Category: Entertainment

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Wednesday

Three of us went to see Alice in Wonderland .. the epic 3D fantasy adventure from Walt Disney Pictures (director Tim Burton) and with Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter.  The picture was snapped in the theater by my friend Bryan  : ).   We all thought the 3D effects were underwhelming, though.  The movie had its moments, and some good underlying messages, but I for one didn’t quite expect Alice to turn into a Joan of Arc like character battling a fierce creature towards the end.

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Monday/ Outside China Town

It was a long Monday at work – Mondays always seem long! but at least I can post these pictures from yesterday’s visit to the Outside China Town (OCT) theme park.   Disneyland or Six Flags it is not – but there is a spectacular and steep aerial tramway up the mountainside to provide panoramic views of Dameisha, the beach and the bay down below.

The parking lot for OCT theme park. We see the tower with the wrap-around screen every night from the Yanba Expressway when we came in from work with the shuttle bus.
The entrance: a nod to the Year of the Tiger, and the first of five or six escalators that takes one up the mountainside.
A misty pond on the way up to the space shuttle display on one of the levels.
Trinkets and refreshments are for sale everywhere, of course.
Here’s the Starbucks, with a food vendor in the foreground. If the Starbucks was a little easier to get to, and not inside OCT, I would have visited it every day.
The water spray is kicked up by a jet ski, and we did not stay long enough to see what other entertainment was offered in this show.
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Here’s the aerial tramway, taking us to the top of the mountain ridge. Those pylons are really tall! That’s Dameisha beach on the right and Mirs Bay in the distance.
The arrival point at the top of the tramway. The little tramway cars take only 6 people, at most.
Posing for the obligatory photograph at the overlook. This is looking more or less west, with the coastline continuing on towards Shenzhen and Hong Kong.
Here’s the skywalk with its glass floor. Yikes. With these things, one has to trust that the civil engineers had double checked their design calculations, and that the builders had followed all the specifications without cutting corners.
Looking down at a new ride that is under construction, on the edge of the cliff. I’m too old for these kinds of heart-stopping experiences, so it’s a no for me, thank you very much.
Another Chinese only menu to decipher. The pictures are super helpful for the helpless (us), of course. The green section has the cold drinks (such as snow top coffee and iced tea) and hot drinks (black tea, green tea, milk tea, classic coffee).
Here is the view from the top, with some main areas and buildings of interest. Dameisha is really ‘big’ Meisha (‘da’ is big) and Xiaomeisha is ‘little’ Meisha (‘xiao’ means small or little).