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Shawn's Asia Adventures! TRs From SE Asia, China & Japan

01/22 - Olympics Photo TR Now COMPLETE - ALL 3 PARTS -pg.15
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Archived Photo Trip Reports of Theme Parks, Roller Coasters, and Donkeys!
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Shanghai & Jin Jiang "Action Park"

Postby packfanlv » Sat Nov 15, 2008 12:40 am

Ok in an effort to finish this thread before I grow old, today I bring you the "lovely" city of Shanghai and Jin Jiang Action Park, which is, for now, the largest amusement park in the city. Of course with Happy Valley under construction and Disneyland rumored, this park could face steep competition in the coming years.

With this in mind, they have added some top notch attractions including Joyland. It is a boat journey through several scenes with children from all over the world singing the same song. Just wait until you see the pictures, because I don't want to ruin this marvelous attraction for you. I think Disney Imagineers might be taking a close look at Joyland for future guidance. Anyway, the TR will start with a few images from around Shanghai and then go into the park.

If you enjoy these trip reports please feel free to comment. I love to hear what everyone thinks. Thanks in advance!
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Since we were able to get tickets for dirt cheap, we flew from Wuhan in Central China in lieu of taking the train. Not only did this save us 12 hours, but we got to see our plane's shadow!
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The real reason I was excited to fly into Shanghai was the opportunity to ride in the world's first Maglev train from the airport to the city!
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During peak times the maglev runs at around 431km/h (268mph), but we were just off peak so it only ran at 301 km/h (190mph). =(
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The train is sleek and sexy.
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Before heading to the park, we can explore Shanghai a bit.
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This is a bit of the old city.
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And this area along the waterfront is known at The Bund.
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Across the water lies to Oriental Pearl Tower. (Yes it contains a credit and no we didn't ride it!)
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Instead of Olympic countdown clocks like in the rest of China, Shanghai has decided to put clocks around town to countdown until the start of the 2010 World Expo in the city.
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This is the Expo's mascot. To me he looks like a Tooth.
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Ok enough with Shanghai, its time to visit Jin Jiang Action Park.
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Emphasis on the ACTION!
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In true Big Mike style I bring you a park map.
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Giraffes and the Eiffel Tower. Score!
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Looking back towards the entrance you can see that this park sits right beside a busy freeway.
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Part of the park is made up of cheesy carnival style attractions.
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And it wouldn't be a great park without a ghetto monorail.
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Around the entrance things didn't look all to nice.
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But then the decor began to improve! =)
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Pretty soon we began to get hungry. For some reason they only had one thing for lunch.
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Ok by now we were ready to ride a coaster so we passed the cleverly named "Flume Ride".
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To go to the shuttle loop name Roller Coaster.
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A view of the layout.
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After watching the train fly through the station
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It was soon going to be our turn to ride.
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No launch here. It lifts you up one side and then drops you back through.
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Yah that's how we roll!
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Luckily we survived so I could barf in my mouth at the sight of the next coaster.
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Yes, you guessed it! Yet another cloned Golden Horse crappy spinning mouse!
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A good view of the park from the top.
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After checking out a few more rides we started to head to the third and final coaster in the park.
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But this didn't look like a good sign. Is this what they do when white people ride?
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Actually the Karst Cave Coaster is an indoor powered coaster.
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With dinosaurs!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Next up we decided to go on the big wheel for some aerial views.
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Here is a nice overview of most of the park. (The weather wasn't great and the smog doesn't help either!)
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Endless rows of housing blocks.
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Back to the park now and what do we see. What is that MASSIVE building wrapping around the pukey coaster?
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It turns out to be something called Joyland.
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Something about this feels familiar. We better go in to investigate.
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Part of the queue.
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Hey this loading room looks a little familiar. *cough* Tokyo Disney *cough*
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Oh well it must be my imagination lets go through the ride.
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What a clever idea, singing children!
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Ok, I'll keep quiet now and let you continue on with your tour.
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Hey look I found some old friends.
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And Finally, The Bride's of Chucky Choir!
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With that done there wasn't much else to do.
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Other than take a quick ride on the crappy Chinese knock off Disk-O
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and another go around on the shuttle loop.
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Finally its time for the long subway ride back to the hotel.
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Oh no the sleeping giant awoke!
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BTW here is a pic of the entry room of It's A Small World at Tokyo Disneyland as a comparison. I hope you enjoyed!
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Postby OldJJman » Sat Nov 15, 2008 6:36 am

Of all of the rides they could possibly rip-off... IASW????

Damn!! Shawn, was the song just as annoying as the "real" thing??


Thanks for the Maglev pics! As always, loving your coverage!!


