Thursday 13th

We've had a lovely day today at Ocean Park!

We took the MTR to Admiralty, then bought our entry tickets and bus passes straight to the park.


It's been a really hot day again today, so we started by visiting the aviary. They have some beautiful birds, all flying freely around a large area.




Then we took an early lunch in the Chinese Restaurant in the Middle Kingdom. After lunch we took the very scary escalators up to the top of the park - there are 4 long escalators and I was a real wuss, hanging on for grim death to the handrail and N_M's hand! You do get some brilliant views from the top.


The first place to visit was the Chinese Sturgeon Aquarium, where you walk through with the fish swimming all around. The largest measured about 3 metres long! They can grow to 5 metres, so none were full grown yet.



Then we went to Atoll Reef - this is a great place, where you walk all around the reef just as it would be in the sea.

You get the sting rays, turtles and reef fish at the top,








In the middle are fast moving midwater swimmers, like tuna and surgeon fish.








Right at the bottom are the sharks, potato cod and garoupa. This Moray Eel and shark were particularly good friends!



Around the outside of the reef there are tanks containing some very unusual creatures, like leafy seadragons and weedy seadragons. We have a particular interest in these fish, and were pleased to take some video to take home.

Then we moved onto the Sea Jelly Spectacular, with its massive displays of jellyfish, with lovely lighting and exciting music playing. These are fascinating to watch moving around their tanks.



The cable car took us back down to the ground floor, and the Panda enclosure. The Chinese are very proud of their pandas, and whereas last year we only got a couple of photos of them sleeping, this year they were enjoying their lunch just the other side of the enclosure! It was amazing to see them up so closely, and to watch the way they shred the leaves from the bamboo branches.



When one of them finished eating, he went and had a big drink of water, went up the hillside to have a huge poo over the edge and immediately rolled over and went into a deep sleep - typical man!!


We also visited the Dolphin University, where in 2001 the first Bottlenose Dolphin was born by Artificial Insemination. The dolphins were all playing naturally in their pools and seemed very content,


then the sealions gave a short show. They are extremely well-trained, and while I don't altogether hold with animal shows, these did seem happy and very well cared for.

So we said goodbye to Ocean Park again, and left it with masses of building works going on in the lower level. It will be very interesting to see what else has opened next time we visit!

Going to Causeway Bay on the way back to the hotel, we were intrigued to see two young women offering "free hugs" to passers by. Needless to say, plenty of businessmen took them up on their offer!