Just back from a great family day out with friends to 'Ocean World' in Taipei County (about an hour or so North of Taipei). The day started off badly, with Juliette awake at 5am after only finally settling at midnight so I was knackered, but determined that we would still go - even though it was pouring down with rain, had gone from 28 degrees to 12 in the space of a couple of days and not the ideal weather for a beachy day out! The trip had been planned last week with our friends, when the weather had been just perfect, and it's just sod's law the heavens decided to pour today! We left late, (were due to meet our friends across town for the convoy trip at 9.45am, but we didn't leave till 10!) And then got into the car and realised we had no petrol so knew we would be even more late! However, all was fine and we chuffed on North to the coast!
As soon as we arrived, the kids were starving, so we decided to have our picnic lunches sitting outside the visitor's centre under some shelter, and then we went on a fab walk along board-walks and paths along the beach - the area is famous for its' amazing natural sand sculptures and rock formations and their pride and joy is a partciuarly large sand sculpture that looks amazingly like the bust of Queen Victoria! It has been landscaped really well there - on a fine day, it would be a beautiful walk and you could spend hours playing in the sand and in the water. The sea today had majorly huge waves crashing into the sand - so rough - and so we didn't venture very near the water line at all!
The kids still had great fun splashing in the puddles and chasing each other around the pathways and then we went into the arena to watch a dolphin/whale/seal/diving show.
As you can see from the pics, with us as a group of 12, there were only a handful of other people who had decided to venture out in the weather to the show! The arena must be able to seat 1000 people or so, and we felt rather sorry for the performers (creatures included) as we all sat right at the back (in the Gods) as it was the only section under shelter from the rain, so our applause and cheers must have sounded pathetic!
The show was ... interesting. The kids loved it, us adults were less enthusiastic, although it was still fun!
The show (all in Chinese with accompanying bizarre techno Chinese music) started with a dolphin and whale show which was actually ace, followed by a quite good seal show and then, the STRANGEST thing: a group of western expat men and women dressed up acting out a strange and silly Benny Hillesque comedy routine including slapstick falls, farting noises, a man dressed up as a woman with balloon boobs that got popped and bizarre clownish routines on a large trampoline. They shouted out things in Chinese, which the few Chinese people around us giggled at - we just looked on a bit bemused - and then their real reason for being there became clear - they were the divers in the diving show. And they did put on a great show - some amazing dives off high diving boards and the piece de resistance, diving off a 40m high ladder. It made us queasy watching them climb and all I could think about was how frigging cold it would be up there before the dive! The flag of Taipei was hoisted on the top and the wind was thrashing it about so it must have felt like a gale up there!
At the end of the show, one of the guys came up to us - almost as if he hadn't seen any 'westerners' for a long time as he was so excited to see us - asking all sorts of questions. In hindsight, we felt like he would have loved to have sat down with us and had a cup of tea, but we feel like we gave him the bum's rush as we were just so cold after sitting out braving the elements for over an hour and the babies needed feeding and the girls were jumping about ready to go, so we didn't really give the poor man a chance.
Have to wonder why a group of excellent divers have decided to come to Taipei county of all places to 'Ocean World' which is nothing special at all! Poor blokes - they are really talented, but we did feel sorry for them having to do their show whatever the weather and to an empty audience sometimes, three times a day!
After the show, we went to an indoor cafe on the property - and we became the show - we became hounded by Taiwanese people, clearly not having witnessed so many blonde haired, white skinned children before! We had to nicely, but very firmly ask them to leave after a while when they wouldn't stop screaming and laughing and trying to touch and pick up the girls! Annalise, Freya & Kinara, are all very good at saying 'No!' 'Go Away!' 'Stop it!' and the really pleasant 'I don't like you'! But of course, they weren't understood!
The trip home was fine - we drove home a different way, up and over the Yang Ming Shan mountains, which is where we lived in our first two years here - it was so misty at points, you could hardly see the car in front, but a beautiful drive none-the-less. It reminded Andrew and I of our time here pre-children!
A great day out - not the most brilliant of places to visit, but when you have all of your little family with you, are surrounded by good friends, and your children are happy, the day has been just perfect!
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