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Published: November 5th 2009
Our 15th day in the far east was also our last morning on the Sunshine China cruise ship before it docks in the early morning in Chongqing (the sister city of my hometown Brisbane).
We only had a half day in Chongqing before heading off to Guilin after lunch. We docked in this huge city with a population over 30million (well the municipality of Chongqing) around 8 am. Of course we get the standard merchants when you get off any form of transport trying to sell some sort of kite, map, scarf, jade etc.
We headed off to the Chongqing Zoo to see the handful of panda’s they have in their compound. Due to some time restraints, we had around an hour in the zoo before we headed off to a park for a tea drinking ceremony. We arrived around the time that the giant panda’s were being feed their breakfast, so other than running to the food, there wasn’t a whole lot of activity in their respective compounds. After around 20 minutes of some ohh’s and ahhs, we quickly scouted the rest of the zoo. I can’t remember the last time that I was at a zoo (probably
15 years ago, in Melbourne when they had the Panda’s), but most of the animals here are fairly stock standard. Most of the enclosures were quite big, however I was a little bit saddened when we came across some of the monkey cages though. Our guide did mentioned that years ago the enclosures were a lot smaller, so at least the zoo management are trying to make a change.
I think the only reason why one of the ladies came on the tour was to go shopping. So while most of us wondered aimlessly around the zoo taking pictures of animals in cages, she went to the Wal Mart across the road from the zoo, our guide was aware of this and she was going to meet us out the front of the zoo. Everybody else meet at the meeting point in the zoo at the designated time and headed off to the bus. Our guides didn’t tell the bus driver to head off, but he did not realising that we were one short. Fortunately here companion on the trip saw a western lady running back to the zoo gates thinking it was a bit weird. She then realised
it was her friend, our guide jumped off the bus while it was parked on a main street and went to get her!! The shopper found something she wanted to buy but forgot her wallet, so our guide in trying to save some time, went back to Wal Mart to pay for the item, being cross-stitch of all things! Of course my sister took this delay as an excuse to get off the bus to have a cigarette.
Once everybody has been accounted for, this time for real, we headed off to a park in the city. I am not sure of the name of the park, but I think it was Pipa Shan Park (I think, but no matter). I was more concerned that my sister was hit on the head with the gate beam as she was trying to dodge the merchants selling the wears. Thankfully she has a hard head!
The park is located on a small mountain and one of the highest points in Chongqing, on a clear day you can get some great views of the city. The day we arrived in Chongqing was a very smoggy day (well compared to home, but
probably not by Chongqing standards), where visibility was at most a few hundred metres.
In the park is a small teahouse where they will teach tourist the Chinese way of drinking tea. Of course they sell tea, tea pots and various other accessories. If I was a regular tea drinker, I would probably go a bit crazy here as some of the regular tea drinkers did.
After lunch we headed off to the airport for a short flight to Guilin. Guilin is famous for it’s karst hills that surround the city, the caves in the hills and the rice terraces located at Longsheng (commonly known as Dragon Backbone Terraces). After dinner we had the option for a cruise around the city, the city is not only surrounded by karst hills but the Li River and a bunch of lakes that have been joined by canals.
Our guide gave us some warning that it is popular for young children to sell flowers to tourists around Guilin, however she said that we need to ignore them as they are also pickpockets. As soon as our bus arrived at the river cruise port, there were 2-3 children trying to sell
flowers to us, even before we got off the bus. You have to give credit to the local government of Guilin who have done an amazing effort in making this short cruise (around an hour long) into a great way to see this small (by Chinese standards) city. The canals have some really nice parks and they even build some interesting bridges that include pictures and calligraphy on the underside. As part of the cruise, you get to see some cormorant fishing, musical and signing performances.
Later in the night we headed into the night markets that happen every night from 8pm on the main street. They don’t seem to hassle you a lot in these markets as they do in the other markets in the big cities. So you can at least wonder at your own pace and look without having a calculator shoved in your face by an overly eager merchant.
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