Photo TR: Nanhu Park, Huidong, China (June 8, 2014)

[The Angry Darren Mullins]

Today, despite a back injury, I went to the eastern part of Huizhou in Guangdong province. The place I visited was Huidong. Huidong just means eastern Huizhou and despite being a stop on the high speed railway, Huidong doesn't get a lot of foreigners. I didn't see a single McDonald's or KFC in the town, but it is possible they had one or two. Upon reaching Huidong on the train, I took note that the parking lot of the train station had not been completed yet. It was one big apocalyptic war zone with a newly opened train station in the middle of it. I boarded the bus (H1) to Nanhu Park. Nanhu means South Lake. I got to the park 30 minutes later as the bus didn't make many stops on the way into town. Nobody was riding the bus into town. I initially tried to take a taxi into town and what should have been a relatively inexpensive taxi ride was going to be expensive due to the driver wanting to play F*** the Foreigner. I skipped on that little game. Anyway, I got to the park and immediately found the rides area. There were two areas with rides, but one is defunct and only pieces of rides remain. The other area is in a corner of the park and features a mouse coaster, which is of a design I have never seen before, a flume, large Ferris Wheel and other rides. The mouse coaster is simply called Roller Coaster. It is very smooth and a swooping drop towards the end of the ride made for some excessive speed before the ride hit the brake run. I really liked this coaster. I rode it twice and it became coaster #867 for me. The park is a small, average Chinese city park. The lake is a bit dirty and some parts of this park were fade, while other parts were new. Many of the rides were old, but the coaster appears to be a recent addition as it looked newer than the flume. I saw no other foreigners in this town and people spoke a different dialect of Chinese, so I had trouble communicating with the exception of a few people who could speak a little bit of English. The park would be an average park for us, but for the locals it is the only park in that immediate area. The park seemed to get busy around 4pm, but I had to leave and catch a train back home. It also started to rain shortly after I left the park, so I got very lucky today as I was able to complete my visit before the rain set in. I have now ridden 867 coasters and I have visited 390 parks.

I have arrived at Nanhu Park in Huidong, Huizhou.

Here is the lake that gives the park its name.

A Jeff Johnson credit is here. As this had small changes in elevation throughout the track, it may be a credit for others as well.

The merry-go-round sits beside the drop on the flume ride.

The Ferris wheel is the tallest ride in the park.

There is a walk through haunted house, but I didn't go in.

There were parts of old rides in another area of the park.

Nanhu Park has one of these.

It is a mouse coaster named Roller Coaster.

Here is one of the cars on it.

Here is the front of the station. The Chinese writing says Guo Shan Che, which stands for flying mountain car. It is actually bad translation that caught on. We call it a roller coaster.

This is from my first ride on it.

The lift hill is sort of steep.

Here you can see that this is not one of China's typical mouse coasters.

This is the area outside of Huidong's train station. The station opened before the parking lot. This should give you a clue how closed off Huidong is from the rest of civilization.