Still more Hong Kong

Wednesday August 24^th

Today, we decided to do the really touristy bit, and visit Ocean Park, which is really just an amusement park. We went once before, in 1978, just after it opened, when I was heavily pregnant, taking our older son and the three children of a friend and neighbour, and we were interested in seeing how it had changed. Actually, it was unrecognisable! So many new attractions have been added, and it has become extremely busy and crowded.

We caught a bus from the city centre to the park, and as soon as we went in, became aware that it was very different from what it was in 1977.The entrance has become quite cheesy, with odd cartoon-like statues and dancing fountains, and the queues for most things were very long indeed.

Paul wanted to see the aquarium, so we joined a giant snaky queue for that. Fortunately, the wait was not too long and it was very interesting, with many different fish, the smaller ones very colourful in tanks with brightly coloured corals. There were sharks and manta rays, some quite large, all swimming around very purposefully. Sadly, as flash photography was not allowed, my pictures are dreadful – not one worth looking at. I was particularly sorry not to have better pictures of the weed sea dragons, which are somewhat like large sea horses but appear to be made from fronds of lime green seaweed. The big sharks and manta rays swam too fast for the shutter speed of my camera.

We were far more successful with the giant pandas. Surprisingly, there was almost no queue to get in to see them. Jia Jia was lying on his back posing when we went in, and An An was lunching. I know they are supposed only to eat bamboo shoots, but An An was having raw carrots. When he had finished one selection, he went looking for another, and came quite close to us.

I was delighted to see them, particularly since I had gone all the way to the Chengdu Panda Sanctuary in 2001 and failed to see a single panda because they were all asleep.

We intended to go to the cable car to reach the upper part of the Park, but Paul was interested to see something called the Ocean Express. It turned out to be a kind of train that accesses the upper park through a tunnel made in the mountain. At least it was air-conditioned, and had no queue.

In the upper park, we had hoped to go on one of the rides which we had enjoyed in 1977, the Rapids, which whirl you about in a circular ‘boat’ along a river trail, getting you very wet. Sadly, the queue for that was over two hours, and it was even hotter than yesterday, so we gave up that idea. We saw more wildlife attractions, Chinese sturgeons, 5 foot long rather prehistoric looking things, and lots of jellyfish. In both cases, no flash photography meant my photos were rubbish. There were some beautiful birds like the toucan which we also failed to photograph because the mesh of the aviary was so thick it ruined the photos.

We were high up by then, with lovely views all over Hong Kong Island, and I anticipated even better ones from the cable car down. Unfortunately, once again the queues and the heat outfaced us; we couldn’t face the wait and returned the way we had come, by air-conditioned Ocean Express.

It was an even hotter day today, and the air-conditioning in the bus back to town wasn’t able to cope, so the bus was quite warm.

As we stood on the escalator back to mid-levels, we stopped to photograph a typical Hong Kong scene - workmen dismantling the bamboo scaffolding around a building.

I always remember being amazed that bamboo was strong enough for scaffolding, though we noticed plastic ties are used today, rather than the rattan of 30 years ago. Also, the workmen are wearing hard hats, which they didn’t always do before, and safely harnesses, which they never did before. They didn’t, as far as I could see, appear to be actually using the safety harnesses though!

This evening's dinner was a somewhat different experience. We had noticed a tiny hole-in-the-wall Chinese restaurant down a back street near our hotel, and Paul was desperate to have some proper Chinese food. Mid-levels, where our hotel is, is full of western restaurants but there are no Chinese ones to be seen. So we ate in the tiny 4 table restaurant tonight. The bill this time was the equivalent of 7 pounds - somewhat different from our Lonely Planet recommended one!