Entry tags:

guilin, yangshuo

Guilin Trip! First post
Guilin Trip
First stop : Guilin

More Guilin Pictures




This trip has converted me. Converted me from what, I have no idea, but I LOVE the south! These limestone mountains make for some fantastic scenery! 真他妈的漂亮。The part of the city we had the hotel in was on the edge I guess, but the view from out room looked out into mountains instead of city, so no complaining here.
First stop where the Reed Flute Caves, which, you guessed it, big caves. Huge caves, but probably nothing special from other huge caves that other people have seen EXCEPT for the neon lights. The whole cave was lit up with brightly coloured lights. Made it all seem a little contrived and touristy, but it actually was kind of cool. Fantasy, fairyland kind of thing. And of course it reinforces my belief that China is a big communist Disneyland. Some poor girl had a panic attack in it because she was claustrophobic. When we finally left Christian and I stopped from some sugarcane juice. Sugarcane is HUGE here, they sell it everywhere. It's pretty popular to just by a giant stick of it and gnaw on the end. Slightly odd, but good. Anyway, the week before I had gone to see a taping of a Chinese game show that Christian was on because it was about Brazil or something and one of the clips had sugarcane juice in it and he said it made him homesick, so they had some here! So we bought some. Ridiculously sweet, but apparently not as good as in Brazil. He may be a little biased.

Anyway, the part of the city we spent the night in, other than having a fantastic view was also next to this fabulous shopping area. Which is good and bad. It reminded me a lot of Promenade Street in Santa Monica from the beginning of the year (god, that seems like a long time ago) with the big street with lights around it and shops lining it. This place was gigantic though, it seriously went on forever. And when you would come to an intersection area, it would stretch in all directions with the same shopping area. Joe and I went a little crazy with sweets and ice cream and then we just walked around buying souvenirs. Good place to do it. Pretty cheap. Nothing really special for the area, but that didn't really stop anyone from buying things. We walked around trying to find some friends that split off from us and they had made friends with this guy whose sister owned a teashop and they were drinking some free tea. We joined, and bought some tea and then the guy showed us to his art gallery. He's a teacher at a school near buy (yea right). Nice stuff though. They had some really beautiful oil paintings, but they were too expensive for my blood.

Next day we split the group up and my group headed to Yangshuo. I loved this town. It was the touristiest spot I've seen, but you know when there are tourists there is western food and lots of shit to buy. Which is exactly what we all spent our time doing. Every minute of free time was either spent eating at the dozens of western restaurants (seriously lined the street) or shopping at the dozens and dozens of shops and vendors. The city was mostly just one street and, lucky us, our hotel was on that street. The city was very European; all the hotels were bars on the bottom floors and hotel-like hostel areas above it. Pub kind of atmosphere. The hundreds of stupid westerners made bargaining kind of hard, but I still came away with a lot of good deals and an empty wallet.
Oh, story time about stupid westerners. My friend was getting money out of an ATM and a couple of Americans came up behind him and they started talking. The guy, who had been in China for about 4 months said 'Wow, I've spent so much money in this town. I spent [insert exorbitant amount of money here] on [insert something not worth it here]'
My friend: 'You know you can bargain, right?'
Guy: 'You can bargain here? I thought they were set prices'
*bangs head on desk* That just amazes me. Even set prices are negotiable and you would NEVER think that things in these kinds of stores are set prices. He must be spending a fortune here. In towns like this, you take the price offered and usually cut it ¼-1/8 (because it's so touristy, usually it's ½- ¼ the price). Those people got bamboozled *giggles*

Anyway, once we checked into the hotel, we headed to the Li River and took a boat to a fishing village. The boat ride was a lot of fun; first good look at some of the beautiful scenery. The river (big attraction in this area), the fantastic tall spire mountains (hard to explain, look at the pictures, or imagine those old Chinese paintings that have the mountains that go straight up). So we took a boat to the village, took about half an hour, got to ride with our feet in the water and take pictures. Quite relaxing. Watch the water buffalo chilling in the river. Whatever. Anyway, this little village, kind of like a human zoo, but whatever. They were happy because Clinton had been there. And people here LOVE Clinton. Anyway, main attraction was all the chickens and birds. First little glimpse of why South China is a breeding ground of bird flu.
Got back and had a burrito. *drools* I'm craving some real Mexican now.
River Fishing Show after we got back to the town. Get this; We follow this boat with the fisherman in it in boats of our own. The fishing…ok, so he has all these birds that he just throws into the water, he goes around, the birds follow swimming under water catching fish. Their necks are tied so they can't swallow big fish. When the fisherman sees they caught one, he yanks them up and practically strangles them until they spit the fish out. How gross is that? I didn't eat any fish on this trip. Oh, and then *coughcoughBIRDFLU* we get out on the shore and he grabs some of the birds and puts them on people (see pics). Some of us where like, wtf? And stayed far away. Hurray for bird flu.

Had some apple crisp (yum) and went to a techno club on one of the back streets. Random, I know, but they pulled us in with California Dreamin'.


More pictures here




Want to split up this trip so it isn't too long. This is the first few days. Still to come: Cooking lessons, bamboo rafting, mud baths, slippery stones of death, and a resort.


~Nikki


My webhost is being ridiculously obnoxious. Sorry for those little marks up in the corner...until I get the other one fixed...What I wouldn't kill to be able to get onto my tripod which I'm PAYING FOR and CAN'T USE. China *shakes head*