Saturday, 8/22

Today was crazy fun! We slept in, had a late breakfast, then headed down to close to the Manila Bay to the Manila Ocean Park. We didn't quite know what we'd find, since it is a relatively new attraction and i couldn't tell from the website what parts were open. Before we even got there though was an adventure! You see, today was a huge Celebration for the 25th anniversary of a Church Movement called El Shaddai which you can read about here. We didn't know this when we set out, but as the traffic got thicker along the way, our Cabbie explained. We had to be dropped off a distance of 4 blocks or so from the Ocean Park because the celebration was happening in the park directly in front of it. So, we started walkin. we walked along a road that usually jsut leads to the parking lots for the park and Ocean Park, but had becoem a bit of a Jeepney campground, as people from all over the country had come. I heard an estimate of over 1 Million people being there. it doesnt seem a stretch, as metro Manila has a population of 20 Million, and like i said, people came from all over. We reached the Ocean Park and decided to start with the Oceanarium, whic his an aquarum, and is really neat! The building also houses (or will house when it's finished) two open Marine Habitats where you can snorkle or dive (i was bummed this isn;t finished yet!) A central food court, a mall, which is still pretty incomplete, an amazing restaurant that i will get to later with a beautiful view of the bay, a super cool outdoor bar- which you will hear about tomorrow, and a hotel, which is still under construction. So, yeas, the Oceanarium. Let's tell the story with pictures!
























This Philippine Crocodile was just napping un the sun... :-)


















These are eggs sacs from Bamboo Sharks. they had 4 different stages of development to view- it was really neat!


















These are spotted garden eels. they were about 1/3 inch thick and would jsut stick partway out of the rocks- sometimes burrowing back down in.


















This is me watching the sharks. i did this for a long time, because two of them were trying to sleep on ledges, and anotehr was trying to wake them-it was hilarious!



















This might be my favorite shot of the day. Scott timed it jsut right. As you can see, i was THRILLED when that Ray swam right over me!







































Then, after finishing the Oceanarium Tour, we went to the super elegant Restaurant attached to it. oh man it was good- a buffet of Japanese, Chinese and Mongolian foods. i ate lots of Salmon sashimi. Nom! The highlight of the meal was when the three piece band came and sang 4-5 songs for us, including some Elton John, James Taylor, and by my request, Van Morrison's Brown Eyed Girl. :-)


















After that giant meal, we went to see the Mermaids show, which was really cute and fun. They have 4 girls dress up as mermaids and swim around in a tank with the fish as the audience watches from a connected room.

After that, we considered staying to watch the sunset, but we were jsut too pooped, so we decided to give it a try tomorrow night and made the trek through Jeepney town (which was even more crowded by now and was beginning to smell a but because of the fact that people were creating makeshift potties below their jeepneys at best.) and out to the main road and fortunately we were able to find a taxi quickly and we jsut took it easy when we got back to the hotel, snuggling on the couch and watching TV.