Of Ocean Parks and Car Cables

Down the stairs, around the corners, over the road, waiting, waiting, waiting, here is # 1 bus, put money in, get on bus, off to Tung Chung. Catch the MTR (these machines actually do take notes!) 

MTR @ around 11:00

Out and through. Where is the bus? Who knows how to find one of those and my feet are swollen and sore. How about we take a taxi? Good idea! 
Ocean Park... how much? HK$ 70. Ok, let's do it.
Hair raising, seat sliding, flight through the streets. Look Mommy, I did my seatbelt all by myself! 

Red Taxi's only on Hong Kong Island

Caleb's excitement reached bursting levels when we arrived and we had to do all we could to just slow him down as he was going to take us through this place at neck breaking speed as he was convinced we were going to miss something.

Columbus - navigating the map

 First stop - The Grand Aquarium

Fish tank only marginally more impressive than Tata's :)

White Tipped Reef Shark - look at top of his fins

Impressive Stingrays

Mr. Octopus

Leafy Sea Dragon

Weedy Sea Dragon

Sea Horse

The orange blur is a plastic pumpkin (seeing that is was Halloween today) with food in for these fish. They were going nuts for it.

Pumpkin feeding frenzy

Hammerhead Sharks and Smiling Rays

We went for lunch at the Panda Cafe and had Ramen. It is noodles in a soup, and this particular meal consisted of spicy beef as well. It really is very tasty. Caleb had plain noodles to his delight, and then decided to add some Fanta orange to that, which apparently according to him, was rather delicious. 
We then set off to go meet the Pandas and the Stump-nose monkeys, indigenous to Western China.

Lots of signs and people around which tells you to keep quiet when you enter the enclosure. Plenty more people who ignore it, which saw the two Panda Bears go inside, away from the people. An An below turned his back on proceedings and mooned the crowds.
He went inside and then the handlers put out their food. So An An came back and I had to spend the rest of the day persuading Ingrid that I don't think having a Panda in the backyard was such a good idea, mainly as bamboo is hard to find...

An An - he was born in 1986, weighs 103kg

An An coming out heading for food.

Sitting down for a snack

Stump-nose monkeys cuddling

And then one showed her face

Off to a train ride which suppose to simulate a submarine... we have a few suggestions for them on how to improve that though, like just paint fish on the walls outside...

Entrance to the Ocean Express

Inside the Ocean Express

The Ocean Express

The view from the Summit was impressive though, as suddenly the sky cleared.

Ocean Express Summit Station

Ocean Express Summit Station

We couldn't go on Bumper Cars, nor on the Water raft as Caleb apparently should be 120 cm, the fact that he is 119 cm didn't count. So to avert from the disappointment, we went to the Rain forrest instead and met a few creepy crawleys (which naturally pleased the youngest in the party)

Poisonous black and white frog

Poisonous blue frog

Piranna

It was time for a coffee and feet up so we headed for the Car Cables (more commonly known as Cable Cars). We found the Bayview Restaurant.

View from Bayview

We were there, promise!

We wandered further down as suddenly there were a cue a mile long full of people and ended up at the Ferris Wheel and there was no restriction as long as he was with an adult. Caleb is fearless, as they take you up and it stops for more people to get in, my heart is in my throat and I feel like holding on for dear life. He on the other hand, chats away, points at things and wonders how the gears work. Once it gets going it was rather nice to be on there.

At the top of the world

As it was sort of a dead end, we headed back to where we came from and found that to access the cable car now, was easy with few people. 

Halloween Themed Cable Car

Ocean Park from the cable car (only the main entrance side)

Hong Kong from Cable Car

Heading down from there we walked through Old Hong Kong - a little bit of England if you ask me.

A busy day full of people in a place that is a combination of UShaka and Table Mountain, just about 5 times the size. We never even got to see half of it as it just becomes too much. Tomorrow we will need a break for sure. By 18:20 Caleb passed out in the taxi heading back to the train. By the time we got home he woke up again, asked for food and eventually went back to sleep.

If the weather is clear we will go to visit the Big Buddah and go past the beach. Need a break before we head for Disney Land.