Monastery of 10,000 Buddhas

In addition to the Hong Kong Heritage Museum, Sha Tin is the home to the Ten Thousand Buddhas Monastery.

After leaving the monastery, I dutifully followed my GPS map - which was spoiled slightly when I spotted Sha Tin Park and decided to take a brief wander through.

After leaving down the park, my confused GPS managed to lead me through a shopping mall and through the centre of Sha Tin New Town.

The main street (Sha Tin Centre Street) felt like a generic modern retail centre - aside from the heat and the Chinese touches, it was oddly reminiscent of central Southampton, which is no great accomplishment.

One of the lessons I learned in my short time in Hong Kong is that aside from carrying a bottle of water everywhere, shopping malls (of which there is no danger of a deficit) are a lifesaver. Not because of the shops, but the air conditioning.

Another lesson I've learned is that where there is an MTR station, there is a mall. So my route cleverly took me via the Sha Tin station and the surrounding air conditioning.

Which made absolutely no difference to the impression I was doing of the Wicked Witch at the end of the Wizard of Oz.

Past the station, via another shopping mall (brief respite thanks to the air conditioning - although overall still no real impact), I dutifully followed the directions provided by Google Maps, which led me around to the entrance to the parking for the mall and an apparent dead end.

However, a squint-and-you'll-miss-it entrance to an alleyway opposite the car park entrance seemed to offer a potential solution.

My trust that the path wasn't going to lead me into someone's back garden paid off as I found signs directing me along a pathway through bamboo groves to the bottom of the staircase leading to the monastery.

A staircase with over 400 steps.

Steep steps.

Did I mention I was a bit hot?

The staircase is lined by statues of arhats, some of which appeared to be wearing lipstick, which I believe is one of the physical characteristics of the Buddha, and intended to represent scared speech - but you might want to check a more authoritative source on Buddhism rather than believing me.

Arhats, from my poor understanding, are enlightened followers of the Buddha rather than Buddhas as such - so I don't think these contributed to the 10,000 figure.

431 steps-worth of statues later and just before I can keel over with heat exhaustion (at this point in time I probably looked as if someone had thrown a bucket of water over me - heat, humidity and exercise are not an attractive combination), I arrived at the lower level of the monastery.

Technically it's not a monastery because it's lacking the one real requirement for being a monastery - monks. The monastery is run by lay-people, which makes it a layestry , or something.

The lower level features a nine-storey pagoda in the centre. However, by this time I was only thinking about drinking water and trying to cool down, so my photography was a bit halfhearted.

No, I wasn't drunk when I took this.

Skanda Pavilion

After re-hydrating a little, I progressed to the upper level of the complex (more steps, sigh). Photography was not permitted within the halls there, so I probably erred on the side of caution with my subject matter.

However, to the far right-hand side, I seemed to be free from the risk of photographing people at worship, so was able to aim my lens a little bit higher.

A better view of the 9 storey pagoda

As I was in desperate need of air conditioning by this point, I decided to end my visit at this point, which meant I never did find the 10,000 Buddhas (although there are apparently 13,000, so the "monastery"'s name is doubly inaccurate).