I think I’ve kept this going longer now that my American attempt!
Anyway – Greetings readers new and old and welcome to day 8 of Hong Kong. The last in the chain which I’m spending in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR), as tomorrow I’m off to Macau… More on that tomorrow.
Anywhos, on my last day “in Hong Kong”, I spent the day in Ocean Park. (woo). Having done a quick google search for some other reasons, I managed to find out that Ocean Park is actually the largest theme park in Asia… Not hard to believe because it’s MAHOOOSIVE!
We went to Ocean Park on the New “South Island Line” of the MTR ( The “Hong Kong Tube”) which only opened at the end of last year – it as pretty cool and had cartoon animals all over the inside of the carriages!
Ocean Park is a mix of Theme park and Zoo, with a heavy emphasis (they didn’t stop) on Conservation and breeding. Neither myself or Hilzo are sure on how we feel about this. (Not about the rides, about the animals!). For anyone who might be wondering – Ocean Park is a lot like Busch Gardens which I visited last year…
I think I have decided today that I don’t mind animals that can’t live in the wild anymore being bread in captivity (i.e. pandas, who are supposedly nearly extinct)….
But, I was not a fan of the Penguin Enclosure – one particular section was very very small and made me a little uneasy.
We did visit the “Marine Breeding and Conservation Centre” and I am still unsure if what they are doing is the right thing – There seemed to be a lot of human interaction and training… I’m just not sure it’s natural. We did see that there was a dolphin show today, but did not attend as I felt a bit uncomfortable by it all and didn’t want to support it!
As today was the last day of the “bank holiday” weekend following the Chinese New year week, there were still lots of tourists from mainland China. Surprisingly the queues weren’t too big, but it was like some of the tourists had never seen animals before!
Anyway enough of the tourists and the animals – the park itself was INCREDIBLE. We started our day by riding the cable car from the entrance of the park to the top of the mountain which was on the edge of the sea:
Frankly going on the Cable Car, made our visit to Ocean Park worth while! To be fair – The views of Hong Kong from the whole of Ocean park were pretty amazing – I’ve got a really cool Photosphere to upload to Facebook!
The rides at Ocean park were actually really great. We didn’t queue for more than 10 minutes for anything and they were all perched on top of the edge of the cliff adding to the excitement!
We covered most of the upper part of the park helped be Hong Kong’s second largest escalator network – Yup, Escalators in the park. But to be fair it’s bloody hilly – The actual individual escalators were longer than those in Tube stations – Craziness… Hong Kongers love Escalators!
We also became minor celebrities on the swinging ship (Sorry, Gallion) after mocking one of the mainlanders Dabbing. I then continually dabbed and they were besotted with us. (#RandomWesterner)
From the top, we took the funicular train back down to the lower part of the park. (DON’T DO IT – TAKE THE CABLE CAR!) Literally our worst choice of the day. At the bottom of the park we saw the pandas pictured above, and we went to the Aquarium which was large and quite impressive..
We also had our picture taken with the Ocean Park Red Panda Mascot!
We were done with Ocean Park so decided to head back and keeping with the watery theme, decided to go swimming in the apartment block I was staying in. Sadly their pool was shut for maintenance so we had to go next door….
Having swam out some calories – we headed straight for the Synagogue / Jewish Community Centre’s All you can Eat BBQ. It’s needless to say I’ve eaten more food (Especially lamb and beef tonight) than in the rest of 2017 (and probably 2016) Combined.
From the JCC we caught up with the Aussies again (Shoutouts to Dan and Hadassah if you’re still reading – I’m counting on your views!) for a drinkie in a pretty cool place… where Hilzo and I learnt a bit more about the Jewish Communities in Aus! (oh and Happy non-Birthday Hadassah!)
There you have it – another ridiculously busy day. Off to sleep now but super excited for Macau tomorrow! Night all!