Enchanted Kingdom

We went to Enchanted Kingdom last Oct 18 with a group of elementary students from a foundation that our employer supports. It was probably my 3rd or 4th time in there and even if it fails in comparison to other theme parks I have been, I still had a great time. Here are some pics:

Manila Ocean Park

The following photos were taken at Manila Ocean Park which had a soft opening earlier this year. I'm glad to say that the oceanarium is comparable to the ones I have seen in Sentosa and San Francisco. However, it does not compare to the one in Ocean Adventure in HongKong, although Manila Ocean Park has the potential to come close. We will see how it goes in the following months once all ongoing contructions are done.












You'd think these pictures do not give justice to the sharks found in the oceanarium. They actually do! The sharks are really very small and do not look threatening at all. Hopefully, they grow in the coming months.

Yuyuantan Park

While looking for a place to stay for free while waiting for the night train back to Shanhai, we ended up in Yuyuantan Park. It was a good choice for us to take a break and relax while enjoying the nice view around the park that is centered around a lake. It was here where I finally was able to make use of apperture setting of my camera and actually saw a difference to my pictures. I tried using the setting before, aiming for a shallow depth of field for my picture, but to no avail. Apparently, for my non-SLR camera, the setting only works for close-up shots, like the ones I took below:

Beijing

Here are some pictures I took in Beijing during my recent 7-day Shanghai-Beijing trip.

There were taken during a very comfortable overnight train trip from Shanghai to Beijing:



First stop is Tiananmen Square:



Right across the square is Forbidden city, former home of imperial China's emperors. This one apparently has 800 buildings and more than 8700 rooms, which meant 2 hours of non-stop walking (and picture-taking of course).







Our second day started at Temple of Heaven, where emperors offered prayers and sacrifices for good harvest:






These were taken at Summer Palace:








Next day was devoted mainly to Great Wall of China. We chose the one is Simatai mainly because of the river view. The trip took 3 hours. And worse, it was very foggy. It also rained a bit. Not a good day for taking pics but I still managed to get some:












The trip, of course, was not complete without releasing some hard-earned funds. Here goes:

5890 Airfare
1620 Travel fee
750 Terminal fee
1400 Visa
90 Van to hotel (100 RMB total, 15 RMB/person)
1440 Shanghai hotel (120 RMB/night, 2 nights)
3060 Train to Beijing (510 RMB)
2400 Beijing tour* (2790 RMB total, 400 RMB/person)

*tour includes train to Shanghai