Day #108: Botanical Garden

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Botanical Gardens are popular in China and most cities have one, but Xiamen's is really special. It is huge - a full day's hiking would be needed to get around it - and therefore peaceful, one of the few places in a Chinese city where it is possible to escape the crowds. Really it is more like a large park with a few gardens (in the sense of cultivated areas) dotted around it. Spending the whole day there I came across waterfalls, temples and gardens that felt undiscovered, they were so deserted (it helps that most people take a golf buggy through the main route rather than walking around). The gardens are arranged around a hill in the centre of the area, and on the hill sit a couple of temples, the highest of which you can get a cable car up to, though I only walked up as far as one of the lower ones, where I saw no one but a solitary monk. Over the other side of the hill is a large cactus garden and "rainforest area". The only downside was the abysmal weather later in the day: prolonged torrential rain, though it is so hot here that at least it doesn't feel cold even when it rains that hard.

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