Ni hao from Guilin!

There's another trip under my belt... I have to admit, I'm looking forward to having classes start again just so I can finally relax!!! This trip was to Guilin, located in the Guangxi province of China. I went with Peggy, Antonette, and Limin.

The photos from our trip can be found here.

To get to Guilin, we had to take a 16 hour train ride. Yay overnight trains. This train was a lot less ghetto than the one we took in Thailand. There were 6 people to a compartment, but the beds lacked in curtains or any semblance of privacy. There was a mandatory lights out at 10pm (we had reading lights though). Plus there was music playing that got turned off at 10pm and turned back on at 7:30am. We passed the time by playing cards (Peggy taught Antonette and I some Chinese card games - I'm now a huge fan of Dragon. It was also fun when we'd start to teach her a game, and then find out she already knew it, but by it's chinese name.)

Guilin is known as one of the most beautiful cities in China, and I can understand why. It seems cleaner than the other cities I've seen in China, and it has an amazing natural beauty. Sadly it was hard to get in the mood because it was pissing down rain the majority of the time we were there.

Our first stop in Guilin was Elephant Trunk Hill. As you might guess from the name, the hill/mountain thing is supposed to look like an elephant. I think the name was more influenced by the era in which Opium was very popular in China as opposed to the hill's appearance, but whatever.

We were lucky and got our own personal trilingual tour guide for the hill. While we were walking around, we ran into two older gentlemen speaking Japanese. One turned out to speak Japanese, Mandarin, and English, and had been to the hill many times in the past. He led us around pointing out the sights and explaining things about the hill... In Mandarin. Peggy and Limin were nice enough to translate what he didn't for us. :)

Amusing anecdote: Peggy got slammed man. Mwhahahahaa. While descending the hill, Peggy and I stopped to wait for the others to catch up. Random people would pass us and we'd say hello/ni hao as required. Well, one chinese guy passed us and I said "ni hao" to him. He jumped and started yammering at me in Chinese, Peggy responded, and then he left. Well, the moment he disappeared, Peggy sneers and snaps the "L" to the forehead for loser to his back. Apparently he complimented my pronunciation saying it was very good... Then slammed Peggy's Taiwanese accent. Ouch man. According to Peggy, China considers the Beijing accent to be the most proper accent - any accent from the Southern area of China is wrong. Mwahahaa.

After we left the park, we moseyed over to where a local market was supposed to set up shop. I've seen deserts (on TV) with more life than this market. Only 3 of like, 25 stands were open. We ended up walking down the street and randomly entering this and that shop. Our longest stay in any store was in a pirated DVD store. $8RMB/movie. Many purchases were made.

The second day we grabbed a tour bus (err, oversized van?) to a nearby village located on terraced hills. Even though it's fall here and all the fields were pretty much dead, it was so pretty. This is how I pictured rural China to be. It was awesome seeing the paddies - it's one of the sights I've always wanted to see. (Well, I partially saw it. It was so foggy we could barely tell what was in the background.)

The village was pretty interesting. I can't imagine having to climb up the small stairs we encountered everyday, or carrying freakin' baskets of whatever they were growing. Mom would have had conniptions over the food. Rest assured that we only ate bamboo cooked rice (a specialty... which was really not worth the money) and soup though.

We returned to Guilin and got dropped off at another shopping area recommended by our tourguide. Amusingly, it was called, "Little Hong Kong." Not so amusingly, it was really boring. It was a generic chinese mall that smelled like pee. We fled and soon found ourselves a grocery store to buy snacks at and fled back to the hotel to watch DVDs.

Amusing anecdote: While having dinner at a fast food restaurant, Limin and Peggy had to translate the menu for Antonette and I. Half way through our meal, I noticed a group of white entering and sitting down. A waitress went to go take their order and a few seconds later, the same waitress appeared at our table and started to talk to Peggy. LOL, the lady asked Peggy to go over to the white people's table and help take their order. Being the nice girl she is, Peggy went over and helped them order beef soup. LOL.

