alive, and that cable car fiasco made it to the top five moments of 2009.