Travel With Rithu

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  • Hong Kong Water World Ocean Park… my first ever water park experience!

    Have you been to a water-park in Honk Kong before? Well I went to one, my first ever! It is Water World by Ocean Park. At first I didn’t know that we were going there, because my parents had secretly packed our swimming gear in my dad’s bag while I was sleeping. When we started from our hotel, I thought that we were going somewhere for sightseeing as usual. Even when we got out from the metro, in the wildest of my thoughts, I knew that we were going in the park because the only thing ouside was the park. Plus, when we were walking past the sign my mom said, “Is’nt it here?” So when we were in the escalator to go down, my parents revealed the surprise, but I couldn’t believe it. Finally after my dad gave me a bunch of reasons, I believed him. After that I was so surprised and I hugged him like anything! It was because I had never been to a water park and this was my first time! To reach the water park, we took a bus. When we reached, I saw many slides around me. I can already feel an extra surge of excitement coming through my body. As soon as we finished changed to our swimming suits, I ran to the entrance and found a small waterfall. The only way is to enter is to pass through it.

    When we entered the water park, all I could see was lots of slides around. Each of the rides had a funny name.

     First, I decided to go to the “Lazy Cruise.” All I had to do was sit on a circular balloon loop called water tube and float away to the end. On the way, there were many tiny waterfalls that made my mom and me drenched by the time we reached the end of the pool. 

    Afterwards, I decided to try out the “Surf Striker,” which made me feel terrified indeed. When I got to the front, a guide taught me how to handle the harsh current of the water on the surfboard. When I was doing it, I found it to be very hard, and suddenly, I lost my grip and got thrown off from the water! There was a timer for 1 minute and by that time, it went off. 

    At the Surf Striker

    Next, my mom and I went to a ride called “Cavern Chase.” When we reached, we found ourselves in a huge queue. But after some time, we reached the front of the queue, and they made us sit on a 4-seater round raft. As it was just the 2 of us, they made us sit opposite each other. The next thing I knew, we were in a dark tunnel, and my mom was screaming her head off until we landed in a pool after a minute or two!

    After that ride, we went to the Big Wave Bay. It was basically a giant pool with a lot of waves,  which meant that it was hard to put the water tube on. Once I finally got inside with my dad’s help, I felt like I was being swept by the waves! After some relaxing, I jumped out of the tube and rushed to the shore, and got my mom to get up to go to the next ride: Rainbow Rush. 

    At the Big Wave Bay

    When it was finally our turn at the Rainbow Rush, we saw 8 tunnels, with these different colors: red, orange , yellow, green, blue, indigo, pink, and purple. I chose the pink one and my mom chose the purple one. As soon as I heard a buzzer, I jumped into the tunnel on a mat which was given to everyone. There was so many twists and finally I reached the sunlight, so I thought I reached the end but before I could even move, I was falling on a free drop! When I reached the actual end, I did not move for a few seconds in case there was another free fall. My mom was calling me which didn’t sound very far. Then when I got up, I told my mom that I wanted to go again because this was the best ride that I have been to so far! This time my mom let me go alone and I chose the purple one this time.

    Sliding through the purple slide at Rainbow Rush

    The next ride was called the Cyclone Spin. When we reached the top of the slide after waiting in a long queue, we settled down on a raft that had 2 seats. The ride was almost like the Cavern Chase, but it wasn’t that scary because my mom didn’t scream at all!

    My dad said he wanted to go to a ride called Riptide, and judging from it’s name I thought it was a scary ride so I agreed, but when we reached, it was just a small pool and my dad said the next place I go to is going to be my last ride of the day, so I said I will go to another nice ride if it is my last ride. So my mom and I sat outside and waited for my dad to finish off with the Riptide. When he was done, we headed inside, hoping that there was an indoor ride that I could have missed, as it was very hot outside. Unfortunately, there was none, but when we saw the map, we saw one ride which made me make up my mind that I wanted to go there. The name of the ride was ‘Sky high Falls.‘ When we stood in the queue, we realized that it was a short one which was convenient. When we were settling on the circular raft, 3 more ladies were made to join us and we were surprised. But as the staff pushed the raft to the ride, we focused on the experience we were going to encounter. It was the best ride in the whole park! There were many tunnels, holes and free falls! Me and my mom were screaming our heads off! But the 3 ladies didn’t shout at all!

