Safari Park Day

This morning we had the choice of when to leave, so we chose 10am, so we could sleep in. Somehow, even though we didn’t have to be on a timetable we still had a hard time getting ready, getting our breakfast eaten and getting out to the van! Our guide made arrangements for our normal driver to take us to the safari park. It took about 45 minutes to get there, so I’m glad that we didn’t have to take a taxi. He took us right to the gate and helped us get tickets.

We went into the Safari Park and right away MeiMei told us she had to go to the bathroom. Lydia is unusual in that she rarely has to go to the bathroom – like 2-3 times per day. MeiMei on the other hand has to go about every 10 minutes. I’m afraid she might have a bladder infection. That would be better news than this being normal for her. She never wants to go when we suggest it, but almost every time we go past a bathroom, she says she has to go 2 minutes later. Ahhhh! When we first got her, she only drank a sip of water at a time. Now she downs whole water bottles, so maybe she’s never had to hold her pee before! Whatever it is, I hope we can get it under control!!! Or else we’re NEVER leaving home!!!

After our first potty break, we took a look at the map and figured out where we wanted to head. We took off and headed for the giraffes. They had a bunch of giraffes and for only 30 yuan you can feed the giraffes. Lydia decided that she wanted to do it. She got one tiny branch and the giraffe grabbed it out of her hand with its tongue.

After that we found the koalas. They were so cute! They have been at this zoo for 12 years and they have been reproducing well. They had a TON of koalas. Some of them were snoozing, but some were awake and eating. They also had a “nursery” area with mamas and babies. It’s so different than in the US. I remember going to the San Diego Zoo and there were keepers making sure that no one raised their voices around the koalas. Not so much in China. There were people hollering at them and no one really paid attention. At least that was good for us since MeiMei thought they were so cute and went from shushing us to squealing with delight.

After leaving each animal area, there was a gift shop that you had to walk through. MeiMei knows me as the “Keeper of the Money” since I’ve been the one holding onto the cash. She would walk through the store picking things up and saying, “Mama?” We said no to just about everything. But if she saw something she thought was really neat, she wanted me to take a picture of it. I have about 25 pictures of her and items in the gift shop. Well, all around the zoo were blow up giraffes that looked like a hobby horse. Lydia thought that they would be a good souvenir, so we ended up with one. It was fun for the first 30 minutes until MeiMei started riding it and dragging it around and wore a hole in it. She kept carrying it around until we got her distracted enough to shove it in the backpack.

We stopped to eat our snacks, since it was lunch time and watched the elephants. There was a water pump there – I’m not really sure why – that MeiMei had a lot of fun pumping. She filled her mouth with food and then pumped the pump over and over.

Just beyond the elephants was an area that was labeled children’s zoo/touch zoo. Well, it pretty much only had horses. I’m not sure if MeiMei actually recognized the character for horse, but she kept pointing out a character that was on all of the signs. I took a video of her pointing to characters so we can know if she has any idea, or if like a lot of kindergarteners I know, was making up her own “story”. She kept trying to get me to say the Chinese word for the animals. I was trying to copy the sound and intonation just like she said, but every time, she looked at me with a disgusted look and kept repeating it and shaking her head. Whenever Brian would repeat it though, it was always right. I’m sorry, but Brian has NO skills at language. I’m pretty sure she was just telling him what he wanted to hear. 😊 He even purposefully mispronounced some of the words and she still told him it was good!

We could see a little train nearby, but since we had spent a lot on the tickets already, we didn’t want to start paying for rides. Lydia really wanted to ride and she would have been willing to pay some of her own money, so I went to go find out the price. After a little struggle with the language barrier, I found out it was free. We enjoyed a ride around the “Children’s Area” in the train. There were a few more rides there too. MeiMei rode a children’s roller coaster, we rode another little train, a merry-go-round, and a dragon ride (like the Dumbo ride at Disney). There were two buttons on the dragons. One to make them fly in the air and another that made machine gun sounds. 😊 Not really sure about the reasoning behind that one!?!

We headed over to the main attraction – at least for us – the pandas!!! They had a bunch of pandas. Again, the pandas in the US are much more protected than the pandas here in China. Even one of the keepers was yelling at the panda to get her attention. There were panda triplets born at the safari park 4 years ago and they were some of the mascots of the park. As 4-year olds, they are mostly grown, but a little smaller than the adult pandas. It was so cute to see them eat the bamboo. MeiMei was also trying to get me to say the word for bamboo. That one I think I did ok on!

While on the panda trail, MeiMei fell and scraped her knee. I didn’t have anything to make it feel better, but I did have hand sanitizer. She had used that after all the bathroom breaks and she decided that hand sanitizer is the miracle cure all. She put some on her knees and everything was good. After that, anytime she fell or was upset, the hand sanitizer made it all better.

After the pandas came more gift shops, more rides and a stop for a drink and a treat. There were these cute panda cookies. They looked like they were chocolate and vanilla sugar cookies, but they smelled like carob and Lydia thought they tasted like “gluten free”. MeiMei didn’t mind though. She downed quite a few of them.

