As soon we booked our Hong Kong trip, we knew we wanted to visit Ngong Ping 360 and the Tian Tan Buddha. Situated at the top of a mountain on Lantau Island, it’s not the easiest place to get to or a quick thing to tick off your Hong Kong bucket list, but the Tian Tan Buddha is a big deal in Hong Kong. We knew we wanted to dedicate one of our 7 days in the city to seeing him, Ngong Ping 360, Ngong Ping village and the Po Lon monastery, and that we wanted to take the cable car up the mountain too.
We’d booked in advance via Klook, as we got 5% off our booking for being a new customer. Tickets booked directly from the Ngong Ping 360 website cost 195 Hong Kong dollars each, around £20, or if you’d rather do the bus that’s 120 Hong Kong dollars, £12. We got a deal on Klook as we booked multiple different activities all in one go, making a small saving. Seeing something as iconic at the Tian Tan Buddha felt worth it when we were pricing this activity up.
I highly recommend booking everything you want to do in Hong Kong in advance, as this often lets you skip the queues when you arrive. Hong Kong has a lot of queues and the Tian Tan Buddha is no exception. Sadly for us, the cable car queue was not skippable (but we didn’t have to queue separately to buy tickets before joining the main queue) and we queued for around two hours to get onto the cable car. Top tip-if there’s more than one of you, take it in turns to leave the queue, head to the Starbucks at the other side of the main square and use their toilet and grab a drink. Coffee powered us through the queue. It was always going to be busy, though, as Ngong Ping 360 and the Tian Tan Buddha is such a popular attraction.
The cable car journey was absolutely worth the wait. I would do it all again tomorrow for another trip on that cable car! The route starts just outside the MTR station at Tung Chung, which is easy to get to from Central Hong Kong. If you don’t fancy the cost or the queue, though, you can take the bus up instead, from the bus station at Tung Chung, NLB no 23. You can also cut out going to Tung Chung altogether and take a bus direct from Mui Wo, NLB no 2. You’ll see another part of Hong Kong if you take the bus, but if you can manage to get the cable car up in daylight and back at dusk, do that. It’s one of the best things to do when visiting Ngong Ping 360 and the Tian Tan Buddha.
Views from the cable car are, as you can tell from my photos, absolutely stunning, and nothing beats the moment you first spot the Tian Tan Buddha. We flew in in the dark, but apparently you can even see him when you fly into Hong Kong, if you’re sat at the right part of the plane.
At the top, there’s a little village that’s more touristy than I expected, with gift shops and various food options. We bought ice cream, took a photo on the rainbow stairs and set off walking towards the rest of Ngong Ping 360. We walked round a corner, saw a sign that there were loose cows wandering and not to feed them, spotted a cow and I lost my shit. I just wasn’t expecting a cow up a mountain, alright?
We walked for about 15 minutes to the Po Lin monastery, taking lots of photos of the burning incense sticks, the lanterns and all of the beautiful buildings before having a proper look inside. It’s important to be respectful so my photos were all taken outside but trust me, the inside is just as beautiful as the outside. I’m not sure if it’s usually as full on as it was when we were there, as we were there around Lunar New Year, but it’s absolutely going to be worth a trip whenever you visit Hong Kong. I enjoyed the village and the monastery but my mind was on the Tian Tan Buddha and the photos I wanted to get when we saw him, so we didn’t spent as long exploring the area as we could have.
The star of the show, the Tian Tan Buddha himself, is about a ten minute walk from the monastery. You do have to climb A LOT of steps, and it’s likely to be busy, but the views all the way up are amazing. We took so many photos and enjoyed walking all around the Tian Tan Buddha, and the little museum underneath him, once we got to the top. This was, unsurprisingly, the second highlight of visiting Ngong Ping 360.
We ended up staying at the top of the mountain until not long before it closed, before joining the (thankfully much shorter) queue for a cable car back down again. I’d highly recommend a visit here to anyone going to Hong Kong, although I’m not sure I’d feel the need to go a second time-I think the Tian Tan Buddha is amazing but once you’ve been, you probably don’t need to go again when there’s so much more to see in Hong Kong.
Have you been to Hong Kong? Would you visit Ngong Ping 360 and the Tian Tan Buddha?
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