Waterfalls, rivers and Chinese landscapes

Asia » China » Guangxi » Guilin
August 25th 2006

Published: August 31st 2006

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JenThor

The Guilin Twin Towers

Arrived in Guilin after a surprisingly good 28h train journey - the trains here move a lot faster than the Transsiberian and are a lot less bumpy! Guilin is in the South of China and the scenery is probably well known to most people from the typical Chinese scroll paintings - soaring limestone peaks of all shapes and sizes covered in trees, rice paddies, people working the fields with water buffalo and the beautiful Li River winding through it all. The weather here is jungle like - incredibly hot and intensely humid (so much so there's a constant thick haze in the air) with powerful tropical downpours every few hours - it feels like you are in a wet sauna continually, but most things are air conditioned inside so we’re doing OK...

We took a tour yesterday to sail down the Li River which was really stunning. It was a 4 hour boat ride and every second of it was amazing - the peaks towered above us, bamboo growing on the edges, water buffalo swimming and grazing, ancient villages on the banks of the river, people cormorant fishing (they tie something round the birds neck so it can’t swallow then

The Waterfall hotel

let it fish - they then remove the fish from its mouth, give it a treat and start again - sounds cruel but the birds don’t look unhappy), people sailing downstream on bamboo rafts.....really perfect. It rained most of the day but this just made everything more beautiful by creating a eerie haze of clouds with the peaks spiking through. (The end point for the boat was Yangshuo - a backpackers favourite town about 65km from Guilin and the place we move on to tomorrow. As we got off the boat we were literally assaulted by thousands of touts grabbing us, trying to sell us things/get us to stay at their hotel/eat at their restaurant etc.....this was crazy - not at all the pleasant peaceful area we’d imagined Yangshuo to be and silently were happy we’d booked a place 3km out of town for our stay here.

Back at our hotel in Guilin we had dinner and then prepared to watch our hotels waterfall show - at 8.30pm they create a massive waterfall down the entire front of the hotel for 15mins (75m wide and 76m high) - hence the name (Lijing Waterfall Hotel). Apparently it’s in the Guinness

Monk enjoying an ice cream!

Book of Records! It seemed like a mad idea but it really looked great. The hotel is right next to both the Li River and two beautiful lakes. At night after dark (which is around 7pm this far south) everything lights up in amazing colours and water fountains show off great patterns of lights and colours. Walking around the lakes, however, was somewhat more work than we anticipated. During the day the paths are nice and quiet, but after dark literally thousands of people come out to populate the scenic routes around the lakes - like walking down Oxford Street! Sitting and watching it all happen was very interesting though, once we found a nice rock to perch on at the side of the path. We're very glad we made it down here even if it is for a shorter time than hoped.

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