Guilin

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In Guilin, as soon as the seal on the cabin door was opened the temperature on the plane rose. It hit me like a wall when I debarked. I had to wait an hour for the next bus to take me to the centre but I didn’t mind because I was saving a fortune by not taking a taxi. The hostel was ok and here I met a couple of girls that arrived just after me with no plans for the town. We arranged to hire a driver to take us round the city and save money and time by avoiding public transport. Our first port of call was the Reed Flute cave. A cave system that was used as an air raid shelter during WW2, the caves are full of impressive rock formations of Stalagmites and Stalactites which are illuminated in points to the ridiculous but I do think it is more interesting than solid white light. The formations have typical Chinese names but my favourite was “A centipede scared by a magic mirror”, if anyone can find how this remotely resembles a centipede let alone a scared centipede then my hat is off to you. After this we went to 7 star park and wondered around looking at the water features, the numerous monkeys being fed, an small museum of rock types from all over the world and of course a museum wouldn’t be complete without a small shop in which to buy small scale rocks and jewellery. At night only two of us remained so we splashed out on some Gin and drank a few of the classy 660ml Liq beers found all over town for the exorbitant cost of 70p.

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