lost or what?

Here is the entrance to the fragrant hills park, it has an entrance fee of about $3. In a communist country everything must have an entrance fee otherwise the people will over use it.

Inside the gate is the first of many temples. They were all great and the gardens and stone work were very high quality, sparkling clean. The photos will be ruined by the smog.

This is what China calls a hiking path. Everywhere was this quality of path, even paths where I saw no one for hours which I assume are never used. The majority of people take one of 2 cable cars up, but there were still a few people walking the main route to the top.

The title of todays post says many amenities. There were bins everywhere, countless public toilets, and no rubbish anywhere. I read a review that talked about wading through waist high piles of garbage, I saw nothing at all. Did I go to a different park?

A bit more path, despite being a very over engineered hiking experience, it was still very enjoyable. I was surprised it was as hard as it was, steep in places, long stair cases, people doubled over sweating gallons of hot water.

A view across to another peak. I walked all along the top to this peak in the distance. The park has a mini great wall all the way around it with razor wire on top to discourage locals from cheating on the entrance fee. I did read that some local un-harmonious citizens offer a ladder service for a discount rate of $1

Here we have the Chinese girl hiking outfit. Its about 30 degrees celsius today. That means you need a full long sleeve, long pants plastic shiny pink track suit. Useless little bag, furry toys attached to useless bag, multiple cell phones, useless crap hanging off the cell phone, inappropriate shoes.
They are also both wearing headbands with plastic flowers glued onto them which I saw an old lady selling by the entrance. You might be wondering why there are no headphones to complete the ensemble, dont worry, one of them is streaming Korean pop music on her phones loudspeaker.

Here is the 'view', squint and you might be able to see the cable car.

Have a bit more view, featuring blossoms.

It only took about an hour to reach the summit snack bar temple, but I enjoyed it a lot. The summit area wasnt even crowded today, probably because most people would only bother spending the money for the cable car on a clearer day.

Summit view.

View of angry psychopath.

Here we have the summit rock marker, and a large citizen monitoring camera tower to make sure everyone behaves in a harmonious manner. Swearing will get you 3 points on your license, littering 5, 20 points and you cant fly anymore, 50 points and you cant buy train tickets. Chinese facial recognition artificial intelligence technology is next level. There was a news story the other day about a camera locating a wanted man in a stadium with 30,000 people, they were not looking for him there specifically, its just that the cameras are scanning everyone, all the time.

The view over the back of the mountain. There seemed to be paths and temples and pagodas everywhere the eye could kind of see if you squinted and invented things in the distance.

Incense Bumer, sea ievei, enshrouding the perk. I think enshrouding the perk is my favorite.

I keep mentioning snack bars inside temples. here is the inside of the summit temple. I think this is great, Japan should do this! Instead they mount neon lit vending machines to the side of their temples.

More attempted view of cable car.

Beijing, and a listening monitoring station. These dishes were everywhere!

Now we get to the surprise brand new awesome temple. It really was brand spanking new, not even on the map. It was also awesome.

It was also 'free' as in, included in the park entry price, with a giant curving stair case to the top. I was excited.

Some of the view from the top, this was all well hidden because it is built on an extreme slope, I had no idea it was here until I stumbled onto the top of it. It is impossible to photograph the full compound from the top or the bottom due to how steep it is.

One last temple shot, or so I thought.

Here are some local thugs forced to do community service gardening.

On my way in, it cost money to go into this temple. But I must have descended down a path that sent me into the back of it without knowing for free. Nice trees, nice bridge.

The street back to the super slow tram was also quite nice, lots of little shops and cafes. It will look a lot nicer once the leaves return to the trees properly.

Back in town now, and if you live in a big Australian city and go to where the Chinese people live, you will have seen these karaoke booths. Here is an entire store filled with them. I paid my money and sung the milkshake song by kellis, not too many words to remember.

And here is my very late lunch, Sandwich and salad. It was very good, the balsamic dipping sauce thing was excellent.