A tiger's tale
Adults dressed in suits resembling a mouse, a duck or a goofy-looking dog are all well and good, but my young daughter prefers the real thing. Or so she declared after a trip to the White Tiger Safari and Night Zoo in Panyu, near the mouth of the Pearl River in Guangdong.
While seven-year-olds tend to live in the present, this one's declaration ought to be taken seriously. She has been to the Tokyo and Los Angeles Disneylands, and decided she would rather enjoy her eighth birthday party with friends at the wildlife entertainment complex across the border than at Hong Kong Disneyland.
She heard no argument from her father. Disney does a great job, but can it offer a child the chance to commune with nature and learn the importance of conservation, while also having a rip-roaring time at the circus?
The Da Shi area of Panyu is a bit more difficult to get to than Penny's Bay, of course. You need passports, visas and patience, and the trip lasts about two-and-a-half hours. But it's worth it to see your child's face light up at the sight of a stuffed six-metre crocodile mounted on the wall of the lobby at the Chimelong Hotel.
The five-star property sits opposite the night zoo and, because it is already late afternoon when we arrive, we decide to enjoy its facilities until dinner. This involves a dip in the pool, a peek at the bowling alley, a stop at the cinema to check film schedules, then a tour of the restaurants. If I had been on my own I would have spent time at the golf driving range. But never mind.
First is the Crocodile Lounge, where tea and snacks are served during the day under the reproachful gaze of the stuffed crocs. Then it is on to the White Tiger western restaurant, built around a glass enclosure housing two of the zoo's finest specimens. It is a thrill to be putting fork to mouth with the male tiger a few feet away, staring at us with piercing blue eyes, intently licking its lips. The Chinese restaurant next door may have dim sum to kill for, but there is no way I am going to get my young companion to leave her new playmates.
The highlight of the trip comes about an hour later as we catch a shuttle bus across to the night z oo's Big Top for the Cirque du Chimelong. It is an enthralling experience, involving mostly Russian and Chinese performers. They include trapeze artists, jugglers, high-wire flyers, dancing hippos, contortionists, elephants doing handstands, monkeys riding bicycles and clowns fooling around on stilts. Lasers and disco music keep the 3,000-strong crowd pumped for 90 minutes, the climax of which comes when a flock of pelicans swoop in over our heads.
As we file out, my daughter's energy levels expectedly crash. It is about 9.30pm and she demands to go back to the hotel. But as soon as we climb aboard the choo-choo train, she makes a miraculous recovery and we summon the will to see the water-skiing show. A series of oohs and aahs later, thanks to people zooming off ramps and somersaulting across the wake of a speedboat, we finally decide to call it a day.
We had not reckoned on our cunning guide, who ensures that our trip back to the hotel winds through the self-drive area of the zoo. And so we sneak our way past unsuspecting lions, rhinos, buffaloes and all manner of wildlife that might ordinarily have eaten us had there not been a deep ditch (invisible to the uninitiated) separating us from their grassy enclosures.
They have an amazing array of animals in Panyu: more than 400 species. The quality of their care seems as good as my family witnessed at Singapore's Night Safari - the obvious model for this complex.
The next day, we see even more of them at the day-time safari park, home to the stars of the show: the white tigers. There are believed to be fewer than 300 in captivity and a third of those were born here. Unfortunately for my sidekick, the latest additions are still too young to be brought out for a public feeding.
We cruise around the caged area of the park before entering the drive-through section. There we follow a
road that has been conveniently provided with animals sitting happily nearby at regular 10-metre intervals, close enough to touch if we are foolish enough to try. They are not the finger-eating kind, but we are not going to take chances with giraffes or camels.
You could spend most of a day in the park with an English-speaking guide. We are pressed for time, so we zip through the rest of the tour and head for the crocodile park, a 15-minute drive from the hotel. The croc-wrestling show is a bit of a ham, as one might expect, but the experience of watching crocodiles leap from the water and snatch a chicken carcass from the end of a bamboo fishing pole is a quieting experience.
The trip is capped by a lunch that I could not have imagined possible in Guangdong. The Four Seas restaurant, another short drive away, seats 1,000 on its ground floor and offers more than 500 dishes in a buffet for just 98 yuan a head. The theme is 'Southeast Asian' and the waitresses wear sarongs. More than 300 old fishing boats were scrapped to find enough wooden beams for the restaurant's interior design. It is an authentic, child-centric, fun place to eat.
And there is no shark's fin on the menu.
