Guilin sightseeing

Our first day of Guilin, Cherry showed us around town. Guilin is not very big. We started out with Elephant Trunk Hill. The story goes that there was an elephant who was drinking out of the Li River and didn't want to go home, so it turned to stone so it could always be at the beautiful river and city of Guilin. There is a similar type hole in the rock in France, but it is man-made.

Next we went to Fobo Hill, a scenic area named after General Fobo, who I am still unclear of who he really is. Cherry kept asking if we wanted to take a picture next to his statue and CL and I both said, "No, thanks!". Funny.

At this point, our legs and my calves were still aching from Huangshan. Every step up and every step down reminded us of our soreness. Ugh. Nonetheless, we climbed up Fobo Hill and enjoyed the hazy views. Nearby is the 1,000 Buddha Cave, Sword-testing stone, 1,000-men pot, and a Banyan Tree. Nice to have a look, but I wasn't necessarily impressed.

Next we visited a painting store (designated shopping) which was nice to see the art work, but not for buying. Then we visited Red Flute Cave, which is a cave with all kinds of cool rock formations. I surprisingly liked the cave, despite the tacky lights inside. The rock and cave was interesting. My pictures didn't come out great, but you get the idea.

Then we went to some pearl store. Guangxi Province neighbors the S. China Sea where a lot of salt water pearls are produced/found. CL bought a pair of earrings; I just looked. I still like pearls for some reason, despite the grandma look to them.

We proceeded to lunch and tried Guilin mifen, a local noodle specialty. We had some pork dish and some rice/taro dish that I didn't particularly like. Taro seemed to be really popular in Guilin.

After lunch we went up to Yao Mountain, another scenic mountain were you can see the Guilin view. Beautiful, but again, it was hazy. The cable car ride up costs 75 rmb. We took a superslide down which was fun (and faster!).

The weather was fairly warm in Guilin that day. It was so awesome to have a private tour. The car was always waiting for us, with the A/C already on, driver and tour guide opening doors, etc. Very convenient, very efficient. No figuring out how to get somewhere, no busses, no taxis, no extra walking! No trying to read incomprehensible Chinese characters, etc. Very relaxing.

CL and I went back to the hotel to relax before eating dinner and walking around the night market. Didn't buy anything in particular. My best purchase was a bag of roast chestnuts and CL got a passion fruit smoothie.

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