     By the time we were done with all the rides, we were all hungry so we went to the restaurant outside. I ordered a burger for me and my mom to share, and my dad ordered rice with chicken curry. When I was finished eating, I asked my parents if I could go for a swim in the pool which was right next to us so they said yes. I only went for a few minutes because we had to go to other places in Hong Kong too….. but that’s another story! Like that, our wonderful experience in Ocean Park Water World ended. While we were walking towards the exit, I told my mom that I really wanted to time travel back to the time when we were standing in the queue for the first ride of the day.

    Map of rides you may choose from based on the adventure categories

  • JOY RIDE by Darjeeling Himalayan Railways!!

    In my summer vacation, I am visiting my house in Kerala. In the summer, my parents, my uncle, and aunt decided to travel somewhere in India together. Eventually, we decided to travel to Darjeeling! On the first day of the trip, we took a taxi to a place called THE MALL ROAD (one of the major shopping spots in Darjeeling). On the way, we told the driver regarding our plan to go for the “Joyride”. The driver then said that there is a shortcut from the mall road where cars can’t go. Then, after some shopping, we headed for the joyride by means of a toy train by Darjeeling Himalayan Railways. For most of the time, the path we used to walk was very narrow, but we did not mind because the path was the shortcut. When we reached the railway, most of the rails were occupied with engine cars, and there was also a table turner which even my parents were seeing for the first time! Some rails were also occupied by passenger cars connected with engine cars.

    Turntable to change the direction of locomotive engines

    The driver is getting ready for the ride.
    Me in front of the joyride train.

    After taking what seemed like hundreds of photos, I heard a very loud ‘ding dong’. At first, I didn’t understand what the sound meant, but when I saw a lot of people rushing to board the train, I realized that the sound meant the train was about to depart.

    In the first few minutes, there were nothing to see outside until I noticed that we were going round and round. Totally confused, I asked my uncle why. Then he said, “We are going around in a famous place called the BATASIA LOOP!” He said it like it was such a special thing but I said, “Huh?” Afterwards I decided to google it up and I found out that it was built for trains to climb up the hilltop in a spiral way because it was steep. Anyways, I was super bored until we reached the hilltop which is a war memorial where the train stopped. Then the train assistant announced that we have to get back on the train after 15 minutes. From the moment I stepped out of the train, all I could see was several different types of flowers!! There were bunches of daisies, dandelions, roses, hydrangeas and many other flowers I’ve not seen before! That place was simply both magnificent and ultra beautiful! After taking lots of pictures, 15 minutes was up and we all hurried to board the train.

    My Dad said that ideally, we could see the famous mountain, Kanchenjunga, from there, which is the 3rd largest mountain in the world. Unfortunately, we could not see it as it was very foggy. Finally, we headed back towards Darjeeling Himalayan Railways, from where we boarded, leaving the hilltop for other times to visit. When the train is moving, you can also see black smoke and white smoke shooting up separately! The whole experience is a 2-hour ride, and in my opinion, you may try it; at least it’s worth it. It was a good experience for me as it was my first time riding a steam and coal train.

  • The Dublin zoo-one of the oldest zoo in the world!

    Today we went to the Dublin zoo! To reach the zoo, we had to take a bus from where we are staying. After a few stops, I saw a sign board that said’DUBLIN ZOO’. As soon as I saw it, I called my parents and said, “We must get down here, this is our stop!” I think they got really comfortable sitting inside the bus because, my parents said that I am wrong and it should be the next stop. When we went outside at the next stop, my parents realized that I was correct because they didn’t see any Dublin zoo in the place. I know, it’s not good to scold our parents, but as the zoo was very far out, we cannot choose to walk because by the time we reach the zoo, we will be tired! So I was pretty disappointed, so out of frustration I scolded my parents! Still, my parents took it lightly and started teasing me! To get the same bus, we had to wait for about 20 minutes! Finally, the bus came and we boarded it again to get to the zoo entrance.

    After taking the tickets, we went to the entrance gate. At the gate, on top of it, it said ‘ZOORASSIC TRAIL’ in very cool fonts. There were tiny plastic fires next to the writing, and the gate was made out of black stones. When I saw the gate, I imagined that it would be full of rides. So, as I love rides, I told my dad, “Let’s go there!”

