After a quick stop in Guangzhou we flew to Guilin. Guilin is a Chinese tourist hot spot, home to the Li River and famous for an eight hundred year old inscription that boasts ‘Guilin’s Scenery is the Best Under Heaven’. We weren’t super impressed with Guilin itself though, because we could tell the scenery was very beautiful but there was this big city in the way.
Still, we had some fun. Sar wanted to try hot pot, so we went to a hot pot restaurant for lunch. Unfortunately, the menu was entirely in Chinese and nobody spoke any English. Miraculously, with a bit of Chinese and some educated guesswork (ticking random boxes) I actually managed to get us a decent meal.
Apart from the 2 cups of ice. But I maintain that a cup of ice with hot pot is just good sense.
We visited Jingjiang Princes Palace, which Sar could not pronounce. It was a mini walled city, with palace buildings, lanterns and trees.
Here are 2 trees hugging.
We also climbed 306 steps to the top of a steep hill known as Duxiu Feng to get some views over the city. It was a random sharp pinnacle that just rose out of the ground seemingly from nowhere, because the land all around it was flat. There were many legends about how and why the hill was important, but I can’t remember any of them.
We only stayed the one night in Guilin, memorable for a disastrous experience at Pizza Hut where they tried to convince us that a meat pizza always comes with fish sauce. The less said about that the better.
In the morning we took a cruise to Yangshuo.
A cruise on the Li River from Guilin to Yangshuo is supposedly the highlight of any trip to southern China, if not to China as a whole. The scenery was stunning. There’s not really any other way to say it.
The Li River winds through Karst hills, which have the most weird and wonderful shapes. I googled them to find out how such interesting shapes form, but geography was never my strong point and I got confused. Let’s call it magic. Our helpful guide, Cherry, informed us that the beauty of the Li River scenery was down to 10% information, 30% observation and 60% imagination. We spent some of the cruise trying to imagine what each hill looked like, but they mostly all looked the same to us. So I guess we missed out.
We managed to get the last day of ‘good’ weather before a cold front moved over the region, so were able to stand outside for a lot of the 4-hour cruise. It was quite breezy though.
We spent the cruise with Rik and Susan, an American couple who had taken the same bus as us from the Guilin hostel to the boat, and were headed to the same hostel in Yangshuo. They were very friendly. Here we are with Susan.
I had heard only the best things about Yangshuo and we weren’t disappointed. Unlike Guilin, the scenery wasn’t obstructed by skyscrapers; Yangshuo was basically just a couple of roads and a lot of tourist stalls. Wherever you looked you could see the mountains and though the centre of town certainly catered to tourists it only took 5 minutes to get out into the countryside.
We stayed 3 nights in Yangshuo and really enjoyed our time there. We had done 4 cities in 4 days so definitely appreciated stopping somewhere for a little while. The weather wasn’t great, but the rain and mist actually added to the charm of the hills. One day we went for a wander through the countryside.
Apart from that, we didn’t really do anything. Our hostel had amazing breakfasts, freshly baked banana bread and DVD players in the rooms. We ventured out when necessary, for food, massages and shopping. I couldn't stop buying earrings and Sar got a Chinese flute from this guy.
At night, the hills around the town were lit up and everything reflected in the water; it was, perhaps, too pretty to capture on camera.
I went for a run along the river and also took a bike out one day. Yangshuo is really small, so it wasn’t a difficult task to get out of town and find the road I wanted to travel south. Just one left turn and then one right turn. Very, very simple.
Somehow I ended up 10km north of the town.
I would actually say that Yangshuo is my favourite place in China so far. If I have the chance in summer I’ll definitely be going back. It was lovely in the winter rain; I can only imagine how nice it would be in the summer sun.
All too soon it was time to leave Yangshuo and we were both really sad to go. We caught a bus down to Guilin (on which we had the privilege of watching both a Chinese movie about lethal playing cards and Moonraker) and then got a sleeper train back to Guangzhou. Just can’t get enough of Guangzhou.
My reason for using Guangzhou as a transit base was that it has really cheap domestic flights. I’m not sure why, but it does. Unfortunately, we were flying out in the evening and our train arrived at 6.30am. Also, it was raining. There weren’t a lot of options, so we chose to go and hang out in the riverside hostel for the day. I think I’d been there enough for the staff not to suspect we weren’t guests, or care that we spent the whole day dozing on the sofas. Not the most exciting of days, but it was much needed rest and by the evening we were very, very ready to get to Sanya…
