Besides, though we can honestly say we've known of Jelly Fishes from pictures and videos, we are aonce again awed by seeing the real deal. Now, I'd have to mention that the only reason we see Jelly Fishes - which would otherwise be colorless, was becasue they have the tendency to reflect light - in this case, colored lights, so it can be seen with the bare eye. As you can see in this picture, the jelly fishes are colored green.
This is not their real color, of course... Rather, it is the result of a colored light from above, and, of course, the Jelly Fishes' ability to capture and seemingly keep any reflection. Once this is done, the Jelly Fishes then became visible.
In this regard, when we entered one room, it was pitch black with the only lights coming form the aquariums keeping the jelly fishes. This gave an almost surreal feel... more so since these glass containers were cylindrical (shades of Aliens came to mind) making it feel like an almost alien environment. The colors were also changing adding to the dynamics of the jelly fish movements. Other rooms had larger species of the Jellies - and these were placed in your usual aquarium types.
Once again we were requested not to use flash photography, thus it was a challenge to get pictures - yet those we took turned out to be very beautiful... as you can no doubt see.
I had to think just how such wonderful looking creatures can sometimes cause a lot of grief to beach bathers, after all, I have heard and seen the effects of a jelly fish sting to a person's skin - and yet... I had to remind myself as well, weren't these attacks mroe of a defensive act? I also remember the one time I saw Jelly Fishes, washed up on the beach's shore - there were a couple of them, and they were all rather large (considering their circumference - as spread out in the beach, was about a foot and a half. This of course happened when I was still a teen, vacationing wiht my cousins in Matabungkay. Bakc then these were obviosuly dead Jelly Fishes. What caused them to stray to the beach's shore? I don't know. It did get the interest of bathing in the beach out of my system, though. No way did I want these large creatures to get ahold of me back then.
Still, just like the sharks that we saw earlier - these Jelly Fishes were nice to look at, but I would not still go near them in open water.
Having seen this, we wanted to see if we could still get back and catch a glimpse of the pandas, so it was off we went... back through the cable cars, as the rains got strong once again. Unfortunately, once we reached the panda's place, all we saw were two sleeping pandas. Actually, all we could see were their back and butts. So scratch that... besides, the park was closing already, and this afforded us another challenge (or problem) since the park did not seem to have an abundance of cabs waiting - in fact there was a long line of commuters waiting for cabs to arrive. We were not too keen on waiting under the rain, so we asked one park officer what possible alternatives we could avail of... he suggested we take a particular bus that would bring us to a stop near our hotel's general vicinity. We waited at the bus stop, missed the first bus - as we were trying to decipher what the scheduels (mostly in chinese) were trying to tell us. We rode the second bus, and I was straining to see familiar billboards or signs to guarantee that we were going the right way (we seeemed to be... at least, for the most part that I could remember).
We went down the specified bus station, walked a bit until I spotted some familar landmarks. From there, I tried to position the possible location of our hotel, and eventually found it. Thank God for my sense of direction and 'ranger' skills.
We reached the hotel, but not before stopping in a 7-11 type store to get us some rammen soup, and milk for the kids - after all, we were wet and tired... needing a hot shower and hot soup. Before sleeping I watched the night lights from both sides of the Victoria Harbor, hoping ot get a glimpse of what Menchu said would be a lighting spectacle that would happen every 8 P.M. but found no such display - perhaps it was not done, due to the strong rains. Ah well...As we prepared to sleep, I was contemplating the fact that we would be going home tommorow. Mcuh as I enjoyed Hong Kong, I was, at times, wondering how our dog, Bubbles was doing. I was also wondering what we would be doing next - after all, with this evening's rains, the famed night market was not an option - and even if it was, we (specially the kids) were tired to go through with it.