    Immediately after we got through the gates, I saw a huge T-rex! It looked so realistic with the wrinkles and moved back and forth and it even roared! On the way while walking, we saw many other realistic looking dinosaurs. After seeing lots of dinosaurs for a long time, my Dad asked, “Where are the real animals?” I said, ” I don’t know.” Suddenly my mom joined the conversation and said, “Look!” pointing at a board. “It said SEA LIONS! Yay!” I cheered. I was very excited to finally see a real animal in the zoo, although I didn’t know what sea lions were. When we reached the place where the Sea Lions were supposed to be, all we saw was a small pond and a shed next to it. For a moment, I didn’t understand what the shed was for. I was wondering until I saw a sea lion’s head poking from the water! Then, I understood what the shed was for. It was for looking under water to watch the Sea Lions through a glass wall. So, I told my parents, “Let’s go inside the shed!” Just as I reached the glass, I saw a sea lion swimming  towards us! It was super huge and cute! It looked like seals and I wondered, “Are sea lions… same as seals?”. When the Sea Lion got very close to the glass wall, I took my camera to take a picture and a video. Sea lions look like seals but the difference between them is their ear structure. Sea lion’s ears are flappy ears while the seal’s ears are little holes on the sides of their head. Both seals and sea lions belong to the same family called PINNIPEDS (Of course, I googled to get this information).

    Afterwards, we walked to the other fields. In the next place there was a huge compound with tall giraffes, white oryxes, rhinoceroses and zebras.  All of the animals were roaming around, especially the giraffes, as they looked like they were posing for the cameras but when I tried to take a pic with my camera, the giraffe just put it’s head down! After taking lots of pictures, we headed towards the bats. To see the bats, we had to go to a dark room. To get used to the darkness, the caretaker told us to close our eyes for some time until we think we can see in the darkness. Since it was dark, we were not able to take any pictures. We had to wait for sometime to see the bat. It was because bats are shy. After some waiting, I finally spotted a bat flying around! The bat’s eyes were big and were almost bulging out of its sockets! After seeing the bats, we went ahead blindly because we didn’t know the way.

    We walked and walked until we reached a cafe. In the cafe, my Dad bought a bottle of orange juice. While we were drinking, I noticed that there were different types of birds, including a colourful peacock that freely walked around other people for food. 

    After we left the cafe, we walked towards the penguins which my Dad said that he doesn’t want to see. Instead, he said that he will walk slowly to the exit and wait for us there. When me and my Mom went to the penguins, I was surprised that a penguin could live here in Ireland because I thought penguins only lived in Antarctica! By the time we reached the penguins, they just finished their swimming/bath inside a pool nearby. They also looked very cute, shaking off the water in their fur. After a while we decided to head back to the entrance where my Dad was waiting for us. While we were walking back, we saw my Dad still standing on the path, waiting for us! We thought he had already reached the exit a long time ago! I was happy that he waited for us so I ran to my dear Dad to hug him. In the whole experience, I was enjoying and excited about seeing every single animal. Some of them looked ugly, I must say, some looked scary and the rest looked very cute. By the time we left the zoo, I was very hungry so we had to go to the tearoom which was in a very beautiful location.

    This is the last place I wanted to blog about my trip to Ireland. From the next blogs I write, you will read about a new place, in another country.

  • MUCKROSS IRISH TRADITIONAL FARM VISIT!!!!

    Today, my parents and I went to a place called MUCKROSS IRISH TRADITIONAL FARM!! The farm is in Killarney, Ireland. The farm makes us realize how hard-working people were in the past because there was no electric machinery, equipment, or appliances like we have now in the 21st century.

    In the farm, there are places like Laborers’ Cottages, Blacksmith’s Forge, Schoolhouse, the Woodland Playarea, Animal farms e.t.c

    At the desk where we buy tickets, my parents had confusion about whether we should go or not because they thought it was just another normal farm. I tried to convince them to go in. So FORTUNATELY, they agreed!!!! After my Dad paid for the tour, we walked to the minibus waiting stop from where we rode to the first stop, the SMALL SIZE FARM.

    Once we reached the stop I found out that the place have a beautiful small white house. All of the window frames were painted in red color. It is a small, Irish styled house. As soon as we went inside, we saw an old grandma sitting on a small, wooden chair. We went to the other room inside and it is an old bedroom with bright white painted cobblestone walls, a small metal framed comfy looking bed, and also, a small statue of Jesus along with his picture in a dark wooden frame next to the window sill. There were other furniture such as a small fireplace with a small fire burning on some wood and charcoal, a  traditional wooden dressing table, and a big bookshelf. When we came back to the main room, the grandma offered us some freshly baked bread and butter. As soon as it reached my taste buds, I was so surprised that an old grandma could bake such yummy bread and butter!

