大连大黑山

Daheishan Scenic Area

Address: East of the District, Jinzhou District, Dalian 116100, China

The Grand Black Mountain of Dalian is a dramatic rocky landscape, with ancient structures, and shows the panoramic views of the city we called, Dalian. For us, we took a bus in order to take the sky railway train, and afterwards another district bus at 开发区 and walked a good 10 to 15 minutes inside the forest. (If you're curious how to get there, you can drop a comment below and I'll search the app for you!)

The hike was tiring because it was freezing cold where we got there. We left our hotel and reached there within 2 hours journey. We didn't want to spoil ourselves always, due to the fact that we took cab almost on everyday basis when it gets dark at night. Dalian is relatively near to Bohai Sea and Yellow Sea and occasionally, the sea wind will blow towards our direction and it gets chilling windy and freezing cold at night.

I bought the wool hat there while shopping on the first day! We woke up late for the trekking due to us being too tired from travelling and getting up early so as to maximize our time there at Dalian. Initially, I didn't want to travel so far to trek up the black mountains, cause all mountains are the same??? Trekked so many of them during my time at Beijing but after looking through all the reviews from TripAdvisor, I decided to go ahead stilll. It was a great hike indeed.

Yay! :) :) look at the beautiful landscape with a passing swallow who flew by. During the winter period, usually the night falls do start early. By the time we managed to climb halfway up, the sun starts to set down and thankfully we managed to get a shot of the gorgeous sunset! Love it when we get to see mother nature at her very best.

Indescribable feeling.

There wasn't any tourists around except for us. Most people will come the black mountain for offering incense to the mountain gods, deity during chinese new year as well as important festival like the mid autumn festival on the 15th. 

Wah sian. I had a damn bad culture shock when I walked into the toilet. The conversation went something like this.

Zan: help me hold leh, I want to go to the toilet now. *monk kindly showed us the direction towards to the toilet

Me: okay.

(after a good 5 minutes)

Zan: You go in the toilet, you'll be surprised!! Go check it out, quite interesting leh.

Me: huh really? I go in now. Help me carry also.

So when I walked in, I was damn amazed lah. There were simply no toilets! Just cemented dug holes with pile of dried leaves. I happened to see a few sanitary pads and tissues on the floor. So.. my friend was having her menses at that time, and I immediately suspected her and said, "wah, I saw your bloody pad on the pile of dried leaves damn gross ok" and before I could even continue, I saw her holding to something wrapped with tissue. Hahaha it was quite obvious that the pad was on her hands, not on the pile of leaves -_- Since sanitary pads are not disposable, so I begun to wonder about the damage done to the nature. But then it was okay,  because I only saw a few of it scattered around. So, where are the rest of them?? Highly possible that the monks swept them regularly together with the faeces and threw them properly :") #thankgod

While climbing up up up!

The temple midway. We didn't finish the whole hike so what a pity. Went down the mountain before everywhere gets dark. There was absolutely no street lamps or whatsoever. Can you imagine how scary it was!! I really didn't want spend a night up the mountains.

Beautiful landscape of dalian. Bustling streets.

Love taking photography of peeping through the bus window.

Gorgeous landforms!! Took this in the train.

The complete map of the scenic area. Mandatory to pay RMB20 to hike up.

Feasting seafood again! Fresh cuttlefish, scallops, noodles and prawn. Paid a little more for the fresh oyster to be served with wasabi sauce. The oyster not cheap but worth every slurp! Entire meal is about $10 with the grilled potatoes and rice served.

Here's a candid photo with so many cactus. :o :o

Boomerang while the train continued to move :)

Do look forward to the 3rd series!