Weekend Getaway: Ocean Spring Resort in Zhuhai, China

We're just back from an unforgettable weekend getaway to celebrate J's birthday. We were planning on going last weekend but by the time we wanted to book the hotel, it was fully booked! A 1000-room hotel fully booked on a regular weekend?! Yes, nothing unusual in China. 

We've been to the Ocean Spring Resort in Zhuhai, famous for its hot springs. Zhuhai is the city in mainland China bordering Macau, and to go from Hong Kong you only need to take a 70 minutes-long ferry ride. The resort had three hotels: an inn, a 4 star hotel, and a 5 star hotel {ours!}. I loved our huge business room with sea view. The resort is famous for its hot springs but it also has a very decent amusement park! 

We spent our Saturday afternoon in the hot springs and both of us LOVED it. They are really worth a visit. My first {and until this trip, only} experience with hot springs was in South Korea in January 2011, where the outside temperature was below zero, so you can imagine the adventure for a first time at the hot springs... This time in Zhuhai has been completely different. The weather here was more like a sunny autumn day than a winter one, with pleasant temperatures above 20 degrees Celcius. I never imagined the hot springs at Ocean Spring Resort would be as amazing as they actually are. I was very positively surprised by many things. First, the hot springs were not crowded as I had feared {this is China after all!}. Second, there were many many different spaces to explore: Turkish style, European, Chinese, etc. And third and my favorite: there was an area with about 20 pools in which each of them had a different herb or substance inside {chrysanthemum, mint, tangerine peel, ginseng, green tea, thousand Chinese herbs, milk, coffee, red wine, etc.}, with a description explaining what that herb or substance was good for and the benefits it had on your body. I guess the total number of pools was around a hundred, most of them outdoors but some indoors as well. I obviously couldn't bring my Canon camera inside, but here is a pic I snapped with my iPhone!

After the hot springs both J and I agreed our bodys felt great and our skin even softer than usual! That's saying a lot, because J and I are naturally soft :D After the hot springs we watched a nice 80 minute acrobatic show called "Memory of the Sea", performed by Russian and Chinese actors.

Today we took some pictures around the resort and then spent a while in the amusement park, where unfortunately most of the amusement rides were closed :(

Have you ever been to hot springs? Isn't it just awesome? :)