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Published: October 28th 2007
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An old Chinese proverb says: "when Halloween comes near you should attend the Halloween Scary Party in Hong Kong's Ocean Park". Funnily enough, as Halloween is coming near I did attend such a party in Ocean Park.
Ocean Park is a bit like Disney Land but different of course, because there is also a Disney park in Hong Kong and the two are huge rivals. Ocean's Park as the name may slightly hint is all about Aquatic life, so you can see sharks, dolphins, various fishes and pandas. Ah yes for some bizarre reason it also has a panda house, I understand donated by the Chinese. But anyway. Each year they also turn the place into a scary Halloween ghost house village, and it's one of the big things to do here at this time of year.
On their website they show some very scared looking teenage girls in a room with a guy dressed as a zombie, and I was thinking "yeah right come on, grow up, that is the sort of thing you get scared from when you are 9". But actually when we got there and sampled the ghost houses, a couple of them turned out to be
really scary! Basically you walk through these corridors decorated with scary things that jump at you, full of nooks and corners where real people hide and then spring out shouting "AAARRGHGGHGHGHWWRR". And I would not have liked to be all by myself, I can guarantee. Yep, I was a chicken and clinging on to my friends' arms the whole way through 😊
Incidentally, on a related theme, in Hong Kong white (expat) people are known as "gweilos" which means "white ghosts". Probably because of their white skin, although all the gweilos I know who live here are tanned, because they like to go out and take in the sun, contrary to the locals who very often run away from it, sometimes hiding under umbrellas to keep the sun off the skin. But the name comes from the time when Brits were in the place and here I could add a whole lot of inappropriate comments about how pale the Brits are so no wonder the name comes from there 😊
Coming back to Ocean Park, it's a place I want to go back and visit during the day time, first of all because it's right by the sea and must
have the most amazing views. It has a cable car (like when you go skiing and sit in those eggs) which takes you from one end of the park to the other and from there, even in the pitch darkness, the view was beautiful, so I can only imagine it being breath taking by day. There are many rides we did not do that night because the place was too busy, but there were some scary looking looping ones I want to try.
It's starting to get a little bit cold here as well. I know I won't get much sympathy from you all in Europe where it must be like 5 degrees currently, but last week end for the first time I needed to put on a sweater in the evening. On our trip to Ocean Park my friend Cherry had a really good idea to go on that ride where you know you sit in a "log" that floats over water and in the end whizzes down a mountain and splashes into a pool of water? Well we had the good idea to do that one that night and got totally drenched, thanks Cherry :-)
Another highlight
The Scary Escalator Ride
Ok it was not scary, just an escalator of last week end was to go on a junk boat trip (no no not a bull full of junk, but like last time, a boat you simply rent for the day). We "sailed" (had no sail but a motor boat, not sure what is the correct verb to use) around some islands in the beautiful Sai Kun area, which really felt like a holiday. I even managed to do a bit of wakeboarding (like water skiing but you are on a board like a surf board). All in all a fun day.
Ah yes and the latest updates on my domestic equipment projects: I have now not only a mattress and a (aspirin) couch, I also got a chair and some tables, wuhhuuh. This week I may get a proper couch, I have seen two, one which has a "cow" pattern (black and white) and which would really make my apartment the funkiest place on earth. More details to follow on that one..
a note about language: when foreigners move to Hong Kong they are usually tempted to embark into a project of learning Mandarin. It's incredibly difficult (apparently the foreign office in the UK trains people
Our New Friend
Notice how good I am at doing the scary face, as a matter of fact they offered me a job for next year's Halloween party. full tome for 2 years before they can really speak it), especially as the writing is a whole new dimension to learn on top of the language. What makes it harder is that people in Hong Kong do not speak mandarin, but cantonese. It seems crazy to learn a language without being able to practice it every day on the street. I have decided to try to learn Cantonese, because at least I can use it in real life. I can already say "good morning" to the guys at the reception of my building, and "thank you very much" to the people in shops (usually they laugh or smile when they hear me, maybe because in fact I get the intonation wrong and am actually saying "you fat cow"??). Cantonese is harder than Mandarin apparently, as it has 7 voice intonations as opposed to 4 in Mandarin. But for me to learn a language I need to hear it and try to speak it, which I could not do with Mandarin, so will give the Cantonese a go anyway.
Oh and I have the internet as of TODAY so now will be able to update on life here more
regularly.
Have a nice week.
Ps - Notice my amazingly beautiful new glasses.
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nadfejda
non-member comment
really sceary
Wow... Really sceary!!!! Particularly nearly headless girl :) :) :)