Month: July 2017

We got together with my student Adeal several times. We went to the museum of natural history and spent the day.

 

 

Ben went swimming with Shelley’s daughter Sophy several times. Here, we met for lunch, then planned to go to this park to play, but it was pouring. I insisted we go anyway. It was fun! We saw black swans, huge koi, and large and small turtles swimming.

We took Ben to LEGOLAND since it’s not too far, and since he has to put up with being in China with us. Many things here are designed for kids 8 and under. I think this is partly because by the time they are 9, they are A) busy with homework every day, and B) they are enrolled in classes on Saturday and Sunday to improve or enrich them (music, math, robot building, whatever).   So this LEGOLAND had rides and activities for young kids. But the lego Shanghai city was amazing (see previous blog post).

Adeal said we could visit a chocolate theme amusement park. Paul looked for it on the internet and found an Austrian chocolate factory tour. Adeal asked where we should meet from the metro but we kept putting off finding the stop. We said off line 12 and she said “no.” And I said “Oh yes, we will show you later.” So the morning we were to go we sent the metro stop to her and she said that’s not it. We finally figured out she meant an amusement park with everything in shapes of cake and where little kids could make candy. Reviews said it was going to be shut down and torn down in a week. Some said it smelled bad. Others said it was still fun. We sent Adeal the link to the chocolate factory She said she never heard of it, but let’s go.

Adeal was pleasantly surprised to find a large outlet shopping center built around this chocolate factory.

 

 

We took the tour and gorged ourselves trying the 212 kinds of chocolate. We each made our own chocolate figures, too, about the size of Ben’s head, for $12 each.

 

 

Ben was tired so the boys went home. Adeal and I shopped, then went to dinner at Hongkong style food at Charme. Yaping loves this restaurant, too.

 

 

 

We almost did not go to this Wild Animal Park because the website was unclear about how much we could see without a car, and you had to take a taxi after the metro.  But we spoke to our neighbors Marsha and Frank and they loved it, so we decided to go.  It was easy…once we saw what the Chinese were doing to get around.

We took the metro all the way out… took about 45 minutes. Then got a cab to the park — only about 5 minutes. Then had to buy tickets, all in Chinese and there are 4 lines for different kinds of tickets and who knows what you are buying? I bought 3 tickets for just the park. Turns out there was a circus show, too, we could have seen, for another $20 per person.

Then we tried to figure out how to do the safari where you ride inside an open-air, caged bus. The Chinese workers’ directions of how to get to the safari bus were awful. I guess without much English, it’s tough. The first one said, “Just to your left there,” where there was a parking lot with buses. Paul had seen a picture of the busses on the internet so knew what we were looking for, and that was not it. After walking to various places we found it, but then there was another line for more tickets. I asked how much and she said 240RMB (which is like $32 per person). I walked away, but then saw the sign below her that said 4oRMB. Just then a bunch of Chinese arrived to wait in line for these tickets, but I shoved back to the front (Chinese style) and asked for 3 tickets — I had just been there and would have bought them. (Chinese style) she sold them to me since I was there.  Then we boarded the bus.

It was fabulous. The bus has food for the different animals so they walk close to the bus.   There is one guy who feeds and says a bit about the animals, then there is a driver. There are other buses you can take that are normal busses where you view from the closed windows. Those were in front of us. The bus driver was bizarre.  He kept honking his horn at the other buses to hurry up. Sometimes he would try to drive around them. I don’t know why he was in such a hurry!  For all of us on the bus, this was a great opportunity to see big animals up close. But you could barely take pictures because the driver stopped a very short time, or not at all.

The tigers were willing to lazily walk up and get a bit of meat. The giraffes were happy to come take the leaves.  The zebras, camels, antelope and deer didn’t really care we were there. They stood in the rode or next to it. The wolves seemed a bit afraid of the bus.

But the bears were happy to jump up on the metal cage of the bus and ride along quite a ways while the feeder kept giving them carrots. It was amazing. They easily hung on to the bus while it drove around turns!

After the safari, you can walk around the other half of the park and see the zoo.  We saw Chinese pedaling these carts and wanted one. It was quite an effort to figure out how and where to get one. You have to be a bit pushy in asking when you find the guy who rents them. It’s a $90 deposit, then $12 an hour to rent. This really saved my food!