Noah's Ark

The weather condition has gone somewhat haywire for the past 2 weeks.

First, it's darn so hot, no wind can be felt at all. At home, we have to turn on the air conditioner for 24 hours. Sure the electricity bill will hike crazily for this month.

Secondly, it's been raining for almost everyday. The humidity level had easily scored over 95% RH. Sigh, hot and humid, one of the worst condition to living.

Furthermore, due to swine flu outbreak, all of the kindergarten and primary schools have been suspended since 12-Jun, and summer holiday was officially started from 26-Jun (instead of 17-Jul). Sigh, my boys and their grandparents, they were like locked up in a small cage for these raining days.

So, when it's not raining on 1-Jul, which happen to be a public holiday, husband and I had decided to take all of them for an outing. Well, this time, we went to a newly open park, Noah's Ark.

Yo, finally out of the hot and humid prison.

See the huge boat behind us, it's Noah's Ark.

There are 3 types of ticket available, from HKD55, HKD85 to HKD100. We bought the most expensive Ark Package which grant us the access to Ark Expo, Ark Garden, Ark Life Education House, Treasure House.

The Ark stands on Ma Wan territory. Facing the sea, the huge ship seems to be able to depart from the land at anytime.

The Ark Adventureland is the least crowded place under the extremely hot sun. Really, I think anyone can suffer a heat stroke if staying there for 20 min.



The heat outside had naturally made everyone to squeeze indoor. Inside the ark, we lined up at the shortest queue to get into the Treasure House, yet this still took us 30 minutes.

To adults, the Treasure House has nothing too fascinating. Anyway, the paintings on the wall are kind of spectacular.

There are 15 discovery galleries in Treasure House. Elements of life education, multiple intelligences, critical thinking and liberal studies are all integrated in the fun-filled exhibitions and programs especially designed for children age 3-15.



Archaelogy gallery.

The boys were very enthusiastic in digging the dino bone. Luckily no one come to scold them or me. (photographing is prohibited in all of the galleries)










Being Human gallery.



Robotic City. The children are fascinated about those giant toys.






Music Wonders.

Outside the ark...

At one corner, some foreign teenagers were singing and dancing to worship the GOD. Well, under the hot sun, not many people could stand the heat to watch their performance.

The story of Noah's Ark, begins with God observing the Earth's corruption and deciding to destroy all life. However, God found one good man, Noah, "a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time", and decided that he would save him. God instructs Noah to make an ark for his family and for representatives of the world's animals and birds in "whose nostrils is the breath of life".

Anyway, where is Noah? and his family? I couldn't see them anywhere in the Park...weird. Aren't they the major characters?

The Ark Garden is more like a Zoo, just that all of the animals are fake one.

I always feel that HK need to have a zoo. I don't understand why the government doesn't want to build us a zoo???

We really have no mood to stand under the hot sun and count on the pairs of animals. After snapping some pictures, we just get out from there quickly.

The restaurants in the Park are obviously can't support the massive crowds. Since we were desperately longing for a cool place to fill our empty stomach, we decided to walk further to the pier side for other restaurants. Unfortunately, the small restaurants over there can't fit in all the crowds as well. End up, we bought some breads and gobbled them quickly at the benches overlooking the ChingMa Bridge.

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After the simple lunch, it didn't take us a long time to finally decide to leave the park, though we haven't entered the other 2 attractions, i.e. Ark Expo and Ark Life Education House. Bugger, we spent nearly HKD600 for the tickets, but we didn't use up 50% of what we had paid for.

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In summary, this is a lousy trip. The facilities in the park are simply not enough to handle the crowds. I hope the management will study the way to improve the condition. Till then, I don't think I want to go there again.

School Outing

Every year this time, William's school would organize an outing for the kids and parents.

We have joined the school outing 2 years ago, and roughly know what kind of trip it would be since then. Imagine, a huge group of 400 plus children and parents that go together, it's hard to achieve certain kind of quality that most people want, for example, RELAXING...

