Wong Tai Sin Temple & Chi Lin Nunnery

OK, the next two blogs are going to be really short because it's 12:30am on Sunday night and I gotta get up in 7hrs for my flight home! But there is no way I am finishing this when I get back, so here goes.
Yesterday I did the whole day myself (go me) because JC needed to hang out with parents, do errands, etc. Veronica suggested I check out these two places, and it was definitely worth the trip out to the outskirts of Kowloon City.
The Wong Tai Sin temple's deity grants wishes related to money, so it's really popular. I took some awesome pictures there and that whole day actually. But there's so much incense! It was really busy with people praying, so there was smoke everywhere. There were also a family giving a whole pig with all the dressings in front of the temple!
So the thing to do there is to get your fortune read. You have to get this container of flat sticks that you shake until one falls out. Then you write down the number on the stick and take it to a fortune teller. So I did and the fortune is actually a story. My story is I am a student, and I am rowing a boat around and around, until I find a cave. In this cave I will find paradise. This I have to do in the spring, so 3 months from now. I better go find a life vest. The fortune for my whole life was going to cost extra, and I decided to opt out.
The next stop was the Chi Lin Nunnery, but on my walk to it I found a garden across the street that isn't even in the guidebook (go me again). It's called Nan Lian and it is gorgeous. Its purpose is just to have a traditional Chinese garden to promote Chinese culture. I guess it's part of the drive to root out British influence from HK. It's awesome. I will not even describe it because you will see pictures and I'm so sleepy. Oh, but one thing that I couldn't take pictures of is this exhibit in the back. It's one artist that does wood carvings, Cheung Pak-Yue. I wanted to write this down since I had it scribbled somewhere because when I have money I am going to need some of his stuff. These carvings are amazing, and unfortunately they didn't have any books with pictures of them at all. I dunno, may be if I go to real China there is a ton of this stuff there, but I've definitely never seen that kind of intricate carving before.
Then I went to the nunnery, which has a lilly pond in the front, so I took a million pictures there. For some reason though I exited the pond through some side entrance, and I went around the back of buildings. But there is a temple in the back that's really tall so I knew I was going the right way. I went right past the no admittance sign because I had a feeling this was the only way I was going to see this thing, and sure enough, after wandering around for half an hour I heard someone yelling at me. Turns out it was past closing, so I got escorted out by security! When I got yelled at I was in the middle of observing a really pretty "hall" as they call it with gilded stuff. It had a no pictures sign, so I obeyed, and I will just have this written down so it reminds me.
Anyway, all of this stuff was so beautiful and amazing and I think that was my favorite day.
It wasn't over yet because I still had to go to the night market. Unfortunately I started at the wrong end. I think I wrote about this already. I didn't find the good stuff until the end, but couldn't spend any more money. In that respect the guide book was right - I should've gone to the dot on the map. But because of this I was able to get something 75% off because I literally couldn't give her any more. Learning, learning...