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Published: November 18th 2007
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Had a foul 8 hour bus trip to Guilin from Guangzhou. The lady next to me was a disease, she vomited into a plastic bag about half hour into the journey and just tossed the bag to the floor next to our feet. It f**king stunk and it was f**king disgusting. It just sat there festuring and solidifying throughout the journey. Then for the rest of the journey she was persistently sneezing all over the shop and not once did she bother to put her hands over her dirty, disgusting foul mouth, I hated her. I would have liked to have moved but there was quite simply no where to move to, I doubted my Chinese friend in seat '6' would have wanted to have swapped.
When the bus rolled up at 4:30 in the morning it was still very much pitch black. Turning up at any towns bus station never really gives you a good first impression of a place, they are generally full of the dodgiest, shadiest, dirtiest looking characters to inhabit the said town, i.e King's Lynn bus station. In Guilin it was no different. As I stepped off the bus and breathed out I could see
my breath in the air.....it was bloody cold! The shorts and t-shirt day's were well and truely over, I'd have to consider getting myself a new jacket I thought. But there wasn't to much time for thinking, for it is foribidden, I was in an Asian bus station and it is the law that I get hassled by absolutely everyone.
'Where you go? Where you go?'
As it was still dark and I was in an unknown town to me I opted for a cab, if it was daylight I would have mooched about by myself trying to find my hostel. So I showed the cabbie where I wanted to go in my lonely planet and he led me to his cab and prompted me to put my backpack in the boot. I told him only a mug would do such a thing, where he didn't understand what I said he knew through body language that there was no way on earth that I was sticking my bag in his boot. And it's a good job that I didn't, as when I got inside the taxi he asked to see the address again, even I could work out
that it wasn't far from the bus station according to the map but he looked about as confused as erm....a new born baby, although I've never actually seen a new born baby first hand that I can remember but I should imagine that they are quite confused when they first enter the world, and thats why they always come out crying.....maybe.
But anyway it was obvious that the guy didn't have a clue so I grabbed my gear and exited the cab. The pack that had initially mobbed me when I got off the bus were back on the case.
'Where you go? Where you go?'
I showed them all the address and said 'You know this?' and I heard one guy say 'Yes', thats when I knew that I had found my man. Although that assumption soon proved wrong, this driver was just a tad more smarter than the last, he drove out of the bus station and turned left and then stopped and asked to have a look at the address again. Despite showing him this he still stopped to ask other locals for directions. Turns out the hostel was only about a minutes drive
away from the bus station, but better safe than sorry as you can't be to sure who's lurking the streets at that time and there did appear to be quite a few bums wandering around aimlessly.
I checked into my hostel, got a few hours of power napping in and then went out to explore Guilin, once again to see if it's portrayal is of any simiularity to that as portrayed in the WAY-COOL video game 'Shenmue', ok, I'll shut up about Shenmue now. I hopped on the number 2 bus opposite the train station, waved my lonely planet at the bus driver, paid my way and was off to see 'Fubo Shan' hill which lies embedded more or less in the heart of the city.
The whole surrounding area of Guilin is covered in the most bizarre yet fascinating limestone karst peaks. It's this area that is often featured in many Chinese paintings. From the top of Fubo Shan you can see great views across the city. At the base you are treated to the thousand buddha cave, but I failed to see a thousand of them. The few I did see were meant to have dated
back to the Tang and Song dynasties, which didn't really mean a lot to me so I left them to it.
I then set off to climb some more peaks at 'Diecai Shan' but was refused entry at first as the lady at the ticketing booth didn't have change for 100 yuan as that's all I had and the entry fee was 20 yuan. So I decided that it was cake time, what better way in which to break ones change. A welcome sweet to China is the egg custard tart, you can get them all over. To accompany my tart I opted for what looked like a tub of mini cookies. And they were, but with a difference, they had meat in them and they were bloody disgusting. I didn't realise that they were meat cookies when I purchased them as all the writing was in Chinese. This is one of my biggest criticisims of Asia, they just don't know how to make cookies.
But anyway with my pocket full of change I headed back to Diecai Shan. There are several peaks here to march up, a cave, bird and buttefly gardens. Crane hill perhaps offering the
best views across Guilin, very windy though and I found myself hanging on dearly to the railings up top. I think the only thing holding me down was my belly full of egg custard tart.
The rest of the day was spent exploring the city, quite a nice city as a whole with a fair amount of shops. I managed to pick myself up a nice new winter jacket for when the weather starts to get all the more bitter.
So China so far although proving hard work in places espcially in regards to the massive language barriers but it still rerry rerry good!
FLOB COUNT: 13
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