JJ
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Postby Olsor » Sat Nov 15, 2008 8:30 am

Great stuff, Shawn! How was that Meisho/Senyo shuttle loop? Those rides seem like a grape flavored fruit chew of Schwarzkopf shuttles, Arrow shuttles, and a Vekoma boomerang.
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Postby packfanlv » Mon Nov 17, 2008 1:08 am

Olsor wrote:Great stuff, Shawn! How was that Meisho/Senyo shuttle loop? Those rides seem like a grape flavored fruit chew of Schwarzkopf shuttles, Arrow shuttles, and a Vekoma boomerang.


It was great. Although it has the same layout as the one at Beijing Shijingshan, this one was a lot better. (And not a ripoff!) It was pretty forceful, but not painful in the least. I still think I like Schwarzkopf shuttles the best though!

Thanks for the comments. Keep 'em coming!
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Olympic Trip Report - Part 1

Postby packfanlv » Mon Jan 12, 2009 8:12 pm

Since I promised to provide a trip report from the Olympics, I figure that it is time to follow through. With other people posting some pictures from their summer trips, I guess it isn't to late for this.

We spent a total of 10 days in Beijing during the Olympics and attended seven events during that time. I will break this update down into two or three parts since we did cover a lot while we were there. I hope you enjoy!

Part 1 - This part will focus on us arriving back in China from Mongolia, the opening ceremony party we attended at a Beijing park and our first event attended, archery!
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You can't cross from Mongolia to China by foot, so it is necessary to buy a bus ticket for the short hop across the border.
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The most colorful border on earth. (Actually we were detained and searched for 30 minutes before being let into China. They even questioned Shawn Reece about whether we were really his parents. They also turned on my computer and searched it for a while to make sure I didn't have any banned materials. SCARY!)
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The border town on the Chinese side is Erlian. It is nice enough, but we were anxious to get on the bus for our twelve hour ride to Beijing.
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Our bus was an overnight sleeper bus. This configuration works good for shorter people, but for me, not so much!
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Since we had already been in Beijing to pick up all of the cultural credits, on our first day we decided to head to Tienanmen Square to see how crazy the olympic crowds had become.
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They had several nice displays in the square.
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Security was never more than a step away.
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How many soldiers can you spot in this picture?
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This is where former chairman Mao, who some say killed more people than Hitler is shown off every day for tourists.
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We encountered these clocks all around China in the lead up to the Olympics.
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As the Olympics got closer, these volunteer booths were set up to help confused tourists. One would be lucky to find an Engrish speaker among them. =)
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They literally had displays everywhere in the city.
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There is something wrong here. I just can't place it.
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This attractive street housed our hotel.
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This is Wangfunjing Street. It is home to the famous night market that sells all of those tasty insects and starfish!
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It is also home to a food court in the basement of one of the buildings that has the BEST FOOD EVER! (We almost never saw any westerners down there, despite that fact that there were hundreds above on street level!)
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One is never far from people while walking the streets of Beijing.
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Finally the day of the opening ceremony has arrived.
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Tonight the Olympics start in Greyjing!
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Are the weapons ready? CHECK!
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The atmosphere was electric on opening day. On our walk through one of Beijing's old neighborhoods we saw this...
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and a flag on every house.
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Before heading to the opening ceremony party, we practiced for when the American athletes came out.
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Off to the park we go.
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They had two screens set up and a kazillion people, no a bazillionkillion people showed up. (Ha Ha I made that up!)
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No your eyes aren't deceiving you. These are real live genuine 100% pure CHINESE PEOPLE! (I know, I couldn't believe it either.)
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Please don't eat us Chinese People. We love your country.
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Its time for the ceremony to start!
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This guy was just as shocked as we were that the Chinese had pulled off such an incredible show.
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Despite the scary images being shown on the screen.....
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We represented when the American athletes came out.
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Yay!
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Of course the crowd loudened as the Chinese athletes made their way out.
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There's a hidden surprise in this photo. Find it and you won't thank me later!
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Thanks ladies for keeping your pits to yourselves!
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The energy was truly electrifying and Shawn Reece enjoyed every moment of it!
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Another view of the crowds.
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This is just after they lit the torch.
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After the ceremony it was time to actually attend an event. We started our early morning on Day 2 of the festivities with this delicious bread/fried egg thingy that was delicious.
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Are you ready for the Olympic security hassle?
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We had to take a shuttle to the archery site. This was the line for the shuttle. This was only the second full day of competition and they were still figuring out some things.
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Add to it that Chinese people don't like to wait in lines and you had people constantly cutting. Luckily we gave ourselves plenty of time.
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Once at the venue we had to go through metal detectors.
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And then a ticket check.
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All of the signs and announcing was done in Mandarin, English and French.
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As was noted on tv, the crowds were light the first few days. Add to it that it was raining on and off and the archery venue was only about half full.
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This was my first live archery event. It was quite fun!
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The Japanese beat the Columbians.
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And there were plenty of people to cheer them on.
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After a while it started to rain, but they nicely provided us with rain ponchos for free!
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When the Chinese women came out, the crowd went bonkers.
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Or maybe they were just scared of her.
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The best women's archery team in the world is the South Korea team.
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They had an entire section of devoted fans.
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It was cool because we watched them set a world record!
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It ended up raining for most of the event. Since this was the only event we actually had tickets for, we weren't sure if we would get to see anything else.
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So we took our time leaving the venue, while making sure to soak up the atmosphere.
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Little did we know that we would get to see six more events in what would become one of the most exhausting stretch of days in our lives.
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More on that next time along with Water Polo, boxing and Shawn Reece's 8th birthday. I hope you enjoyed it so far!
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Postby COOOOLkid » Tue Jan 13, 2009 7:38 pm