Lydia was dying to go to the “Bear Forest”, so we tried to follow the map there. I’m usually good at following maps, but the map for the park was not to scale and didn’t have all the paths on it. I knew the word for bear was something like “hua”, so I asked a worker there and pointed to the map. He actually spoke very good English and was able to show us the way. When we got to the “Bear Forest” we saw some snow wolves, but zero bears. I’m not sure where they were or where they were supposed to be, but there were no bears!

Lydia also wanted to see the “Jurassic Trail” where they had a dinosaur exhibit. It was almost closing time and we had to get across the park. We tried following the map again, but no more success was had this time. We did end up seeing the tigers and they had a tiger nursery where there were some very cute baby tigers, so I guess it was worth the detour. We finally asked someone (using the map) and found out where to go.

As we entered the trail, there were animatronic dinosaurs in the “jungle” along the trail. It was pretty cool and they were very realistic. They had sounds and movements that were very realistic. So realistic that MeiMei started freaking out. Brian took her through as fast as he could sat at the exit, so Lydia and I could take a little more time. We took maybe 10 minutes and by the time we got to the end, she was still crying. Have no fear though, I had hand sanitizer! Just to put into perspective how real the dinos were, Lydia wouldn’t stand with her back to the t-rex to get a picture taken. I had her take one of me, but she was a little too nervous to do it herself. They were very lifelike, if that’s possible for an animal that is extinct and I have never seen!

At that point, we were shutting down the safari park. I called our guide, so she could send our driver to get us and after one more stop at the bathroom, we headed out the gate. We found our driver and he was parked in the exact same spot that he was this morning. I’m not really sure, but I think he may have spent the day at the safari park waiting for us. I’m not sure what the going wage is for sitting in a van all day, but hopefully it’s not too much! Don’t worry, we’ll give him a big tip at the end of the week. 😊

We had him drop us off at Shamian Island so that we could eat supper at Lucy’s. Lucy’s is an American style restaurant and it hold memories for us with Lydia. We took her there and she had spaghetti. They heat the plate in the over to melt the cheese. When we got Lydia, she touched the plate and burned her fingers. It was night, so we didn’t realize she burned her fingers because we couldn’t see. The next morning we saw that her fingers had a blister on them from the burn and we felt so bad. She didn’t get the spaghetti this time, but I did. We got MeiMei a grilled cheese sandwich because when we showed her the picture, she said yes. Come to find out, she was just saying, “yes” to the French fries. When Brian tried to get her to eat the grilled cheese, she kept her mouth closed and didn’t even want to try it. He got her to eat one bite, but she was not impressed. She also wasn’t impressed with the spaghetti that I offered her. I’m afraid she might not be so happy with meals at our house!

After Lucy’s, and another bathroom break, we headed out to find some shops that were open. Well, by 7:30, pretty much everything was closed. We started down a street where we saw lights and MeiMei announced that she had to go to the bathroom again!!! Since it’s China, I was tempted to just pull her pants down and have her pee in a drain. I thought that we should at least try to find a bathroom though. On our way to the bathroom, we saw a shop that was open and the guy tried to convince us to come in and shop. I told him that we needed to find a bathroom, and he offered his to us. It was a very interesting bathroom…you had to walk up five steps to get to the “throne” – at least it was a western style toilet – and then the toilet was only about 10 inches off the ground. On the way up, MeiMei tripped and bruised her leg (again), but we made it to the bathroom. 😊 We decided that if we had used his bathroom, the least we could do was look around. We found a chop (stamp) that could have MeiMei’s English and Chinese name carved into it. There was a bunch of other stuff too, but by that time MeiMei was almost falling asleep standing up. We told him we’d come back tomorrow to look some more.

We walked back over by the White Swan Hotel at his suggestion to find a taxi. There was one coming down the road after just a few minutes of waiting. We took the taxi back to the hotel and before we got off the island, MeiMei was asleep.

We’re all tired after our long day and ready for some sleep. Tomorrow we get MeiMei’s visa that will allow her to become a US citizen when she steps on American soil. I can’t believe that tomorrow is our last full day in China. I’m ready to get back to my queen size bed, but I’m not sure I want to take care of the cooking and cleaning again. It’s been nice to have the past few weeks off. MeiMei is pretty good at folding clothes, so at least I might have a helper while we’re at home. 😊

Feeding the giraffe

Koala in the tree

One of the many souvenirs we didn't buy! 

The one we did buy!

Elephants and a giraffe on his head!

An "artistic" picture by MeiMei

She really knows how to capture the mood!

She's a speed demon! She loved all the rides - and no motion sickness :)

Baba doesn't do spinn-y rides, so it was a good time for Mama and MeiMei to spend together

Isn't to sooooooo cute?

"JieJie bobo MeiMei"

Eating the "gluten free" pandas - MeiMei doesn't have too discerning of a pallet!

The biggest Beanie Boo ever!!!

I'm about to get eaten!!!

Triceratops