Another amusing anecdote: Our youth hostel had a DVD player for rent to take to your room. We grabbed hold of it, and after a mishap with the plug (the freakin' extension cord began smoking. SMOKING!) we got it working. I love bad copies. What kind of DVD player was it? It was a Pasnsaio!

The plan for the next day was to grab a bus to Yangshuo, a town about an hour and a half away from Guilin. I have never been on such a ghetto looking bus. I think the Guilin/Yangshuo route is where bad buses go after retirement. I dunno, but I was not comfortable on the thing.

Yangshuo was a cute little town. The most amazing thing about it though were the Karsts everywhere. (I didn't know the term for them until I googled them 2 seconds ago.) They're these strange mountains/hills that pop out of the earth randomly. They're gorgeous.

On our first day, we rented bikes and with a tour guide, set out for a jaunt around the countryside. It was a fun ride. The bikes were ghetto and the views great. We did run into some issues with the roads though. Due to the amount of rain in the region, the roads turned into mud. Hell, on the way back to Guilin that evening, we encountered one road that was in construction (meaning, only dirt - no rocks) and my tires actually stopped moving from the amount of mud that had built up on them.)

We ended up taking a small break from biking by taking a 2 hour bamboo raft trip down the river. It was very pretty and relaxing, but also cold and after awhile, boring. The most excitement came from having to stop the rafts and descend ledges... It's hard to describe, but there was some adrenaline involved by being tipped over the edge of a cement ledge. See this photo for an idea of what I mean.

After more biking and lunch, we decided to go to the Buddha Water Cave. The pictures led us to assume it'd be a nice little walk through a giant cave system... Little did we know it would be a 2 hour medium difficulty spelunking adventure. And here we are decked out in our winter jackets/scarves even though it was really warm in the cave. GaH! At the end of our cave tour, we were given the choice of either having to walk back the entire route, or trying to squeeze through a hole that wasn't even 2 feet tall and coming out through a shortcut. We chose the shortcut, but I have to admit, I nearly did freak out because the hole was so tiny. Luckily I had taken off my jacket and purse (couldn't have done it with them on) and managed to slither through. (Thank god for the management's requirement of helmets too - I cracked my noggin' many a time while sliding through.)

We biked back to Yangshuo (another hour and a half - Blister butt strikes again!) and tried to cleanup as best as we could in the half hour we had left. You see, we had purchased tickets to an outdoor opera that night. (Nobody thought to mention it was outdoor to me... So I didn't bring my scarf.) It was a beautiful opera. I dunno if there was supposed to be a story, but the visuals were amazing. The entire thing was staged on top of a lake, so all the actors were either on bamboo rafts or floating stages. The music was hauntingly beautiful.

After we returned to Yangshuo (the opera was about a 20 minute drive away from the city), the others went to a market but I fled back to the hotel. I was really tired, but also something from lunch was coming back to haunt me. You don't need the details, but I've never been so thankful for peptol-bismal, and I'm bitter at my other anti-nausea pills for not working.

I was in a delicate condition the next morning for our trip to Shingping (or some village that sounds like that). Once again we were on a ghetto bus full of smoking people). Our goal for this trip was to embark on a boat trip down the river to look at more Karsts. It was worthy it because the views were amazing.

We tried finding a local market to explore before heading back to Yangshuo, but unfortunately this village was uber-ghetto. The market we found lasted for all of 10 ghetto stalls (most of which sold sugar cane). One the way back to the bus station, I was trying to read one of the banners suspended above the market and asked Peggy and Limin to translate. I was informed that it read something to the effect of, "Join the army! Bring glory to your family." I don't think I need to comment on this.

Anyways, we caught a non-ghetto and non-smoking bus back to Guilin and ended up walking around for more dvds before catching the train. Once again, we were lucky and didn't have anyone else in our 6 person compartment. More cards were played, and this time I passed out at like 10:30pm. I was so exhausted.

Thus ended my 2nd trip this month. I'm going to miss travelling when school begins simply because it's our habit to constantly snack while going out and about. Seriously, one of us always had a snack bag (err, by one of us, I mean Antonette).

P.S.
If you haven't, read Memoires of a Geisha. I bought it right before the trip and finished it about 3 days into it. It was an amazing novel and I could barely put it down!