Part 2: Ocean Park Hong Kong

When we get off the Ocean Express, we are at the summit of the park. This is where the fun begins.  If you are into roller coasters, here is where you’ll find all those goodies.  I wasn’t there for the amusement park and still I didn’t have time to finish seeing everything. So I’m telling you right now, its BIG! Ocean Park has developed in a crazy way.  There are rides, performing shows with dolphins and seals, walruses, you name it! and they also have a bird show.

First stop at the summit: THE RAINFOREST

I’ve never been to the rainforest (although I’d love to go one day) but here’s what seems to be there. There are little cute monkeys, lots of insects, spiders, frogs, and snakes etc.  And to make things feel just even more awesome: we have the Toucan.  I love Toucans! Just look at how beautiful they are!

Another worth mentioning is Hercules Beetle up there, he is the strongest animal in the world proportional to his size. He can lift 850 times his own body weight.  Amazing stuff, right?

The rainforest was a new addition in the last 3 years so to me, it was still new.  But the next part is the fresh addition apparently.

We’re heading into Polar Spectacular where we have North and South Pole in two separate exhibits but right next to each other.  I was really excited because I read in the newspaper that they had new baby walrus additions to their families.  Unfortunately I didn’t get to see them.  So it made this area a little more normal.

In North Pole, we have our seals and walruses.  The amazing part was that you walked into this tunnel right under where they swam so it felt like you were underwater.  Just look at this, it felt amazing!

 

Then in the South Pole, we had penguins.  They had water splashed all over the glass so it was hard to take good pictures. Here’s one to see these penguins, there were also emperor penguins.

 

After that, we walked to the other side and went to one of the original exhibits (in my memory): The Pacific Pier. Have you seen the coast of San Francisco with all the seals sunbathing on the rock? I’ve heard that doesn’t happen anymore, I’m not sure if thats true.  But this part is exactly like that. Except they have people go in to take care of them and feed them to make them do a few tricks.

 

After that we got a bit lost looking for the next exhibit, in the middle we took the ride to see the view around Ocean Park and it was beautiful.

 

Eventually we did find our way and was the last group to go in to see the SEA JELLY SPECTACULAR! I love this one a lot!

Jelly Fish

After that was time to go back to the main area on Cable Car and we get the beautiful night view as we took it down. I’m frightfully scared of heights so when we hit the ending area going downhill, I always feel a bit edgy.  I was so glad to reach land…only to be able to catch the Water Fountain Show with fireworks and spitting fire and projections.

That was my fun day at Ocean Park. If you want to visit the Part 1, you can click HERE

Part 1: Ocean Park Hong Kong

Ocean Park Hong Kong is the best park in my book thats in Hong Kong, surpassing by miles Disneyland Hong Kong.

This park is separated into two areas.  That is one thing that needs to be set out front.  So I’m going to separate my posts into two.  This one is based on the areas in the main area.  Here you will also find the Journey that I took down Old Hong Kong Street from A Word A Week Challenge: Journey from two weeks ago or so.  Other than that there are a few areas that I enjoy visiting.

First one we went to was the Grand Aquarium. Its pretty much like walking through a gigantic fish tank and then walking through the ocean at other times.

Here are some discoveries I found:

We have the lobsters which are normal. We also have these cute little ones called Weedy Seadragons and Leafy Seadragons.  I find that so adorable.  Then of course we have our seahorse.  Look at that school of fish.  It was a whole path with different mirrors and circles to look through to project them right up until we reached the tube with this swarm of fishes.  It was so pretty.  I can’t show you everything here but there were all sorts of ocean animals from small to big.

After that we went to see the Pandas in the first exhibit which is now called Hong Kong Jockey Club Sichuan Treasures. These pandas were given as gifts from China in 1997 to celebrate the Hong Kong Handover.  They only had one of them there when we were.  Their names are An An and Jia Jia.  Here we have An An sleeping…comfortable? He was born in 1986 (The same year as me!).

In the same exhibit, the other treasures are these two beautiful female monkeys called Hu Hu and Le Le.

The other exhibit which is I love was featured before and its the other exhibit called Amazing Asian Animals.

These ones here are the start at the Gator Marsh and its Chinese Alligators.

The next stop is Pandas. This exhibit features two pandas called Ying Ying and Le Le, who were gifts from China in 2007 to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Handover.

That day only one was present that day also.

So now the next one is the ancient one which is critically endangered and its the Chinese Giant Salamander.

So here you have the main area of Ocean Park. I’ll be back later on with the part on the summit after we took the Ocean Express Summit Tram.

A Word A Week Challenge: Journey

Being on vacation means I’m always on a journey somewhere.  In Hong Kong, its all on public transport and sometimes it was over an hour of travelling.  It made Sue from A Word in Your Ear’s word for this week JOURNEY seem so on the spot.  (You can join into her challenge here for more details)  I had to think about which part of my trip felt like a journey.  Leading up from Ocean Park feature for the weekly photo challenge of green, I’m a bit late with this week’s word but I still wanted to participate to demonstrate my journey into the old days of Hong Kong. Hong Kong is different from China in the way that it was influenced by Chinese culture but also because it was a British colony before 1997, it has been influenced by colonial architecture around Hong Kong.  This makes Hong Kong into a different phase in its early days before modernization.  This part of Hong Kong is the part I want to show you.  Ocean Park now features a Old Hong Kong street area.  Here is a gallery to show you my journey through that.

Journey to Old Hong Kong

Old Hong Kong Street Cinema

Here is the walk down old Hong Kong street where we get an idea of how the stores looked.  There were side carts and people that sold fruits and vegetables and other goodies on the side of the street as well.  There were posters on all the walls advertising perfumes and lotions, ointments and messages from the government such as to preserve water.  One of the issues is that people needed to get water at a certain place and they only had a certain amount they could get so they would use old oil cans to fill it up and bring it back home to store and use accordingly. There is the old double decker buses and the first generation trams.  You even have the booth for where the traffic control officer would stand before traffic lights existed.  Also, there are rickshaws and we even get the actual frontal display of the theatres and how they looked.

I’m all about history and heritage when I talk about Hong Kong and I feel that as someone whose family is primarily born in Hong Kong, I find it important to understand how my grandparents and parents lived when they were younger and understand the past society.  It has been a tremendous change from back then till now.