Diamond Hill

One of the best parts about living in a big city is the convenience of public transportation. While we do walk a lot here in HK, the second way I get around is on the "MTR". This underground railway is fast, reliable, and has many different stops each with their own attractions.

Surprisingly, there are multiple MTR stations just a few stops away from Kowloon Tong (my home station) that have beautiful temples and nunneries. Today on another Hattie and Haley adventure, we decided to explore some of the areas close to home and made our way to the Chi Lin Nunnery and Nan Lian Gardens at the Diamond Hill MTR station.

Hong Kong does a great job helping "lost" tourists and posts directional signs all over the city. The MTR exits also have detailed explanations as to what there is to see at all of the different exits at the stops. Without all the signs it would be very easy to get disoriented! Following the signs to the nunnery we stumbled upon the gardens in our short five minute walk from the station.

The gardens were very "zen" like and actually relaxing to walk around. While I love the excitement that the city has to offer, some of the best days are escaping from it all. We walked around the garden for an hour or so and saw a beautiful golden temple-thing, coy ponds, Bonsai trees, a man-made waterfall, and a really cool looking restaurant hidden under the waterfall. The gardens were beautiful but sort of seemed like part of Epcot World in Disney. A lot of the temples and buildings were not very authentic and definitely had the tourist-made look to them. It was still a great place to walk and think a little though!

Mini Trees!

Oasis in the middle of the city

Attached to the gardens is a walkway to the Chi Lian Nunnery. This nunnery is a huge Buddhist temple and has some really authentic Chinese architecture. All of the buildings are wood frame buildings which means that they are built without the use of any iron nails and instead held together with an intricate interlocking system. Apparently the Chi Lin buildings are the only buildings to be constructed this way in modern day Hong Kong! 

As the New Year's festivities are still going on the temple still had a lot of extra decorations up. In the shrine the front of the Buddha statue was flooded with offerings and as we walked past the statues we were allowed to spin the wheel of good fortune for the New Year. The nuns also blessed us and gave us each a red envelope with 20 cents in!