Monday, 22 July 2013

Ma Wan - a cautionary tale

Ma Wan aka Park Island is a 30 minute ferry ride from HK island. I've wanted to go there for a while, so when we had nothing to do this Saturday, we headed off for Central Ferry Pier 2 to catch the boat. I think Ma Wan means Horse Bay.

I had checked Little Steps beforehand to make sure there was enough for us to do there, and it looked ok. I wasn't really interested in going to Noah's Ark (an evangelical Christian theme park (?!) which costs $155 per adult and $130 per child!), partly because Vergenia went a while ago and said it wasn't that great. I can confirm that it is a proper theme park, because they have speakers blaring atonal "music" hidden in the bushes.

Having given up on the maps displayed by the road, we resorted to Google Maps and found the Ma Wan Park, only to realise that it's open 1pm-6pm. What kind of park isn't open all day?! Quite a lot of the displays in the park were closed for maintenance when we finally went in, which was disappointing. There was an adventure playground but that was closed because it's only for pre-booked groups, a hilltop viewing platform, a little waterfall and a solar tower. Can't tell you what's in the solar tower because when we finally got there they told us that you need a ticket to get in, and you can only buy that ticket at the Noah's Ark ticket office, which is about 10 minutes' walk away. At that point we gave up and headed back to the ferry!

We cooled down a bit in Pacific Coffee near the pier, and a very kind guy moved to another table so that we could all sit down. It was really kind of him in a city where the norm is for every 4-seater table to be occupied by just 1 sleeping person...

I would love to go back to Ma Wan sometime to explore the abandoned village (photos here) but I'm not sure that's a very child-friendly outing.

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