Ocean Park
Trip Start
Apr 07, 2009
1
4
11
Trip End
Apr 15, 2009
Hong Kong, China
Thursday, April 9, 2009
We went back to our room and grabbed our day packs then caught the MTR from Jordan across to Admiralty and then bought our Ocean Park tickets before catching the bus from a stop nearby to Ocean Park.
Arrived at Ocean Park and after some language difficulties we worked out that the cable car between the two sections of the park was not running due to high winds and that a shuttle bus was being used instead.
We wandered around past the Flamingo Pond and through the Aviary before taking the escalators up to the Mine Train Rollercoaster. Waited in line for about half an hour as the park was full of kids due to school holidays. Rollercoaster ride was fun and S's first ride on a rollercoaster but as the line was so long we decided not to ride it again and go check out other parts of the park.
Had lunch at Pacific Pier after seeing the seals lounging about in the sun before going to the top of the Ocean Park Tower which was a revolving observation deck the went up to the top of the tower and back very slowly. Great views over the park, Aberdeen and the islands to the south.
Next we went to Atoll Reef with underwater viewing areas for a tank full of fish including sharks as well as stingrays and turtles which was quite interesting. There were three levels, one at the surface, one just below the surface and another at the bottom of the tank.
We decided to look for lunch but the queues for anything appetising were so long we would have missed out on the dolphin show at the Ocean Theatre. Managed to get a seat in the theatre and watched the dolphin and seals perform. Show was a bit kid-orientated but the tricks and the show itself was quite good.
After the show we got a snack to tide us over and then heard the cable car was not running again. Took the cable car across to the other part of the park. It was still quite windy and the cable car was a long way off the ground so had some nice views.
At the other part of the park we wandered around for a while before visiting the Giant Panda Habitat. There were a number of pandas in enclosures munching on bamboo or lounging around. We then decided to go back to the other part of the park and lined up for the cable car to take us back. After about 10 minutes of waiting some of the park staff yelled something out in Chinese and people started walking off. We eventually were told that the cable car was again closed due to high winds and that we had to take the shuttle bus back.
We took the shuttle bus back and decided to just catch the bus back to Admiralty. After arriving back we caught the MTR back to Jordan and returned to the hotel. We got back to our room and the toilet still reeked and raw sewage was still coming up into the toilet whenever you flushed it.
Went back down to reception to ask what was happening and we were asked if the problem was fixed. It appears no one had actually investigated and they hoped it would just fix itself as there was no evidence that anyone had looked into the problem. We said it was still broken and we were moved to another room where the toilet worked properly. The room change, we hoped, would also move us away from the nocturnal TV watcher neighbour.
Instead that night we has Disco Stew as a neighbour who had his iPod plugged into the clock radio (the clock radio in the room had an iPod port so you could play your music through its speakers) playing his techno favourites until after midnight. The walls of the room were solid concrete with a recess for the TV which backed onto the neighbouring room's TV meaning the noise from the room passed straight through what appeared to be a thin metal plate behind the TV.
After numerous calls to reception which initially received the "if we ignore it it will fix itself" treatment that we found was the standard modus operandi for the hotel we finally got off to sleep.
