Hannah's birthday treat was a visit to Chris Patten's favourite place in Hong Kong, Ocean Park. Ocean Park is a zoo, aquarium and amusement park which opened in 1977 funded by the Hong Kong Jockey Club. It is one of Hong Kongs most popular attractions and the 33rd most visited tourist attraction in the World. As a non-profit gift to the people of Hong Kong it has a nice family atmosphere with an educational / conservationist theme.
Its also just down the bottom of the hill from Parkview at Deepwater Bay and you can see the roller-coasters from Deepwater Bay beach. Season tickets are very reasonable so I bought some for Hannah and Rika when we moved to Parkview last year but they didn't use them much. We were put off by stories of the park being very crowded in the weekends and holidays. In retrospect this was a big mistake...
Hannah with Popo-chan at the entrance. I tried to talk Hannah out of taking the doll since I knew I'd end up carrying it, but Hannah trumped that argument with "but its my birthday!".
If you could plan your perfect trip to Ocean Park you would make it warm but not too hot, and overcast so as not to get sunburnt, with a nice breeze. If you were clever, you would have the HK Observatory forecast 'heavy squally rain' for the weekend to deter crowds, and then issue rain warnings throughout the day promising heaving rain which never quite arrives. And you'd time your visit to coincide with the Elite Models annual bikini picnic. Which is pretty much exactly what happened. Except for the models.
So we arrived at 10am, got our tickets with almost no waiting and then walked straight into the Giant Panda house which is normally famous for its huge queues.
The Panda's were not doing much though. As if they had heard the weather forecast and decided to have a quiet day indoors.
The Sichuan Golden Monkeys next door were much more fun. They were very cute, active and alert, although they seemed a bit bored with nothing to do except play chess and watch the endless lines of visitors troop past.
This one took one look at Hannah and decided to come down from its tree to wish her 'Happy Birthday'.
It was clearly fascinated by Hannah and Popo-chan, and the three of them had a long chat through the glass, much to the excitement of the 60 or so other visitors who crowded round to watch and take photos.
The monkey then retreated to a tree for a while before coming down to Hannah again for another chat with Popo-chan.
So our top tip for Ocean Park - 'bring a doll'.
Rika bought a monkey nuigerumi.
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