Spending Time at Manila Ocean Park!

Hello everyone, I’m back with more pictures.  You missed me I’m sure.

What, no?  Not even a little bit?

Sad.  But that’s all right, because I’m not here today to talk about me.  Today I want to tell you about a trip I took with my family to a place called Manila Ocean Park.

Now if you live in Manila, chances are you already know what this place is.  For those of you who don’t, let me start off by showing you this:

Already you know it’s not a swimming pool, right?  And since I haven’t embedded a creepy audio file written by John Williams you’ve probably guessed it isn’t a movie studio, either.  Bravo. 

It’s actually an aquarium located on Manila Bay that’s full of fish and birds and mermaids and fountains and talking penguins.

Talking penguins, yes, you heard that right.  I’ll explain later.  For now, have a gander at what you’ll find should you decide to visit:

We walked around this place for half a day, and believe me, there was plenty to see.  Once inside, you will pay a brief visit to an office, where you’ll be given a sheet of tickets that get you into each of the individual attractions.  From there you make your way to each attraction in turn, in any order you like, and for as much time as you’d like.  My favorite was the Ice Village—because it was cold, man!  Below freezing cold.  I was finally home again, if only for a short while. 

(note:  we could not get pictures of this village, as the cold tends to frost over camera lenses)

As for the kids, they had other ways to define their fun.

These shots come from inside a museum dedicated to what I can only think of as movie pop culture.  What it’s doing at an ocean park I’m not too sure, but it is damned cool (check out Vader and those storm-troopers, all life-sized!). Naturally, the kids went nuts, especially for the superheroes and the minions.

By the time we left the museum it was nearing dark.  At seven p.m. we attended an outdoor light and fountain show, but on the way to that, there was the talking penguin.  There are no pictures of this oddity here, either, as the show took place inside a movie theater, where documentation with our gadgets would have been rude.  But let me explain it by saying that a cartoon penguin walks onto a movie screen and interacts with an audience of 100 people in real time.  How exactly this is done I’m not sure, but of course there is a guy sitting somewhere out of view, chattering away with his guests whilst the penguin makes appropriate gestures onscreen.  Again, the kids went nuts for this.  Portia even tells me it was her favorite part of the whole day.

If you’d like to see this place for yourself, you can find out how to get there by visiting the Manila Ocean Park homepage here.  It’s worth it, even with all the traffic you’ll fight.  For less traffic, try going on a weekday (of course), or rig a mini-gun on the hood of your car and watch ‘em all scatter when you squeeze the trigger!

Okay, ignore that latter suggestion.  I just got done watching the Machete trailer on Youtube and am feeling a little cheesy.  (Do NOT click that link if you are not old enough).

Getting back to the family fun, you’ll love this place if you love seeing your kids laugh and watching exotic fish of all types and sizes brood at you from behind thick aquarium glass.  Check it out.