10,000 BUDDHAS... AND MY DREAM COME TRUE

Every guy’s dream, really. When I heard the name of this tourist attraction, there was no question that we had to go there. Monkey Mountain. It’s as simple as that. A mountain full of wild monkeys.

On Saturday morning we met up with some friends before embarking on our adventure. Our group was pretty entertaining. First we had the friends from law school and their curly blond toddler girl. As we would walk with them and see the spectacles of China, this little girl was a spectacle to China. Smiling gaggles of women would ogle and point and stop us to get a better look. They just loved her. The other two were a young white couple, a former Hong Kong missionary who therefore speaks Cantonese, and could interpret the world around us. That was pretty cool.

We headed first across the bay to the 10,000 Buddhas. It’s actually not an exaggeration. There are 10,000 6-inch Buddhas in a huge room but the much more entertaining part were the numerous statues of what we presume are various ancestors lining the whole walk up. They had character. A simple description would not do them justice. A number of locals were actually there lighting incense and praying and so on and I felt very strange there in my shorts and sunglasses and big camera in their place of worship, but it was clear that they expected it so long as we heeded the sign at the entrance, “PLEASE TURN OFF THE FLASHLIGHT WHEN YOU TAKE A SHOT.”

When we felt we’d seen enough Buddhas to last several lifetimes, we headed off to go see the monkeys. It was rockin. It was basically a road big enough for one car that went over the river and through the woods surrounded by millions of monkeys. Not that we could see them in the distance, more like we had to walk carefully so that we didn’t aggravate the surly one in the middle of the road and have to fight him off with backpacks and umbrellas. Of course being a guy, I needed to know at given moment what my strategy would be if the hordes of monkeys suddenly surrounded us, their eyes filled with lust for our pbj’s, and one of them in a custom fitted vest and fedora (this is Hong Kong, after all) stepped out of the crowd and squeaked the monkey equivalent to “get ‘em boys.” Daring combat and escape would ensue and Maret would drape her self over my shoulders and say “my hero!” before fainting.

We took picture after picture of the awesome monkeys. There were scores of baby monkeys hanging onto their mothers’ fur for dear life. There was lice picking action and just about everything you could want from a day with the monkeys. I guess there was no poo flinging, but that’s alright with me. Despite Maret’s close call when she made too much eye contact with the cranky one, we made it out unscathed. All in all is was an awesome tourist adventure day.

P.S. You know it was adventurous day because all the things we did make awesome movie titles. Check this out: Indiana Jones and the Ten Thousand Buddhas! Or Indiana Jones and the Monkey Mountain!