The woman spoke English fairly well and told me where she lived and said that she would even feed Michael lunch when he was hungry. They seemed nice, so I said he could go. Then she told her daughter, who only looked about two, which resulted in a crying fit. I decided it probably wouldn't be the best idea for Michael to go after all (he might have even invited himself, I don't know), so I told him that we would go for a walk to the playground instead and then get lunch. He runs back to our place and starts crying, "I want go my friends house. You make me sad."
After he calmed down, we headed out. We picked up some fruit, beef noodles and dumplings on the way back for lunch. Yummy.
As I was doing my Saturday cleaning, Michael decided to watch a DVD on our laptop in the bedroom and fell asleep. I had to wake him up two hours later. I knew he needed to get out or he wouldn't go to sleep until after ten, so I quickly went online and found an indoor playground called "Tom Dragon's Castle." As soon as Michael saw the pictures on the website, he started dancing around saying, "I want to go there, now, please." The website was only in Chinese, but I had directions from an English playgroup that had gone there, so I was only looking for the opening hours, as many kids places close at five or six on weekends. I saw two lines that I figured were opening hours. One said 0930 - 1900 and the other said 0900 - 2000. I assumed the longer hours were the weekend hours. By this time, it was a little before five, so I calculated that if we arrived there by six, we would have a solid two hours of playing, and then by the time we got home, he would be ready for bed.
It was looking like rain, so we grabbed our umbrella and left. I was planning on making Michael go to the bathroom at the MRT station, as I knew I probably wouldn't want to use the bathroom at the playground, but I forgot. Michael got really excited as soon as he saw the entrance. The playground was in the basement. I put our umbrella in the umbrella stand, making a mental note not to forget it (can you see where this is going?) and went downstairs. Neither of the two ladies spoke a word of English. The lady helping me kept on pointing at these four different cards. I did not want a multiple pass. I didn't expect to ever go back. So I just kept on shaking me head and holding up one finger. Finally, she just gave up and said "500." The playgroup said that they got tickets for 250NT, so I knew it would be more than that for admission. I was expecting around 300NT. If I had known it would be 500NT ($16.09 Cdn at todays exchange rate), I would definitely NOT have gone. Too late now. I was just hoping that I was right about the opening hours.
Michael ran right in. After he had played for a few minutes, I took him over to the other section where the bathrooms were. As soon as we rounded the corner, the stench hit us. As we had to leave our shoes at the door, they provided slippers for the bathroom. Good thing, because it was disgusting. I refused to even go in. I made Michael put on slippers and go in a urinal where I could see him from the door. He already had his pants down when some air guns started going off. They have a section where there are about ten different air pressure guns that shoot out little foam balls. And this section is right across from the bathrooms. The loud noise really scared Michael and he kept on trying to run back to me. I kept on trying to reassure him that it was all right, that nothing was going to hurt him, and that yes, he did need to go pee. He finally went and then I noticed that the very bottoms of his pants were all wet, hopefully with just water, but around a little boys urinal, highly unlikely. Yuck, yuck, yuck. If I hadn't paid so much, I would have left right then. However, I didn't know how to say "I demand my money back because I won't let my child play in this cesspool" in Chinese and I knew Michael would justifiably throw a major tantrum.
So, I made another mental note to wash him extra well during bath time which I guess pushed out my first mental note to remember my umbrella, because I forgot it there. At least Michael had fun exploring everything. They had these cool rollers that Michael really enjoyed. You can't really tell from the picture, but they're spaced about a foot and a half apart and the child rolls from one end to the other on their stomach.
The other thing that really annoyed me was that they had a table set up with these salespeople trying to sell us these expensive educational toys, guaranteed to double your child's IQ! They knew they had all these parents trapped and were taking full advantage. I refused to listen to them.
At 6:45, there was a loud intercom announcement and 75% of the kids ran for the exit. Guess what time it closed? Since I had paid so much, I was determined to be the last to leave, so I warned Michael that we would have to leave soon, but let him continue playing. Luckily, I was wrong. It did close at eight. And we were not the last to leave.
Near the end, Michael started playing with another little boy around his own age, and that boy's older brother, who enjoyed practicing his limited English on Michael. Michael had tonnes of fun until they started playing monsters, which sent Michael crying to me. I reminded him that if someone does something he doesn't like, to just put out his hand and stay "Stop!" So, he went off and tried it, and guess what? It worked. Mommies are geniuses.
Michael was a little sweaty, but not too bad by the end, as he was just in his undershirt. The other kids there in their three layers were soaked. I don't know why the parents here always overdress their kids. As we were leaving, a lady ran up to me and showed me the hair dryer by the exit, in case I wanted to use it. I laughed and ran out, vowing never to return.
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