Last week, from Sunday September 29th to Friday, October 4th, I was in Guilin, China. We had a week off of school for National Holiday. Basically, all of China is on a holiday for a week. So very nice, but so very crowded. Most of the HIS teachers went out of the country, but 3 of us decided to brave the crowds and explore China.
So I am located near Shanghai, and Guilin is in the Southeast. Look at the A in China and go down. You'll bump into Guilin.
I went with Jacob and Chris. Jacob teaches US Chemistry and Chris teaches 3rd-12th Music. We stayed at a hostel right in the middle of the town. It was great. We got a family room, so we had 4 beds and tons of room!
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| At the Guilin airport. No commas, so you need to be all of them! |
Chris didn't feel good so while he relaxed at the hostel, Jacob and I went out to explore.
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| Sewer was broke. The men were down there BAREFOOT, stuffing rope into the cracks to fix it. Ooohhh, China.... |
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| We vowed that we'd do this on Thursday night, our last night there. Everything exciting was happening Thursday night. In case, you know, China belly. |
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| Garlic chili, one of the three treasures of Guilin. Soo good. |
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| Oh Haayyy! |
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| Chris playing peek-a-boo |
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| Boo! |
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| This is a hotel that turns into a WATERFALL!!!!! |
We decided, since the Holiday didn't start until Tuesday, that on Monday, we'd do the Li River cruise. Guilin is famous for its karst, which are strange looking mountains. They are so famous that they are on the back of the 20RMB.
We got up early and took a bus about an hour to the river. It was a cool day, but cloudy. It made the river cruise ever more magical.
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| Wedding on the banks of the Li |
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| See that man on the bamboo raft? He was peddling fruit. He'd come up to the open windows, where we were all sitting and try to sell fruit as we cruised along. |
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| This mountain is called the Hello Kitty mountain or Horned Goat. Use your imagination. Can you see it? |
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| This is Nine Painted Horses. We looked, but we couldn't see ANY horses..... |
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| Famous picture right there! |
After we docked, we were in Yangshou. It was a really cute old town. The movie
The Painted Veil was filmed there. I definitely want to go back and explore there. We tried to walk out to the countryside, but it was a LONG way. We got up to the top of a mountain and realized it must be a long way and walked down. We randomly hopped on a bu back to Guilin.
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| Pano on my camera |
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| Corcorans. They go fishing in the Li River and catch fish for their owners. |
The next day, we just explored Guilin. It was the start of the Holiday so we expected it to be really crowded, but it wasn't. We walked to Elephant Trunk Hill. It was almost 100 RMN ($15) to get in so we wandered around til we could see it through the trees.
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| Can you see it? Use your imagination!!! |
Next, we walked to a Scenic Area. See that tiny temple on top of the middle hill? We hiked to that!
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| Yup, the crowds are beginning.... |
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| Wild monkeys? Yah... right.... with all these people??!?! |
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| OMG!!!! Monkeys!!!! |
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| View from the top of the mountain. Do you see the long line of cars coming over the bridge to us? |
After that, we wandered around our area again.
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