Fo Guang Shan

Hello,

today we woke up a little earlier than usual (7 am) in order to go to Fo Guang Shan Buddha Museum and the adjacent monastery.

My breakfast from the buffet of our Hotel

After our breakfast at the Hotel we took the MRT to Zuoying station. There is a bus from Kaohsiung station (8010), however it only goes at 6 something am or 12 pm... There are two other bus services to the museum at Zuoying station. The Eda bus 8501 and the Harvard express bus (Hafo) E02. The E02 bus is much faster and only costs 5 NTD more (70 NTD in total per person), so we took this bus.

Fo Guang Shan is the largest Buddhist monastery in Taiwan. The Fo Guang Shan order was founded in 1967 by Hsing Yun and promotes Humanistic Buddhism. The monastery was built in the 1970, the museum however (with the 108 m tall Buddha statue) was only opened in 2011. In the Jade Buddha Shrine in the Memorial Hall of the museum, a tooth relic of the historic Buddha is claimed to be stored.
The museum's architecture, with the great Buddha at the end of the complex, is breathtaking and there are many exhibits and information boards also in English. Also the employees and monks are very friendly and many spoke English pretty well. One women even talked to us in a little bit of German and gave us a book about Humanistic Buddhism for free. It is clear that they want to spread their faith, but they are not pushy or anything.

very intricate wood carving at the museum

One thing to be noted though: we didn't read the signs (also in English) properly and since many employees/monks said to us we should enter, we entered the Golden Buddha Shrine which is not supposed to be entered as just a tourist... So be sure to read all the signs properly before entering. It maybe rude to do so without the intent of prayer. Although I am sure they are not mad if you do more or less by accident as we did. We didn't take any pictures of course.
For lunch we ate at the Twin Pavilions. All restaurants/shops only sell vegetarian food, since the Fo Guang Shan Buddhists are vegetarian and it is also forbidden to enter bringing any kind of meat. We ate some dumpling soup and noodles with a sesame sauce and drank some kumquat lemonade and some kind of drink/soup with jelly (it was listed as a drink but came in a bowl), all of which tasted fantastic!

our drinks

dumpling soup

noodles with sesame sauce

There are many shops, and even a Starbucks (...) at the complex. And we ate the most delicious dessert there: one of those pancake type desserts I already wrote about several days ago filled with a Mochi/peanut filling! It was so delicous that after one bite we decided to buy a second one. Normally we only buy one portion of everything so that we can share and try more foods.

so good!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You can easily spent the whole day at the complex. But be aware of the bus timetable (I believe the last one goes at around 18:00).

From all the walking in the brutal heat we were quite exhausted, so we took the bus back at 15:40 and just went straight to our hotel.

But we very much enjoyed the day.

See you soon,
Pia