We have tried to ignore the invitation when the teacher slipped the notice in William's bag. But William wanted to go so much this year, probably because his class teacher had done a marvelous job in the promotion job. For the sake of William will be graduating soon and this would be the last school outing for him, we didn't say "NO" when he said "YES".

That Saturday morning was very cold. We woke up early and gathered in school before the whole gang could finally departed at around 9.40 pm. It was 40 min behind the scheduled time. There start our compact trip for the day.

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The first destination is Tai Po Insert House. We have been to this place for more than 10 times. Those are the passengers in Bus I (bus no. 9).

William's classmate.

Inside the insert house, there is nothing too fascinated about it. We just walked through it without much lingering. Should give way to the people who seldom come to this place, right.

One of the specimen. Besides moths or butterflies, there are lots of beatles specimen too. Actually, most of the beatles are very pretty if looking them in detail.




Floras around the insert house...



The flowers all look very pretty and healthy too, must be a very good place for them to growth.

While waiting for the other people to come out, we simply let the boys to run around and to play whatever they like, as long as the act is not damaging.

Our lunch was settled in the Chinese University's canteen, it's buffet style. We quickly gobbled the foods, line up to go to the toilet, then headed north to our 2nd destination at around 1 pm.

Lavender garden in HK, well, never heard of it before.

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The tour guide told us that the owner of this lavender farm came back from England after migrating there for some time. Couldn't find any job to do, he found a partner who offered him this piece of land to work on until now. Besides lavender, they also plant some herbs that are widely used in cooking too.




Some of the lavenders that is planted here...Must lavender blue in color?



Apparently, there are blue lavenders too...




They are just interested in playing with the soil, not the lavender...

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Ok, time's up. Got to go to the 3rd destination...




Frankly speaking, I was only looking forward to go to the strawberry farm the whole day. The farm is bigger than I've expected.



Young and old, we all were thrilled to see those fresh strawberries...




Since we got to pay for whatever we cut here (HKD40/lb), we got to educate the boys to choose for the right one, right. The rules is simple : Only cut the biggest, and bloody red one.

When I saw those strawberries, I really have the urge to put them into mouth. But somebody kept nagging us by using a loud speaker, that we shouldn't do it. OK OK, I've got it.

The boys were so happy to find the strawberries to cut.




And we were happy that they cut the right one for most of the time.

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The strawberries here are organic planted, and their size are bigger than I've expected too. Now I know the locally planted strawberries are no any interior than the imported one.

End up, we had cut a full basket of strawberries, weighted slightly more than 2 lb. And that was done in just 30 min time. If we could have stayed here any longer, I'm sure we would cut a hell lot than that amount. Sigh, hard to tell is this a good thing or a bad thing?

Ok, that's the final destination for the day, a cow farm.




The entrance looks like a flea market instead. We were given a small cup of fresh milk as a complimentary drink, I didn't take it. Vincent did, he said it tastes good.



The baby cow, age only 1 year plus, but they weight more than 100kg already. Boy, what an incredible growth rate.

Cow feeding is the only thing that we can do here. Too bad there is no milking activities open to the public.

Walking up the hill, there live the mother cows. The guide told us only female cows are available here, for the sake of their milk. They used genetic method to breed for baby cow. Err...how to say that?

Those cows are from New Zealand. But same type of cow, very different fate.

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In NZ, I bet their peers have a large greenery field to walk around, and have unlimited lush grasses to eat on. Here, the cows can only walk within this "jail" area, and be fed.

Saw this cow at the other side of the "jail". It got a fresh wound on its right horn area. Wonder what had happen to it? It seems very lonely. I felt so sorry for it, but there is nothing we could do but feed him some grass. I hope it will get well soon.




Ms Lau is not just William's teacher, but Vincent's too, when he was in kindegarten. Personally, I respect her a lot for she does more than what a teacher suppose to do. In school, she is also like a nanny to them.

We got home around 5 pm that day. The first thing to do was of course, to wash some strawberries and put them into mouth. To my surprise, they aren't just look good, but taste very sweet too. We are so pleased with the good quality of those strawberries...



Look how pretty they are. We had decided to go to that farm again some time in the future. Must jot down here that Nov-Feb is the best season to go...


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