More Travelling From the Comfort of Your Computer Chair™, brought to you by the venerable iDenise.net!
(Though, really, Guilin is very much worth visiting in person. Shame on you.)In a yet-unsurpassed feat of laziness, I have decided to make this travellog extremely, extremely simple - one page, embedded graphics, and who cares if it's several miles long. Makes it quite a bit simpler to navigate, too. To heck with frames and multiple pages and popups!!
A couple of disclaimers, first: All graphics and photographs were taken either by myself or by my dad (mostly me), unless otherwise noted, and are copyright. Usage policy is simple: If you'd like a couple of photos of Guilin for a school project or website or some such, hey, go ahead - I know what a pain it is to find photos. Just include a link back here saying where you got the pictures. Just don't go around claiming they're yours or anything, because that's just plain annoying.
Okay, okay, that's done with - NOW we can start!
Day 1: Arrival, Xishan park, Elephant Trunk Hill, Much Lazing Around
The flights were packed on Good Friday, so we had to take a really early plane to Guilin - 8:30 am. This meant we had to get up at 4:30 and be at the airport by 6 (or something close to that - I can't say I was fully conscious for much of that time, haha!) Of course, I had to go to bed at 1 am the previous night! I fortified myself with a big glass of iced coffee at the airport.
We did get a most wondrous first look at Guilin from the airplane windows, though, so that rather made up for getting up early. The mountains look almost like drawings of mountains on old-fashioned maps - little triangular cones. I almost expected to see 'Here there be dragons'.
First thing we did on arrival was go to Xishan park - I'm not sure if that's it's name, really, but it's called
or 'West Mountain Park' in Chinese. We walked around for a while - it's good-sized park, and quite pretty. There's a lake in it, and rocky crags all around.
After lunch we went back to our hotel. We stayed at the Sheraton, which faced onto the Li River. The lobby is nice enough, and it's a 5-star hotel, but oh, it's confusing! We walked around in endless circles before we found our rooms, which were in a second wing and not nearly so nice as the ones in the main hotel. Sigh.
This is the main lobby - there's a skylight above, so it's nice and bright. Note the glass lifts - they're practically a Sheraton trademark!
Here's a couple of shots of my room. Inexplicably, a quarter of my room was partitioned off into a second, smaller room - with NOTHING in it. Completely nothing. It did have a pleasant view into the hotel gardens, though why someone would erect a wall between the bed and the window is a mystery. The two windows do overlap, but it's not a direct view into the garden from the main bedroom. Odd.
Because we'd arrived in Guilin half a day ahead of schedule, we didn't have a whole lot of sights planned for that day and had a bit of free time after lunch. Most of our fellow travellers took the opportunity to rest a bit. Not so us! We decided to head out and see if there was any shopping to be had. And indeed there was - there was a pedestrian shopping district (
) directly behind our hotel.
We had a good look around, but it didn't take long for us to gravitate towards McDonald's for a fry or two.
In the mid-afternoon, we returned to our hotel and the tour group set out again for Elephant Hill. It's the symbol of Guilin City. Unfortunately, the place was packed with tourists!
There were a lot of azaleas round the back, though.
We stayed there for far too long, since there wasn't a whole lot to do there and it was hell to get photographs because of all the people. I got to see my first cormorants. It seems that they've given up fishing; it costs 20 yen to take a photo with the cormorants, now. Lazy capitalists! :)
That evening we got to watch a dance performance. After that we went out on one of the bridges on the Li River and admired the spectacular lighting installed on the rocky hills.
It was quite a full day - I was properly tired when I finally plopped into bed at 1 am!
Day 2: Boat trip down the Li River, Crown Cave, Yangshuo
Most of the second day was spent sailing down the Li River in a boat. That was extremely, extremely, worth the six hours on the boat - 83 kilometres of spectacular scenery floating by is really something special! I took insane amounts of photos.
There are tables in the boat, where we ate lunch, but I spent most of my time upstairs on the deck with the wind in my hair and my head facing up, feeling awfully small and ephemeral, but in a good way.
It had rained that morning, so the hills were shrouded in mist and looked straight out of a typical Chinese painting.
This is the waiting-for-husband's-return rock (
). See the woman with a baby on her back?