    To reach the other stops we decided not to take the bus ride. So we walked for a bit and finally reached the second stop. Again, I found out that this stop was also a house but it was the worker’s residences. First, we explored the outside of the house. The house was white like the other one, but the window frames were painted in blue. On the other side of the house there was a cabbage farm and an apple tree. Next to the farm there were some pigs rolling in the mud so as I walked nearer, they were all super stinky! When we went inside the house, I saw a bedroom and a living space with a small fireplace again so there is nothing to describe much.

    After a few more stops, we reached a place named LARGE FARM. There I saw JAUNTING CARS, goats, cows, sheep, one cute tiny kitten, and one new born piglet!! Next to the piglet, there was a small fire to make the piglet feel warm. All these animals were in their own fences in a shed. When I left the shed, I saw another pen next to the shed. Inside that, there were lots of hens and roosters. So I sat down on a bench nearby and watched the hens for a while. Until…..another huge brood of hen ran from the shed and behind them was a boy chasing them! What was more, a man tried to pull him out of the pen, but the boy kept on pulling back. After sometime the man managed to pull the boy out of the pen. We then went to a small pond nearby where the swans were. When we reached, the swans gave us a greeting by saying, “QUACK! QUACK!” After that, we walked to a woodland playground where I played a lot.

    We went to our last stop, THE SCHOOLHOUSE. While we were walking to the schoolhouse, I thought that I could write with a feather. When we reached the schoolhouse, I found an old man talking with some people next to a large door. So we waited for sometime. After some minutes, the old man asked me if I want to learn. I said yes. He told me to sit on one the desks. The room had a very tall ceiling, a fireplace, a small blackboard and several large desks and benches. When I sat down, somebody called him and he had to rush out. We waited for sometime. But still, he did not come. So we decided to leave and started to walk back to the reception.

    In the whole experience, I felt just a bit excited because all of the houses looked the same. But when we went to the Large Farm, I was really excited because I really love animals.

  • Europe’s only Toy Soldier Factory in Ireland Visit: Prince August Toy Soldier Factory!!

    Today is a super duper fun day! Guess what? I went to a toy soldier factory called Prince August Toy Soldier Factory with my parents!!! The factory is in Killarney, Ireland. The route is very adventurous and your ears might close due to altitude difference as we were driving uphill. But that is the only fastest route to it!

    In the factory, we saw many chess piece miniatures, guard miniatures and also cute miniatures of angels in cupboards. Chess piece miniatures were in the form of people(except the knights), all dressed up for a war. It was all simply wonderful to see.

    We asked the staff about the toy making activity. But instead, they said that they will make the sculpture and I can only paint it. After I heard this, I was like WHAT!!! I was surprised, because I thought I could make the sculpture and also paint it all by myself. Without any choice, I decided to view the demonstration. While they were doing the demonstration, I understood why I can’t do it. It was because the process of making it was very dangerous because the metal was very, very hot!!!

    HOW TO MAKE A TOY SCULPTURE!

    MATERIALS: Mold, Boiled Solder Metal, Spoon, Boiler, Paint and a ribbon(any colour).

    STEPS:

    1. Boil some solder metal in the boiler for at least 5 minutes.
    2. Next, take the mold of anything you want (I chose a mom rabbit holding her baby rabbit).
    3. Then, take a spoon, take some boiled solder metal and pour it inside the mold for about 2 minutes.
    4. After 2 minutes, open the mold cover and our sculpture is ready!!
    5. Next, we take the sculpture out of the mold, cut off the unnecessary parts and put them back to the boiler.
    6. Then, it’s painting time!!
      • When I went to sit on a chair, I saw many different metal paint colours. After I put a plastic apron on me, the staff told me to choose any colour for each part of the sculpture. While I was painting, I noticed that my Dad went to explore the other parts of the factory. After painting……TADA!!!!!!! IT’S READY!! Note:After painting each part of the sculpture, it’s best to dry it.Also, we have to have lots of patience and don’t be in a rush.The staff will come now and then to check how we are getting on.In the whole experience, I was very excited, so I didn’t have the patience to paint slowly.