I mentioned in an earlier blog item that our friend Richie is Buddhist. In fact, it should be noted that he’s probably one of the world’s very few Cajun Buddhists.
Richie’s wife Jill calls him her little Buddha. Well, Jill, today we went to see Hong Kong’s Big Buddha.
Big is not just a figure of speech. This buddha is really big. He’s 111-feet tall and top of that he sits on top of a mountain.
The thing is, seeing the Big Buddha is not easy. Getting to the monastery required a 40-minute subway ride followed by a 30-minute bus ride up a series of switchbacks. And just when you breathe a sigh of relief because you’ve finally reached the monastery, you find out that you still haven’t reached the Big Buddha. You still need to climb a stairway with 238 steps. Then, of course, you need to do all of the above in reverse to get home.
You’ll be happy to know, Richie, that we threw all our spare change into the collection boxes located in several convenient locations around the Big Buddha.
Those monks don’t monkey around when it comes to money.