We soon reached Crown Cave, where we stopped for an hour or two. The stalactites and stalagmites are huge - I can't imagine how long it must have taken for them to form! The entire place was lit up like a fairy palace.
We walked a bit, and toured in a train and a boat, before we finally returned to the surface via a lift (which looked VERY out-of-place amidst the limestone columns!)
We got back on the boat and continued our journey down the Lijiang to Yangshuo.
See the ducks? They're regular-sized ducks. The cliffs are very sheer, rising straight up out of the water, and everything else is dwarfed by them.
Occasionally, there are villages along the river, and they keep ducks there. It seems so remote living here, sandwiched between huge rocks on one side and a huge river on the other.
This is Painting Hill - if you look closely, you can see a painting of nine horses on the cliff.
At long last, we docked at Yangshuo (
). They say Guilin has the best scenery in the world...and Yangshuo has the best scenery in Guilin.
That'sin Chinese.
Where we got off the boat, there was a crafts market. I bought a T-shirt there. Yangshuo is very picturesque - the entire town is nestled in the shadow of these huge rock crags, but it's smaller and not as clean as Guilin.
As Chinese cities go, Guilin is quite clean. People do spit though, and every other man smokes like a chimney, but it's OK overall. The toilets certainly have room for improvement, though.
Anyway, we walked half an hour to the carpark, where our coach was waiting for us, having raced us all the way down the Lijiang to Yangshuo.
Surprisingly it only takes 1.5 hours to Guilin by coach. It took us a whole four or five hours to reach Yangshuo by ship.
That night we went out to see the Waterfall Hotel - every evening at 8:30, they have a waterfall display. The entire side of the hotel becomes a huge artificial waterfall - which was immensely cool!
(the hotel before the display)
(during the display)I wonder what it would be like to actually be inside one of the guestrooms and have a waterfall coming down your window!
After seeing the waterfall we went back to the streets behind the hotel and window-shopped again, since there wasn't a whole lot to do. I bought a Chinese painting and Mom bought a box of Guilin rice noodles. It only costs 4 yen for horse meat noodles, but thankfully mom opted for pork at 6 yen. Shudder. I noticed signs saying 'rabbit' and 'dog', too.
When we got back to our rooms, mom opened the box and found this:
Much hysterical laughter (me) and staring (my parents) ensued. Mom couldn't pour it into the box, and we didn't have anything big enough to put the noodles into. Eventually she had to hold the bag up with one hand and eat with the other. Poor Mom.
Day 3: Ling Canal, Guilin Merryland
First stop on Day Three was the Ling Canal in Xingping (just two hours north of Guilin), built by the First Emperor in 214 BC to join the Xiang and Li Rivers. In doing so he created a continuous waterway from north to south with which supplies and armies could be transported. With this canal, he conquered the southern regions. If the canal hadn't been built, we all might be part of Vietnam, instead! The canal was used through the dynasties for transport. Today, though, everyone flies instead, so it's a tourist spot.
There is a Y-shaped dam at the mouth of the canal that splits 30% of the water into the Li River and 70% into the Xiang.
The foundation is actually made of logs, with stones piled on top to make a dam. It's amazing that the dam is still standing after 2000 years, even with repairs throughout the dynasties!
At the angle of the dam, they built a peninsula sort of thing to protect it, called the Ploughshare Mouth according to this sign.
The entire setup is a pretty darned cool bit of engineering for being BC and all.
While I was there, I got to ride a short way on a little horse...well, a pony really. I don't mind admitting I am terrified of riding. I don't know why I did it. Even though I was taller than the horse - haha!
In the afternoon we went off to Guilin Merryland. It's some sort of theme park/golf course/resort village/hotel compound, quite big, very new, Taiwanese-funded. Too bad it was raining the day we were there. First we had a go at the driving range - the furthest I could whack the ball was a mere 50m, sadly, and that was only when I could hit it! But it was my first time playing golf so 'twas all cool. I maintain that golf is an extremely, extremely tedious sport, though.
We then went for a stroll around the lake. It was a really BIG lake, too, and it was very pretty in the mist.