Fantastic photos! I can't believe the Olympics was already like 5 months ago.
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Postby dino » Thu Jan 15, 2009 4:16 am

Cool update with great pictures (well, maybe not the pit picture).
Please don't eat us Chinese People. We love your country.

LOL, I'm going to start saying that now :lmao:
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Postby packfanlv » Fri Jan 16, 2009 5:14 pm

Olympics in Beijing, China - Part #2

Since archery was the only event that we had tickets for, our original plans were to leave Beijing shortly after that. Fortunately for us many of the tickets were not being used and we found that showing up outside of a venue and asking everyone if they had extra tickets usually enabled us to somehow get tickets for the event. We also discovered that as long as he would sit on our lap in the event of there being any empty seats, that Shawn Reece didn't need a ticket!

We were truly lucky in finding people to either give us tickets for free or sell them to us for near face value. For the seven events we attended, our total outlay for tickets was only $120! It was truly miraculous. Out of everything that I have done in my life, I have to say the attending the Olympics in China was probably my favorite.

Today I will focus on some more Olympic sights around Beijing, our visit to the water polo venue and some "boring" Olympic boxing. Shawn Reece was also lucky enough to celebrate his 8th birthday while we were at the Olympics. What a lucky punk he is!

As always keep the comments coming. I really enjoy hearing from everyone. Thanks for taking the time to read this!
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Pictures of Chinese athletes were found everywhere around the city.
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And even far away from the venues we could find a guard on every corner.
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Each sport had its own little drawing. These were used on the tickets, at the venues and on all of the signs.
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This is the entrance to the Olympic Village. It was fun to stand outside and see all of the athletes coming and going. The buildings in the background are the apartments for the athletes.
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All of the signs are in Mandarin, English and French.
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This is a bad picture, but you can see that that the balconies were covered in the flags of the countries occupying them.
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We visited the National Stadium site a few times, but this was the first time we actually got to see the flame.
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More floral displays.
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In between events we took some time to visit some of the lesser known sights in town. This is the Lama Temple (Yonghegong)
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Temples can be interesting places to visit. Of course when you visit a lot of them, then they all start to look the same!
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Our first attempt to get scalped tickets after the archery was at the Beach Volleyball venue. Unfortunately we were not successful, but Shawn Reece did get interviewed for Australian tv.
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Since the beach volleyball was held at Sun Park, we decided to ride the fake Tarzan coaster instead. (We had already visited this park previously and gotten all of the credits.)
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We also discovered this cool Coca Cola venue in which they had large screens set up to watch the competitions, a huge pin trading tent and Nintendo Wiis!
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On the next day we headed over to the Water Polo arena to try and score some tickets. Here is some of the military equipment nearby.
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Luckily after spending almost an hour looking and not finding anyone selling water polo tickets, we ran into a Dutch man who gave us two!
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Shawn Reece was excited.
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Before long we were inside and....
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Enjoying the sights!
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We even got to see the U.S. women play.
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The Americans were well represented.
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Towards the end of the U.S. match, the arena started to fill up for the final match between Russia and China.
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It was a ton of fun watching and cheering for China with the locals.
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We even decided to break down and sport a Chinese flag for the occasion.
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GOD I LOVE ZOOM LENSES!
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Uh oh. I think she spotted me taking pictures.
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We had a great time at the water polo match.
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Afterwards we ran into the U.S. men's basketball team at the mall.
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See what I mean! (Actually this was just a tall black guy who was not an athlete. The Chinese all assumed because he was tall and black that he played basketball and they swarmed him!)
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The next morning we woke up and celebrated Shawn Reece's 8th birthday with cake. We also wanted to try to get into boxing.
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Of course Shawn Reece had to call home via Skype first on our ghetto ten time taped together piece of s**t headphones.
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To get to the boxing arena we had to take a bus.
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The boxing tickets were by far the easiest for us to get.
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The way they score boxing in the Olympics sucks IMO.
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The only time I really enjoyed myself was when the Chinese boxer came out because the arena came to life with cheers.
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Oh yah and Jasmine loved the Mexican wave!
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After boxing Shawn Reece wanted to visit the water cube and National Stadium at night to see them all lit up.
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Next time I will try to finish up this TR with Cuba vs. U.S. baseball, beach volleyball (including bikini dancers), weightlifting and track cycling. I will also show you the Beijing Zoo and more pandas than you will know what to do with. Thanks!
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Olympics Trip Report Part 3 of 3

Postby packfanlv » Thu Jan 22, 2009 1:37 pm

The atmosphere in Beijing during the Olympics was amazing. For us it was a non stop combination of getting tickets, attending events and filling our extra time with sightseeing around Beijing.

