Ocean Park

March 9 – Friday

This morning I walked down the hill to the Central bus depot. I was to meet Sarah at the top of the escalator going down to bus #6. I was a bit early & sat on a step outside a bank branch that is there & very quickly a guard came over & told me I was not allowed to sit there. He said the bank gets very upset. I suppose I look like a vagrant. Sarah & I caught the bus to go to Ocean Park.

Ocean Park is an amusement park/aquarium/zoo. It is supposed to be one of the big tourist places to visit & neither of us had been. We both have visitors coming in the next month, so we felt like we should see if it would be worth bringing any of them here. We paid our fee, after a long discussion which they did not understand about whether at the end of the day I could turn in my day pass towards a season’s pass if I liked it enough. I gather they’ve not heard of that type of deal or we just were not communicating well enough.

We got the map & first disappointment was that the panda habitat was listed as closed for renovation. Of course that was one of the main things we wanted to see. Next was there was no butterfly area, which I was sure I’d seen on another map. Turns out that has been closed down, could not get a reason. We were pretty disappointed by these 2 things, but had paid our money. This park is interesting because it is in 2 major parts. There is the main entrance (where we entered) which has little kids activities & rides. Then there is a cable car that takes you up along a ridge along the coast to an outer peninsula, that has the “older” kid rides & sea life. There was not much to see on the main entrance side. We did find what they call dolphin university, which is where they are training dolphins for the dolphin show. Today the dolphins were getting ultrasounds. This is an education center as well as training area for dolphins.

There was also a rare bird show that we watched. They had parrots & macaws from Africa & South America. These were trained to do some tricks & to talk. There was also the largest owl I’ve ever seen, which swooped down on this poor kid who had volunteered to help. Of course he didn’t hit the kid, but I don’t think he was too thrilled by the experience. It was very well done and this also is a training & education area. They are working towards helping protect endangered species.

At this end of the park there was a hot air balloon on a tether that you could to up in for a look around, but since Sarah is afraid of heights & is was a cloudy day, we opted out of that ride. She did agree to take the cable car even though she warned me ahead of time that she’d act terrified & get sweaty palms, but not to worry, she could handle it. She did fine, but did have white knuckles as she held the edge of the seat the entire time.

The other side of the park has the “big kid” rides. I only went on one, a train roller coaster. It wasn’t very long, but some good ups & downs. It was fun. I went solo at that was just too much for Sarah. I sat in the front seat (couldn’t believe it wasn’t grabbed up) with a young Aussie woman. We had a blast & screamed & put our arms up. Sarah was watching from the side & she said we were the only ones with our arms up & screaming. She said the Chinese people on the ride just looked terrified & were very quiet. Cultural differences!

There are several ocean related exhibits mingled in with the rides. There were California seals – Sarah’s from California, so we were not too impressed with that. A large reef area with exotic fish & sea turtles. Nice large aquarium. My favorite thing in the aquarium area was the sea dragons. They are like sea horses, but with long spindles coming from their heads & tails. It is hard to tell them from the sea weed around them because they have so much flowing from their bodies. They were really interesting looking. The other thing that I loved was the jelly fish house. There were probably a dozen different tanks of jelly fish & the entire house was dark with black lights that kept changing colors. It was a very dramatic effect. It was sort of space alien feeling the way they move so slowly and the lights.

We took a bus back to town and spend an hour or so wandering around the elevated walkways around Central. These are walkways that keep you above the traffic & link a bunch of buildings together. Of course there are shops everywhere, wouldn’t be HK if you couldn’t shop. I resisted any shopping except at Oliver’s, the Western grocery store. I was in search of pizza dough & was not disappointed. I also found muenster cheese, which I’ve looked for since we got here & this is the first time I’ve seen it. Funny the things you end up missing. I also miss good hand crank can openers. Can you believe that I can’t find a good can opener here. I’ve looked everywhere. The ones they sell have a very short turn handle, so it kills your wrist. Don’t worry, Patti (my sister) has it on her list of things to bring over when she comes in about 2 weeks (I can’t wait, to see her & my mom, not to get the can opener).

On my way up the hill to come home, wouldn’t you know it, I passed a framing store. I stopped & he is about the same price as the woman in Stanley & a heck of a lot closer. He seemed very nice & he does the work himself. His English was good, which is always important when doing this type of business so things don’t get mixed up. It will be a lot easier to get John to come here then to Stanley to pick out frames. It was a good day!

Having found the pizza dough, I got the rest of the ingredients so that we could have our Friday night home made pizza. It wasn’t the same as at home for some reason. I think I don’t have the right kind of pan & for some reason the oven doesn’t get hot enough. It is supposed to be at 400, but this over only gets up to about 350 & that is pushing it.