Manila Ocean Park: Feel the sea life
The first ever trip outside of a city or state excites people, and for me, this was my first time travelling international. Because of this I was even more excited and full of energy.
My journey was to the land of the Islands, the Philippines.
The official name of the Philippines is the Republic of the Philippines. This country consists of 7641 Islands. So, if a person plans to visit one island in a day, it will take him more than 20 years(7641/365= ~20.9) to cover all of the islands.
Top Three Reasons to Visit:
- People who love the sea and beaches have thousands of islands to choose from, both small and big.
- The capital, Manila, is famous for its nightlife with party-goers. It's a haven for party people.
- This country has many marine mammal parks. So, people interested in sea creatures can carefully observe the plentiful sea life.
I landed in Manila which is the capital of the Philippines. On the way to my guest house, I saw two different types of economies coinciding in this one city. On the one side, the road was full of slums - small and old houses, while on the other hand, I could see buildings that touched the sky. I stayed in Makati city, which falls under metro Manila itself, and is known as the financial center of the Philippines. Makati is also an important cultural and entertainment hub in metro Manila.
My Visit to the Ocean Park:
While settling into the city, I heard about the nearby Oceanarium. An oceanarium is a marine or large-scale aquarium where one can experience the sea life. Luckily, I found it nearby. The name of that oceanarium was Manila Ocean Park, which was about an hour drive from Makati. I toured here along with a few of my friends.
After reaching our destination, we saw the list of the events the ocean park had on offer. It would have been a tough task to cover all the activities of that were on offer, so we highlighted the few that we deemed important, and entered. The Ocean Park reception gave us cute, scannable arm-bands, which were also entry passes to various events we chose to attend.
The ocean park maintained a few small pond-like structures to house the fish, which stayed mostly near to the water surface. These colorful fish were so beautiful that it seemed like a marine fashion-show was running in before our eys. The ponds had many rocks of various sizes in order to recreate the natural sea environment.
The next pond-like structure had tiny fish with tiny stones placed to recreate the percfect setting.
Then we walked towards the main oceanarium, which was huge. We saw the starfish, which were perfectly star-shaped. The color of these fish were similar to the stones, which give them a natural defense mechanism against predators. A starfish seems like a lazy creature. Most of their time is spent lying on rocks. We waited for a while, but very few of them showed any movement, and we moved to the next aquarium..
...where we saw Black Ghost fish. These fish were black with their eyes glowing continously. This area was also kept at a very low light, so that visitors could observe the glowing eyes of these interesting specimen.
One part of the oceanarium was packed with beautiful fishes in different colors. Along with the versatile colors of the fish, this part also had sea plants, stones, and rocks in different colors and shades.
Then we moved to another part of the oceanarium, where some very large fish were kept. As opposed to their size, these fish seemed to be the most fearful of predators, therefore they often choose to stay at great depths.
The next are was the jellyfish habitat. There was an entire auditorium dedicated to showcasing the life of jellyfish. It seemed like the Jellyfish were emitting different colors, and after watching for a time, my eyes adjusted to the darkened room, and I could make out the many different hues that they produced.
After four or five hours of witnessing a large variety of sea creatures, we thought about resting. And, what could be better than having a Fish Spa* therapy in an ocean park?
Fish spa therapy is a pedicure service where a large number of a species of fish - Doctor Fish - eat the dead skin cells from human feet. There was a pond filled with thousands of doctor fish. We folded our pants from the bottom up, and put our feet in the water. Hundred of small fish swam to our feet and started nibbling at them. We all felt a tingling sensation. Everyone was laughing, and most of us could not resist taking our feet out of the water for a few seconds, and then putting them back in the pond again.
Just in front of this fish spa center we found an ice-cream parlor, which served us lovely, tiny ice-cream cones with assorted flavors; we cheered with these small cones.
In the evening we attended a sea lion show, which happened to be the most interesting and the funniest event of the day. Two sea lions showed their audience lots of entertaining activities including walking like a human and imitating the trainers. The coordination between the trainers and the sea lions was extraordinary.
As this ocean park is built on a seashore, it has a beautiful sunset view. We witnessed this beautiful sunset, sat there for some time and then went back to our guest house, It was a day amazingly spent.
Dont forget to bring your gopro camera. :)
Stunning!
Enjoy your tour
What is striking is that the entrance is the same for the hotel H2O and a kind of mall. The place is pleasant and you will see aquariums with very big fish. I imagine we are all thinking about the robustness of the windows so the volume of water is huge! It is a must to visit. The tour ends with an exit to all sorts of pretty shops and restaurants. It's well thought out. We took the opportunity to visit some rooms of the hotel H2O because they have rooms with very aquariums on a wall. For us, it was new, we had even hesitated to sleep ... To discover.
Indeed a great place to visit! :)
Flow me
I love the SPA concept being pampered but "Fish Spa" is freaking me out. All I can think off is the movie piranhas. I know its not the same but .... blame it on the movie.
