The day looked fairly bright, so it was time to navigate to a nearby mountain.
The one I selected had a world famous botanical garden, I know its world famous because google revealed that old people who do some sort of global botanical garden pilgrimage have it on their list of 10 in the world to visit.
I am not sure it is worth that effort, but I might be missing the significance of the species on offer.
What they do have is a significant formal bonsai garden, and separate areas for plums, cherries, roses, camelias etc.
They also have a massive indoor greenhouse, that is also split into multiple areas such as alpine, desert, tropical etc.
Thats probably more than enough text about gardens, time for stories from the subway/monorail.
All station platforms and the trains themselves have multiple tv screens, normally showing ads, interspersed with something from national geographic channel or funny home videos.
My favourite ad is about this little girl, who grows up with her head wrapped in bandages, unable to see.
Eventually due to the wonders of modern China, a hospital makes her better, and they unwrap the bandages and she can see!
Only then she looks out the window and sees how polluted the world has become, all she sees is chimneys spewing black smoke.
She immediately starts crying and re wraps her face in bandages.
Whilst we are on the topic of wrapping, my favourite funniest home video is also a kind of propoganda.
It features American children un wrapping their xmas presents and throwing a massive tantrum because they didnt get what they want.
Many resort to physical violence against their parents.
Now onto the photos!
Another day, another bus station. This one is in Nanping, a very nice place indeed as we shall see later.
I have now visited all the town centres of Chongqing.
My bus is a mid level bus, which means it costs 2 yuan, instead of 1 or 3. It seems fairly crapppy to me, a manual transmission required for the mountain, but an old style crash gear box. The driver crunches every gear change.
This made for very slow going, which was fine by me as its steep cliffs for most of the journey.
I never did see a pink skyscraper before.
And whilst I have seen gold ones, none as impressive as this twin tower gold monolith.
The entrance to the botanical gardens. It was on the far side of the south mountain (Nan Shan, which literally means south mountain). This means there were no views of the city, and I couldnt really capture any good photos from the bus window.
The park layout is confusing, theres basically no English signage, and the maps they have never really show which way you are facing or the whole park in one image.
As best I can tell, you start at the top, and walk downhill and then back up again to get out.
Inside the impressive greenhouse.
Which features fake waterfalls and cave systems made of concrete.
The indoor highlight for me was the cactus garden. You really have to watch your head in places, as not only will you walk into something, it will be very prickly.
Alternatively, you can climb over the prickly things to carve your name into these less prickly bushes.
Outside the greenhouse is the as expected highly maintained, quite formal Chinese garden.
The park is the go to place for people getting married. Subtracting for my usual exaggeration factor, there were at least 20 couples getting photos taken. Heres 3 in one shot competing for the best spot.
The entrance to the bonsai area.
I like bonsai, the road up the mountain had a number of nurseries specialising in bonsai.
There are also many nice water areas, all in all its a nice place to visit, clear fresh air, and lots of people enjoying themselves. Many people bring elaborate picnics with them and blaring radios in backpacks to accompany them on their peaceful walk with gangnam style.
Back in Nanping now, and the number of great food venues is unbelievable. I settled for a Taiwanese / Sichuan fusion place, which was amazing. First up was chilli and cucumber, my favourite side dish.
Followed by the spicy fusion noodle soup, which is Taiwanese beef noodle with added sichuan peppers and peanuts. 10 out of 10!
The Nanping area is 'finished' and seems to be for wealthier younger people to live in apartments directly above the extensive shopping, dining, cinema area. Its also on the monorail line that connects the airport with the high speed rail terminal.
Note to self, if I ever have to live in Chongqing, live in Nanping.
Second note to self, unintentional bad art.
The apartments are of high quality.
The shopping is underground, as are the nicer restaurants. This on the left is Wanda Plaza, which seems to go forever underground, I never got to the bottom of it.
Finally on the way back, you cross the mighty Yangtze river, whos scale is not properly illustrated in photographs.
Tonights walk to me to the very tip of the central part of Chongqing, at the confluence of the Jialing and Yangtze rivers.
I am fairly certain thats the first time I have every typed the word confluence.
This is a very interesting walk, you can get right down into the mud, where there are then floating gangways out to various boats. It is however a giant construction zone with new bridges, new tunnels and massive new buildings being constructed right at the tip.
Once you get around you end up walking along the highway out over the water, you can then pass back under this to get to the cliff face where there is a 14 storey faux ancient village thing which is mainly restaurants and tourist shops.
I know this sounds crap, but the construction of this is awesome. Its a maddening labyrinth of tourist traps, only there were almost no tourists. The only ones I saw, all 2 of them who are the only 2 I have seen since getting here were sitting at an Irish bar, drunk out of their minds yelling at people. When they saw me they invited me over for a fag and a lager. I declined.
Heading down to the docks is mostly construction site. Some places you have no footpath so you walk into oncoming cars, trucks etc.
One thing about Chongqing, no horns, no scooters. Both are banned at least in the central parts of the city. The same applies in the modern side of Shanghai. It makes walking about a lot easier when there isnt scooters coming at you on the footpath.
This has a flow on effect to cars, if they cant use horns and cant follow scooters to illegally go through red lights, they seem to obey the traffic laws.
Once you get past all that, you get to a square which is actually a circle, with many people flying kites.
There were even a couple of guys trying to sell crap to tourists here, wanna buy a tshirt? wanna buy a watch? First time thats happened to me on this trip.
Like I said you can get right down to the mud / water. Its a lot of steps and presumably the water sometimes comes up the steps. Theres anchor points and chains coming out of the wall way above where you can walk to.
I cant get enough of photos like this.
This is the faux tourist complex with the pirate ships etc. It actually goes below this photo too, the highway I am standing on is on giant pillars.
At the top of this picture you can see where the bridge will connect to. A bit further down theres a tunnel which is either a drain or the subway. The bridge will be double decker with cars on top and trains underneath.
A return visit is warranted.
Looking up from near the bottom of the cliff. I cant really capture how cliff like it is.
This is actually inside that tourist thing. It is huge.
The pirate cave. It exists to advertise a restaurant, which seemed to have no customers on a Friday night. That might be because their sign advertised mainly bullfrog, pigs blood and brains of various animals as their highlight dishes.
This is where the Irish bar and a Tex Mex grill were located. There were also a number of flash looking nightclubs in the complex.
This photo is here only to show the 3 wheeled car. They are everywhere, and I have only seen them in Chongqing, not in any other Chinese city.
If you recall the Top Gear episode, they flip without warning. I was on high alert.
Past the end of the pedestrian mall area you get to what passes as the red light district I guess. Which means karaoke bars.
Around the town there are a number of concert spaces like this. All of them seem to be open mic night. The crowd seems appreciative no matter what someone does to Gangnam Style. I saw this guy sing it, and 4 older ladies dance to it.
Finally, after my large lunch, I didnt feel like dinner. But I couldnt resist these lays potato chips. Authentic Sichuan flavour. If you ate these in Australia and your mouth went numb, you might assume you had been poisoned.