In this final part I will show you pictures from our last four events attended at the Olympics as well as the world famous Beijing Zoo. One of the most amazing things we were able to experience was the Cuba vs. U.S. baseball game. We ended up getting free tickets from an American lady walking by outside and were sitting right next to one of the two Cuban cheering sections. All I can say is, Cubans can be loud and annoying, but we had a ton of fun.

The other three events covered in this report are Beach Volleyball, weightlifting and track cycling. Each venue and event had its good and bad parts, but we had a ton of fun at each. Of course, beach volleyball was probably my favorite event out of the seven that we attended.

Ok, time to start the report. Any comments you have will be appreciated. I hope you enjoy! :)
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Today we'll start off with the Beijing Zoo.
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The zoo is just outside the Second Ring Rd. (which defines the old city) and is quite spacious and green.
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They even had a few children's rides. (Hey, this TR had to earn its place on this board!)
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While the zoo had a good selection of animals that you might find just about everywhere....
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Including saggy camels.
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It was the Panda collections we were most interested in seeing.
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As you can see they have a lot of Pandas.
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The Beijing Zoo has the second largest collection of Pandas in the world, behind the Panda Observatory in Chengdu. The Pandas appear to be taken care of pretty well.
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The other cool thing about this zoo was the speed boat rides. We didn't have time to take one, but they looked pretty fun.
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Ok enough with the zoo. Its time to head out to the old ball field. Thank you kind Northern California yuppy woman who's son is on the men's U.S. water polo team for the tickets!
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It's time to head through the ticket gates.
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Insert mob of loud and crazy Cubans here.
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Someone gave us these cool American flags sticky things and we did our best to represent them.
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Just behind the baseball fields was the building that housed the basketball competitions. It was designed to look like wheat. (Oh those clever Chinese architects!)
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The whole game us Americans tried to out do the Cubans, but they are some f****en crazy people.
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Buy me some pig snout and noodles.
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I don't care if I ever get back.
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For its root root root for the commies.
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If they invade its a shame.
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For its one two three strikes your out at the old ball game! (The U.S. lost in the 11th inning because of a new rule that you start each extra inning after the 10th with runners on 1st and 2nd.)
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Ok on to weightlifting. Jasmine looks ready to go!!
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So we show up at the weightlifting venue and spend almost an hour trying to get tickets.
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Finally this Spanish Judo athlete shows up and gives Jasmine an extra ticket while she drools all over the floor. No, I wasn't jealous at all. Come on!
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A few minutes later we managed to get another ticket and we were finally on our way. Shawn Reece was pumped up!
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All I can say about weightlifting is that these dudes are strong.
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As the competition wore on, the men started getting heavier and before I knew it they were lifting over 600 lbs.
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Here is a final look at the venue.
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As the Olympics drew on the Chinese government began to crack down on scalpers and it became much more difficult to get tickets.
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I am going to skip Beach Volleyball for the moment and talk about our last event attended Track Cycling. This event was held in that wierd spaceship looking building in the background. For those on the TPR China Trip, you might have seen it since it sits right next to Beijing Shijingshan Amusement Park.
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We were only able to get one ticket, so Shawn Reece and I went alone. For some reason all of my other photos are no where to be found so this is it. We got to see two medal ceremonies and a world record so it was neat!
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Ok I'll finish off this TR with Beach Volleyball which was my favorite sport from the Olympics.
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The action was amazing.
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and while they cut to tv commercials we were entertained by these ladies.
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Oh and the Olympic mascots were there as well.
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"Dad stop taking zoomed it pictures of those women in bikinis so you can post them on TPR. It is a little embarassing!"
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Ok back to the action.
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This was really a lot of fun and we got to see the American men kick butt!
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"Shawn stop looking behind me and take the damn picture!"
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Seriously though, the atmosphere was fantastic!
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The food available at the concession stands, not so much!
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But we had the time of our lives! I hope you enjoyed this trip report from our time at the Olympics. I always enjoy hearing your comments!
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Postby sugart » Thu Jan 22, 2009 5:00 pm

That was awesome. I thought that the tickets to the venues would be a little harder to get than that or that they would cost an absine amount of money. Did you try to get into any swimming events and see Phelps, or was that worthless to try
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