Traveling in China - Day 6 - Rock Park in Chongzuo (崇左)

After a couple days of doing next to nothing, we decided that we should get out and explore a bit before we went on to the next city.

We decided to go to 崇左石景林 (Chongzuo shi jing lin). I think the best translation would be scenic rock place or rock garden. Not sure, but they did have a lot of rocks.




View Rock Place in a larger map

Here is a map of the place we went. The area with many pins is the actual park. The rest of the map is the way back to our hotel.

We took a tricycle vehicle to the park (all over southern China, a cheaper alternative to a taxi is using the tricycle's which are basically motorcycles retrofitted to have a small covered trailer seat on the back).

It was about a 20 minute trip and really I don't think any of us in the group knew what we were going to. We were just told by our Chinese student that it was a nice place to visit. Good enough for us. It cost  ¥10 ($1.60) to get in.

Once we got in, we could see that it was a fairly well kept park that had actual grass you would walk on and rocks and plants.

Here is Chinese graffiti. Guess it is like putting your name on an aspen tree. As shameful as this is, I think it actually looks pretty cool!

I think the plan here was that if they made a garbage can look exciting, like it came from a 1970s sci-fi movie, people would want to use it more. Plan failed. China has billions of garbage cans. Unfortunately, the billions of Chinese people don't all use them. 

Pretty sure this is the only time I have seen Loida smile in a photo. Guess all she needs is a giant mortar and pestle... Or whatever drugs came from the giant mortar...

Not every day you get to climb up a rock using a giant ficus root.

Loida doing some surveying.

Here, trees and plants grow out of rocks.

Here, rocks grow out of trees. 

I waited forever to get a picture with as few people in it as possible. This was the best I could do. Even in small towns, everywhere you go is crowded.

We spent forever trying to figure out how to get up to this pagoda! The whole place was like a fun maze that isn't much fun after you have gone to the same place over six times.

Jerry, Me and Serena (the Chinese student... our tour guide) up on top of the pagoda that took us forever to find. 

After the park, we decided to walk home. We did that for about 30 minutes until we realized that walking home would take forever. We took another tricycle home and called it a day after that. Chongzuo had been very good to us. We will all miss you Chongzuo.