Advertisement
Published: November 8th 2009
Our last day in Guilin was a later start then normal before we did our last tourist stop in this city, the Reed Flute Caves. It is my sister’s birthday today, at some stage our group sang Happy Birthday on the bus, she was a little bit embarrassed.
The caves are one of the major attractions in the city of Guilin and are located fairly close to the city itself. The local people have used the caves for centuries including during World War II when the locals hide in the caves when the Japanese invaded the city.
There are some very cool features in the cave including a fairly large open area that is called the Crystal Palace. They have done a pretty good job in the cave with the lights highlighting certain rock formations to show the formation to indicate how the particular name came about. One thing I didn’t really understand or like was the music and neon light show in the Crystal Palace area that lasted around 4 minutes, to me it seemed a bit weird and almost tacky. But some people may like it.
After our visit to the caves, we had to
fight our way to the bus through the persistent merchants who followed us from the cave entry to our bus, around 500m walk. I do feel sorry for these merchants as many are farmers and are selling souvenirs to add to the low income they generate from the farm. But I am not particular interested in buying something that will last the length of my trip thanks.
Before we went for lunch we went headed over to a local Pearl Museum. Of course, what I have noticed here in China is when they call something a Museum it usually turns out to be a shop. Anyway, it was actually kind of cool to learn a bit about pearls. They even put on a fashion parade for us with around 10 ladies, apparently they were wearing pearls, I didn’t really notice!
Next was of course was the pearl shop which was pretty big, around half the size of a football field. Surprisingly they didn’t have any type of items for the male species, like tie pins or cufflinks. So fortunately they had a nice cafe in the shop, which served the best coffee that we have had in China!
I was knocking back my second coffee and noticed our guides were looking at some earrings for themselves and wife, next thing you know I have bought a pair of pearl earrings (for around AUD$45), I have no idea why I did, or what the hell I am going to do with them. Weird, the two coffees must have gone to me head.
After lunch we headed off for another flight, this time up to Kunming, the city of Eternal Spring. We landed mid afternoon and had a few hours to do nothing or shopping. Tonight we went off to dinner and have the local dish, Over the Bridge Noodles and birthday cake for Judith.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.036s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 7; qc: 24; dbt: 0.0183s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1mb
