In Hong Kong Island

May 2nd, 2009

Today plans are Ocean Park, and Madame Tussaud in The Peak. Both are located in Hong Kong Island.

To get Ocean Park, take the MTR trains and get off at Admiralty MTR station on Exit B to get on the special CityBus No. 629 (HK$10.6). There are 2 entrances of Ocean Park, the main entrance and Tai Shue Wan entrance on the higher place. CityBus 629 can take us up to Tai Shue Wan entrance, or alight at main entrance then take free shuttle bus or cable car later. We bought the tickets from Dragon Hostel where we're staying, because they give 10% discount for Ocean Park and Disneyland tickets.

In the down part of Ocean Park (main entrance), there are Giant Panda Habitat, Madagascar 2 Live, Dolphin University... well nothing much. It's actually more suitable for kids, regret that we spent too much time here until we wanted to move to upper part of Ocean Park with cable car but the queue had been already like hell. Sadly we decided to go up by shuttle bus, with hope that we would take cable car on the way back.

There are many attractions, like Dufan in Indonesia, such as Space Wheel, Raging River (Niagara), Mine Train (mini rollercoaster), The Dragon (giant rollercoaster), and The Abyss. It was very hot, should bring sunglasses, wear thin clothes and bring extra clothes if you want to get wet by riding some attractions. Unfortunately, the cable car had even much longer queue, so we went out by CityBus 629 direct from Tai Shue Wan entrance to Admiralty MTR station.

From there, we're heading to The Peak Tram terminus by taking MTR until Central Station, took Exit J2 and walked along Garden Road which is between The Bank of China building and The Cheung Kong Centre. The walk to the tram station only takes about 15 to 20 minutes. There is a fast line queue for buying Tram + Sky Terrace + Madame Tussaud tickets. Once you are onboard The Peak Tram, take a seat on the right hand side which has the better view, we can see skycrapper buildings along the way to the peak. The journey itself is not too long, only 15 minutes, but so crowded in public holiday.

It's very windy on Sky Terrace, we can see the Hong Kong buildings in the lights, so nice but we're in hurry to get into Madame Tussaud that's closed on 10 pm. There are many world famous artist figures like Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, Michael Jackson, Madonna, The Beatles, etc. There are also some political, historical, religion, science, athlete figures, and maybe only in Madame Tussaud HK that's filled with HK artist figures like Andy Lau, Aaron Kwok and Jackie Chan. Well, we can take photos with all figures free except Jackie Chan and Barrack Obama. Inside there's also ghost house named Scream. We walked in group of 5-7 people in the dark. I just held my buddy's shoulder and walked with eyes closed haha I was very scared.

Finish for today. My legs were so f*cking tired, and there was news of some people being quarantined in HK due to H1N1. It was not bothering us at all.

(*)Courtesy to Arie and Helen for some pictures. Click the images for bigger view.