Met Slug there, and we walked around admiring the crops planted there and the hordes of people fishing. The main attraction is the prawn fishing and longkang fishing (for kids only: $10 to catch a tank of guppies, mollies and other cute little fishes). The prawn fishing is a damn cruel business: hungry anglers can barbeque the prawns caught on the spot. You can see those poor prawns still struggling and moving their pincers, despite having a wooden skewer driven through them and being laid on a grill whose flames were slowly burning them orange. I could not bear that sight and hurriedly walked away.
Anglers waiting for the prawns to nibble at their bait: bloody cockle flesh
The longkang fishing is no better. It is too idealized to think it is just a bunch of innocent children fishing around in a pond for little guppies using nets. In reality, they are unknowingly killing those fishes! I shuddered when I saw flattened guppy carcasses on the stony path surrounding the pond. There were even some dried ones that were soon going to be fossilized into the path. Some senseless kids caught tanks so full of those fishes that there was hardly any space for them to swim and some of them were probably hyperventilating. Don't their parents ever teach them about the negative impacts of overcrowding? And speaking of parents, we came across this father who was blatantly frolicking in the pond and catching the fishes, despite the explicit sign stating that the longkang fishing was meant for kids only. He was emptying the pond of fishes much faster than all the kids there combined.
Kids engrossed in fishing for guppies and mollies at the longkang fishing pond
Shameless Dad (this one in white)
I absolutely abhorred the sight of these people mercilessly treating the fishes and prawns, so Slug and I went to explore other parts of the park.
Bottle Tree shaped like a bottle (hence the name of the park)
Riding on a swan and exploring the pond costs $9 for 15 minutes!
Slug and I
Relaxing by the big pond
We got hungry and decided to dine at the restaurant there. Ordered a few dishes (crispy duck (for the first time in our lives, we finally got a taste of what FRIED duck is like), cereal prawns, fish maw soup and fried calamari) and bill amounted to nearly $90. Not cheap.
To me, the attraction for this is the golden buttery cereal flakes, not the prawns!
Topped off dinner with almond longan and iced cheng tng
Post-dinner gratification
After dinner, we walked around the ponds (Shameless Dad was still hanging around in the longkang fishing pond), still crowded with the anglers. Slug, also a prawning enthusiast, finally could not stand it anymore and even though he knew I had banned fishing in any forms (except in computer games) from our lives, he still pestered me to let him try prawning for one hour. I relented only when he promised he would bring the catch home and rear them instead of eat them. He then rented the equipment, and was charged $14 for an hour.
We settled at a small pond away from the crowded main pond, and Slug started fishing. I hardly have any patience for such things, and started to fidget and whine about the midsummer heat after a while.
After an hour, he caught 2 male prawns and 3 females ones, and out of these 3, 2 were pregnant! I was delighted, and we rushed home and settled them down in a tank. As I gazed at the packs of glossy orange roe slotted between the legs of the 2 mother prawns, I was already fantasizing about nursing a massive colony of prawns.
Sadly, the next day, all of them died, probably due to lack of oxygen (we did not have an air pump). While I was ridden with guilt, Slug seemed suspiciously gleeful when he suggested that those 5 prawns would make tasty additions to his instant noodles.
No more prawning for us ever!
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