4 April 2013
Ocean world where are you?
Today in Qingming, commonly called tomb sweeping day, a national holiday in China.
What this means is that unless you work in a shop, theres no work, and schools are closed. But shops and restaurants are all open, just busier than normal.
This also means that everyone is trying to get somewhere to sweep a tomb presumably. So taking a long range bus or train is out of the question, the tickets would have been sold out ages ago.
The day is also raining, well it appeared to be but never did. The streets were wet when I woke up but I never actually saw it rain.
Hence I decided to go to the polar ocean world park where they electrocute dolphins and sit polar bears out in the heat.
I did my research, theres a metro stop named ocean world and the internet told me thats where it was...no.
First, the train didnt even stop here, the stop is closed, the stop after it is the last stop, no problem I thought, I can get off there and walk back. Only I never did find it, I found what is claimed to be the worlds largest structure, its nearly finished but not yet. Heres a link to an Australian news story on it.
When I eventually got back to my hotel which involved an hour long jog up the highway in the rain, I found out that inexplicably the ocean world is nowhere near the station named as such, and is a few miles further south past the last metro stop. Maybe tomorrow!
Getting off at the last station seemed promising at first. A finished building. Turns out its the only one, predictably, bank of China.
The worlds largest building, 3x the size of the pentagon, 500 metres long, 400 metres wide, 100 metres high. And after I read the SMH article I linked above, I now know why theres a stop called Ocean Park here.
It is going to have a fake beach and palm trees when finished.
OK, one last pic, its not everyday you accidentally jog past the worlds largest building hiding in the fog.
Another bank building. When the bubble bursts in China, I dont want to be here.
After an hour or so of light jogging in what looked like light rain but wasnt, along a freeway, I arrived back at civilization, in an area called 'Incubation Park'.
Here stuff was being built but a small mall was finished. The basement was staging a real estate fair which seemed chaotic, perhaps its people trying to buy an investment property before the new anti property investment laws take effect.
I found this cool coffee shop, which is also a book shop and stuff females like shop, where after a long delay and what seemed like a gargantuan effort by 3 staff, I was served a decent coffee.
Back on a subway station, and here they have indicated the ocean world stop is closed, but theres no clue that it is not the ocean world park.
As frustrating as this might read, to me it was exciting to get so lost in the fog, find the giant building by accident and not really have any concept of where I was going.
At times I wasnt convinced if I was heading North or South, one way would take me further and further away from a way home! Luckily I was indeed heading north the whole time.