Safari Park

This morning, we visited Safari Park. Definitely an adventure. Our guide can't go everywhere with us since there are others in our group and everyone wants to do something different; so she arranged for a driver to take us there, wait for us and bring us back to the hotel. Easy enough, right? Wrong. He took us there but when we were ready to leave, he's nowhere to be found. We have no way to contact him or anyone else, and no one at the park spoke English. We were told it would be hard to find a cab there (which was why we hired the driver), so imagine Kevin, me and little Ava with her rice cookie standing in the parking lot. I'm near tears and beginning my first meltdown when a cab drives up. He doesn't speak a bit of English, so we show him our room key with the hotel name on it. He shows us the amount of money he wants, and we get in the cab. That dude could've taken us anywhere, but by the grace of God we made it back to the hotel.

Safari Park was such fun, though. We took a train ride throughout the place and saw all kinds of animals. Many of them came right up to the train. Ava giggled the whole time! If it weren't for the rain, we could've spent all day there.

There was a young couple sitting in front of us on the train. They spoke broken English, and told Kevin our daughter looks Chinese. Kevin told them she is. "Impossible", the man replied. We just smiled. Apparently, Ava wasn't properly bundled (Chinese parents dress their children in many, many layers). I can't tell you how many women have come up and scolded me (in Chinese and in English) for not dressing her properly. Seriously, Ava is fine. And she hates all those layers - she will take them off if I dress her so that people will leave us alone.

We are back at the hotel now - and I think it's a good idea to stay put for the rest of the day. Enjoy the pictures - the man walking the monkey and the smile on Ava's face made this fiasco of a day so worthwhile.