Labor Day Crowd in Shanghai Oceanarium

My wife Antipatika had already posted an entry about our trip to the Shanghai Oceanarium. However, I already had some photos cropped and watermarked so I’m still doing my own post. Having said that, I won’t go into further details of the trip, I’d rather rant about the crowd instead.

Just one of the clearer photos I got from hundreds of blurred shots. Taken at the far end of the 2nd tunnel.

Skyline Penguins Fly

May 1, Labor Day, is a National Holiday in China, however it fall on a Thursday. The following Friday was not declared a holiday so the people should still go back to work the next day. If it turned out to be a Friday, it would explain the sudden apparition of an enormous crowd, but it’s not. I could only hope that the Chinese denizens really had a thing about commemorating national holidays because if not, why not just storm the parks and tourist spots on a regular weekend. Weekends are always consists of two days – Saturdays and Sundays – and the whole world knows that. Though there are cases that someone had to render overtime work and most often that not, it had to be done on Saturdays. That only means they still have all Sundays to do the site-seeing on countless parks and other attractions. What’s the need to do that on May 1, of 2008?

The Shanghai Oceanarium has two huge aquarium tunnels where people could pass through while gawking at the multitudes of fishes and other marine creatures. I thought I would be amazed but I was exceedingly annoyed instead. Annoyed not because I didn’t liked the aquariums and everything on it, I was annoyed because of the huge crowd. Upon entering the first tunnel, you wouldn’t even have to take a single step because you’ll be automatically pushed forward by the crowd behind you. If you want to take a decent picture, you must set your camera to the fastest shutter setting (use multiple running shots if possible) because you can’t pause to even click the capture button without being pushed (a perfect reason for explaining why you have 95% of all you photos blurred). Don’t even allow yourself to faint or fall down because you’d be definitely flattened like a dough. The arrival of the crowd is seemingly endless so if you’ll fall down during the opening, you’ll only be noticed during closing.

Now that I have mentioned it, the Shanghai Oceanarium claims to have the World’s Longest Underwater Viewing Tunnel at 155 meters. That was the second tunnel from the main entrance which has a travellator so when you’re persistent enough to get past the first tunnel, you’ll have a more reasonable explanation why you’re moving automatically on the second tunnel.

Upon entrance, the ushers will give you a complimentary ticket which you could exchange for a complimentary gift at the souvenir shops later. That gift is a “mysterious” synthetic pearl that the crews would personally take from inside an oyster. LOL! Then they’ll ask you to buy an overpriced bracelet, necklace or earrings so they could attach the mysterious peal on it. ROFL!

The what!?

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