Turtles and the Dragon's Backbone

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Dear Friends,

Here we are again with some updates on our whereabouts. From Hainan Island we went back up to north to Guilin by bus. I was still really sobbing about leaving the beach and good weather, but Chris convinced me that there are other things to see too, so here we go...

Poking the 1000 year olds

Guilin is a relatively nice city, but the real sights are outside town. We AGAIN went to a cave, this time on foot, not by boat. We were positively impressed that our guide also spoke English so our tour was really enjoyable. The weird thing in the cave was though a separate section where they show you 1000 year old turtles. Poor animals, they are laid on a big stone, covered with some embroidered clothing and some money bills and posing for photos all day long. It was really sad to see this. And of course all tourists (read: Chinese tourists) are poking these ancient animals, punching them to see if they are real... We were told that these turtles were found in the cave when it was discovered, but this does not really sound like a real story to us... But, truth be told, we did pay 10 RMB extra to see it...

Rice, rice and more of the same...

Next day we took an adventurous trip to the famous Dragon's Backbones rice terrasses near Longsheng. This was a real experience. From Longsheng we took a local bus to the village of PingAn which is normally supposed to take approx 90 minutes (based on the guidebook). However, you should know how bus trips are in China. When the bus leaves the station, the bus attendant opens the door of the moving bus and starts shouting out during the way to people on the street if they wanna join us in the bus. They try to sell out as many tickets as possible, they have small extra chairs, wooden planks in the bus to "accommodate" more people, so by the time you leave time the bus is like a haring can. We normally start at the bus station, which means seats are guaranteed... I think we will keep this habit.

So after leaving Longsheng we continued to our destination... but in a village on the road we suddenly stopped at a stall where a man was selling cement. Yes, one of our fellow travellers decided to transport 10 bags of cement by public bus to their "mountain villa" construction... packing the cement took like half an hour, after this we could continue. We were already up on the curvy road on the hill when the bus driver noticed that the door of the bus trunk was open and after a quick counting realised that 1 bag of cement was missing. So he parked the bus behind a curve (not really safe), he put a stone behind one of the wheels (to support the break system.... auch) and started walking down the road to find the cement bag. After 20 min he was back - without cement bag, but its because he just moved it to the side of the road to prevent accidents. After almost 3 hours we arrived to PingAn where we started trekking among the rice terrasses for a cosy 5 hours. The views were very beautiful especially when we left the villages where every person wanted to sell us their stuff and offer guiding services.... Still, we could not get rid of one local lady: we simply asked her to show us on the map which trek to take to the next village, but she insisted she would definitely take us there (hoping that we would eat her rice and stay at her house). We told her that we go back to Guilin, but she did not listen.

So we were trekking among the peddy fields (beautiful scene) with this annoying lady behind us. We told her several times that we did not need her help but she was just going. At a crossing we met further local ladies, so from there we were trekking with 3 local ladies. One of them had a bit better understanding of English, so she told to the first lady that indeed we planned to go back to sleep in Guilin. After this the first lady decided to leave us alone, as her business opportunities seemed to be gone... the other two went on with us though... Near their village they showed us a small waterfall, which was indeed nice. But then they started unfolding their long hairs to show us (indeed, they were the famous long hair ladies, see pics). We found this a nice friendly move and took a few pictures with them. They seemed happy too and indeed, they had a reason. Immediately after taking the pictures they asked for money from us.... we told them that we did not ask them to show us their long hairs, but somehow they did not understand (or pretended not to understand) this sentence, they were just holding their palms, waiting for money. At the end, to get rid of them, we gave them half of what they asked for so they left us alone. We also experienced some really friendlyness though. From that village an other lady helped us to get further (path indications were really poor within villages). As she went to the same village as us, we just had to follow her.

The Slow Rip-Off

All went fine. After reaching our final destination we went to the info stand to ask about our bus connection back to Longsheng and then further to Guilin. This was at about 5 pm and we thought there was a bus at 6 pm. But this time Lonely Planet was wrong, that bus did not exist, so we were there on the top of the rice hills in the dark, trying to convince a local bus driver to take us to Longsheng. This did not work, but he was really kind and helped us to arrange a private taxi (actually several ones, but we did not take the first one as prices were horrorous... ). At the end and old guy took us as far as Guilin for 350 RMB (this is a shit lot of money in China, total rip-off, but if you compare it to Europe, you pay the same from Luxembourg city to the airport...). So we were off on the road with this old guy and very thankful wife in their mini-mini van, which could do an average of 40 km/h with max speed of 50 on our trip. Took us 2 hours to do the 90 KM ride.... but we made it back to Guilin.

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Photos

Blinky blink cave。。。
Once more a lovely cave, with plenty blinky blink lights. The Chinese LOVE shiny lights: The more the better!!!!

Poking the 1000 year old
So according the legend: he's 1000 years old and probably had by now several nervous breakdowns due to the poking Chinese tourists. Everybody pokes to check whether it's still alive.

Main dome in the cave
Please note the reflection in the lake.

Dragon's backbone rice terrases
Paddy fields, paddy field and MORE paddy fields. But please do not forget the lovely local guides....

Long hair show.
Look, shiny hair! Everybody used L'oreal!!!

Waterfall hotel
The largest manmade waterfall: 45 meters. Every day at 20:30 it flows for 15 minutes....

Comments

[Sarah]

you suck
YOU SUCK AT BLOGING!!!!!!!!!! DONT DO IT ANY MORE

[Sorry but we are not at home]

You suck... that's ok.
That we suck in blogging is totally fine for us. Cause did it ever occur in your mind that the main reason why we're using this medium is simply recording our impressions for ourselves. The fact that other people can read it is only secondary (primarily for friends and relatives). So in case your bothered by it, ok, then don't read further, but we continue. Greets.