We only ever did get a quarter of the way around it, really, because we hopped onto a passing golf buggy and saved ourselves from having to walk. Turns out that it wasn't just a bunch of trees around a lake...it was a more or less full-sized theme park (about half the size of Ocean Park, I'd say, but that doesn't include the golf course or the resort or the hotel). Riding around in a golf buggy with a helpful tour guide/driver is sure better than walking! We saw lots of things on our way around the park - rides, amusements, performances, and so on. The park was divided into about eight different territories, each with a different geographical/cultural theme such as Europe and South Pacific and so on.
Tour completed, the buggy driver deposited us back where we'd got on, and we took a free ferry across the lake.
We ended up at a temple - it was a REAL temple, too! Mom bought a couple of sticks of incense and waved them around a bit for luck.
(That's not my mom, by the way, it's a Merryland employee who keeps the fires lighted, takes the dead sticks away, and maintains the thing in general.)
We crossed the lake again afterwards via this very lovely bridge (the same one as in the misty lake photo above). It's completely made of wood and is very picturesque and quaint!
My hotel room there wasn't bad, either - it was a perfectly acceptable 5-star room. In fact I liked it better than my room at the Sheraton!
However, the thing about Merryland is that there is completely NOTHING to do after the park closes at 5. In the end I played a bit of pool with dad - I was terrible at it, but I managed to sink a couple anyway, so that was good!
Day 4: Yao Mountain, Mausoleum of Prince Jingjiang, Bumming Around Guilin
Last day in Guilin! We drove back out to Guilin proper - another two hours' coach ride, which I fell asleep on. Yao Mountain is the tallest mountain in Guilin city, at 900-odd metres, and commands a wonderful view from its peak.
That is, when it's not foggy.
That day it was rainy and very slightly muggy, so instead of miles upon miles of mountains, we got to see miles upon miles of fog. Oh well.
To get to the peak, one has to take a cablecar:
They have boxes (the blue ones) and chairlifts, and it's a 20-minute ride uphill. I chose a chairlift, and certainly enjoyed floating up through the mist. It was all very peaceful, very quiet, very very relaxing...until it started to rain, that is. Dang.
What we were supposed to see...
What we actually saw...
It was all very atmospheric, though, so it was OK. The cable car ride up and down more than made up for the lack of view, rain and all.
From Yao Mountain it was just a short drive to the Mausoleum of Prince Jingjiang, who ruled here for a while. The first emperor of the Ming dynasty sent his nephew all the way over here so he wouldn't try to steal the throne or do anything, really...clever!
Eleven princes are buried here...his descendants, no doubt.
See the ramp that leads up to the door? It unusual, so it makes people watch their feet as they go in - sneaky way of making people dip their heads as they enter. This was one paranoid Prince!
Inside, the walkway is divided into three - warriors on the right (left, here), scholars on the left (right) and emperors and others of royal blood in the middle.
I guess we all have to be emperors, since they've gated off the other paths! :)
There are lots of statues on either side of the walkway.
They ALL symbolize something - and they have to be very careful to get it right so you know exactly what class of a man was buried here. For example, the elephant means he was ruler in the south - if they'd put a camel there instead, it'd mean he was a king in the north.
Both, of course, means emperor of all of China, and that wouldn't do at all!It didn't take long to get a good look a the mausoleum - that was all to it, really - so after lunch, we were set loose upon Guilin. This was the third time we walked around Guilin! We did a bit of window-shopping, went to McDonald's again, and generally managed to fritter away an entire afternoon doing nothing of note.
There was a stand selling bird-food in the square. I have never seen so many pigeons smooshed so tightly together before. Hong Kong doesn't have much of a pigeon problem - at least, it's nothing like the photos I see of Trafalgar Square! :)
In my excitement, I completely forgot about avian flu...ah well! No harm done.Since we had an excess of time and a shortage of things to do, we somehow ended up at McDonald's again. Sigh. It tastes exactly the same as the McDonald's in Hong Kong or the US or Australia or anywhere, really.
Afterwards Mom insisted on buying a bag of roast chestnuts. I'm used to big chestnuts at least an inch in diameter - these were SMALL! My hands aren't big to begin with, either - 16 cm from wrist to fingertip.
And that was the end of our Guilin expedition! We headed to the airport directly after dinner, and that was that.
I'll always remember how the misty mountains look in the rain, though. They are really something.
I hope you enjoyed this brief account of my travels in Guilin!
Questions, comments? Direct them here!
Everything on this page is copyright Denise Chan and Y. C. Chan, all rights reserved.
