Guilin's Daxu Ancient Village The Daxu Ancient Village located Southwest of Guilin city in Guangxi Province was built during the Song Dynasty (960-1279), and is my second home. Since I am lucky enough to actually live in Guilin, I get to visit Daxu often. I have many old friends there, and every time I return to this beautiful village, the word that I am back in town spreads quickly, and soon a lot of people come out to say hi. The children in Daxu love me and within ten minutes I usually have a group of ten or so following me [View Full Entry]

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Guilin's Jing Jiang Prince's Tomb The Jing Jiang Prince's Tomb located in Guilin, Guangxi near Yao Mountain, the largest mountain in Guilin, is the resting place of an imperial prince of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). The area around Yao Mountain was considered to have good fengshui, so many imperial princes are buried in the area. During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, Guilin was home to one of the governing centers of China, and was considered an imperial city. Guilin has a palace complex, that predates the Forbidden City in Beijing. Built by the founder of the Ming Dynasty [View Full Entry]

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Guilin's 7 Star Park 7 Star Park located near downtown Guilin is the largest park in Guilin City. It covers over 900 acres. It is named for the seven mountain peaks that are in the park and are placed in a similar formation to the big dipper, hence the name 7 Star Park. This park has just about everything for everybody. When me and my wife have some time off and want to go out, we inevitably end up here and luckily because I work at China Odyssey Tours, I get in free. The mountains in the park have pavilions and [View Full Entry]

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We arrived in Guilin at 1:00pm. It took us 5 hours to travel by bus from Nanning to Guilin (500km). Our first impression on the city is the sweet osmanthus trees on both sides of the streets and we saw them everywhere in the city. Guilin means "forest of sweet osmanthus" (Quế Lâm). 80% of the trees in this city are sweet osmanthus trees, 20% are peach trees and others. Our Chinese tour guide pointed at a board on the roof of a large building and said "There are 2 rivers and 4 lakes in Guilin." Guilin is located in the [View Full Entry]

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The Chinese food in this blog are the food that we had at breakfasts (buffets), lunches and dinners on my 4-day tour (from 30 April to 3 May 2008) in Guilin and Nanning, China. 6 people shared a table and there were 8-9 dishes. The lunches and dinners included pork, chicken, duck meat, fish, tofu, egg, vegetable, rice, soup, noodles and fruit (orange or watermelon). The locals often put a lot of oil (dầu hào) into their fried food. As for breakfasts, we had buffets at our hotel. Mantou (bánh bao), rice porridge and Xiangtiao (quẩy) are traditional Chinese food. I [View Full Entry]

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My first stop in China was the province of Guangxi (west of Guangzhou). That is, if one doesn't count Macao and Hong Kong, which, apparently even the Chinese don't in some ways (i.e., no visas necessary, different rules, and even a different feeling. One commentator stated that nothing would please Beijing better than to have Shanghai surpass Hong Kong as the super-city of China. That tells a lot right there.) One thing worth mentioning now is that cities 5 to 10 times the size of Portland, whose names I have never heard of are all over China. Dozens of them. Qingdao [View Full Entry]

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Well, our first internal flight in China was just great , thanks. Still altogether odd that a (relatively) small city in China has an airport at least as big as Auckland's. We're both starting to understand both why 'big city' people around the world giggle at Auckland and also why its such a great place to live. Someone slap me quickly if I forget such lessons. Anyway, we arrived safely at our hostel in Guilin - only minor incident was the taxi driver taking some sort of shortcut .. which involved driving away from the smooth, well-lit road onto rutted back [View Full Entry]

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In an attempt not to be too negative, I had to be persuaded to keep the title of the last blog as 'Good Morning Vietnam' instead of my preferred 'Good Riddance Vietnam'. However, as we boarded the train at Hanoi, that's kind of how we felt..... BUT! there's a lot to be said for the phrase 'better the devil you know' and our relief to be leaving Vietnam was born more out of the fact that we'd escaped without loss of valuables or limbs, rather than looking forward to China. Don't get me wrong, China has always held a fascination for [View Full Entry]

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This blog is more about practical information for people who wants to do the journey. There is a night train from Hanoi to Beijing that stop in Guilin, but there are only soft sleeper for 80$. So, I took a bus from Hanoi to Nanning for a price of 20 to 27$ (dependig on travel agency and day of travel). The bus left at 7:30 (Vietnamese time, GMT+7). At the border, I had to cross the border on foot and change bus. The Chinese bus arrived in Nanning at 16:00 (Chinese time, GMT+8). Both the vietnamese and the chinese buses where [View Full Entry]

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Another day another overnight train, this time from Guangzhou to Guilin on Saturday night. I was pretty tired when it finally came to getting on the train I was quite relieved to find that it wasn’t too busy. Even better was the fact that the people in my sleeper compartment had no desire to communicate in either English or Chinese which meant I could relax with my book. The train left around dinner time and as I left Guangzhou I felt a bit of regret that I hadn’t taken the opportunity to sample any of it’s famous cuisine. Instead I was [View Full Entry]

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