On a serious note its a really interesting presentation of the Philippines as a holiday spot. Its not one I had previously heard off or a view usually presented to the rest of the world. Well done. Great pictures too.
hahaha!!!
Unlike Piranha, these fish does both gives fun & kills :D
I can understand how exciting this trip was for you since it was first international trip. So many islands to choose from. This can actually be the toughest challenge lol wchich one to choose? I love this oceanarium, I recently traveled to Boston in US, there is a beautiful one as well. Your picture with starfish is amazing, I was always amazed by this kind of fish. Amazing colors and corals. It’s sad they are dying all over the world. I recently watched documentary “Chasing coral” I wanted to cry 😢. Beautiful colors with all these jellyfishes. Haha, this fish spa is great, I tried it before and it’s weird in the beginning, but then you get used to it. Sea lions are actually very smart. They love being taken a pictures of them.
I can tell, you had a great time on your trip.
Thanks @milano1113
The sea life is amazing. This is worth visiting someday
Wow. You are here in the Philippines! Enjoy your tour here. There are a lot of beautiful places you can visit here. Our beaches are beautiful :)
@saskia
Yeah!!
palawan island seems to be one of the most beautiful :)
True..Palawan is one of the best tourist spots :)
Wow this is so nice and beautiful i think i should visit too 😊
Love Your pictures.....Especailly the animated fish ...
"Manila Ocean Park" is a very nice place. multitude of fish and other marine creature to see. the park includes different entrances at more or less interesting prices. presence of an aviary with raptors and other universes to discover. in short, a beautiful marine park.
Agree!
Thanks @kouba01
Im totally inlove w your post !! SUPER NICE TRAVEL, I HOPE TO GO TO THAT PLACE SOME DAY...Meanwhile I'm very glad that you've been there :)
Greetings from Venezuela!
Great,
Wow, so much detail in the write-up, it is as though I am part of the tour as I got swallowed by the beautiful write-up. Seen the star fish change colour too, they use chromatophore to blend with their environment just like the octopus, and I will love to get tingled by the doctor fishes, sounds fun. Anyways you had a swell time. 😀
Enjoy this travel thanks for share.
Honestly, I am so afraid of the deep. there are so many unknown creatures and fish out there!
Hello @adsactly, seeing your ocean Park trip made me reminisce my first & was also the last time I experience Manila Ocean Park in my home country, Philippines 😀💕
It was so memorable as it was my first time to see those magical huge jellyfish & sea lions 😀💕
Enjoy your 1st PH travel & keep travelling!
Good content and an interesting read. Thank you for sharing.
Hola @adsactly
Que buena nota.
Sacando cuentas, creo que el resto de mi vida será en Filipinas.
Saludos y Gracias por el dossier.
Nice Travel
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nice pict, and have a nice travelling
Adventure is one hell of a thing I don't think twice before embarking on.. Nice one
nice pics!
Was there 2 years ago... and it really amazed me and felt like I was a little child mesmerized by the beauty of nature. I'll visit this place again sometime this year. :)
Thanks for this post as it reminded me of how good it feels being a kid again with the wonders of our water creatures!
Wonders of Water!!!
It sounds cool :)
wow, best photography (Adsactly)thanks
Beautiful & interesting place to visit.
Do you have plan meeting with Filipino steemians. @purepinay is a Cebu residence while @surppassinggoogle just around metro manila. And many others...
Thats beautiful man. I love the sea and I hope one day to travel to location such as this. You're lucky man.
wow this is excellent post ,I really like it .
I like the name mostly "Hotel H2O" and the way you deliver it. It seems really a enjoyable place. want to visit it in my life at least for once
very nice i like it
Lovely article, very interesting. The Philippines would be a great place to visit
Nice pics, Thanks for sharing.
I also want to travel internationally and I want to see the atmosphere in other countries
Great. Now just take some photography lecture so your $200+ posts won't look like shit. It would be a shame to miss those nice moments you will have on your travel!
Thank you for sharing with us your trip to the Philippines. I love to see different sea creatures. Hope you had a safe trip!
nice !
Lovely and lively post. I love adventure and exploration, it does make life exciting.
Lovely and lively post. I love adventure and exploration, it makes life Exciting.
Thank you for useful and interesting information! Be happy and travel!
The philipines is one stop in Asia thats still high on my list. Great photo's of the Oceanarium, yet I still prefer to see wildlife over captivated animals.
Good evening, a very good publication, I liked the photos are a bit colorful and flashy, in turn the way you wrote it I liked and teaches me to improve even more my post, but excellent work, I hope you read my humble Comment, I'm inside the platform, I do not blame you if you can not read my comment because apparently it says too much, but anyway thanks for the post and a greeting from Venezuela
Nice photo..
Vote n follow 😀