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Published: September 21st 2007
We embarked the boat from the Li River Cruise and walked down "West Street". Chinatown is to San Francisco as West Street is to Yangshuo. It's funny though; they sell Chinese souvenirs on West Street. I think that's like buying/selling BBQ, hot dogs, and baseball caps in Chinatown. Anyway, it's a cute touristy street with lots of stores, restaurants, and a few ice cream shops. 😊
We checked into the hotel (Paradesa Hotel) which was quite nice. It had a tropical/Mediterranean feel. The room was pretty nice - we got the "deluxe" room. I thought the tour standard was quite good - the places they brought us to eat, hotels, etc. Guess you get what you pay for.
This trip to Anhui (Huangshan) and Guilin has reminded me that Shanghai is not "real China". I saw a lot more farmland, bad roads, few high rises, few business, nearly no U.S. brands/companies other than KFC and MCDs. On our trip, most of the toilets are squatting, few American brands, everything was much cheaper, etc. People just live to "exist". It's quite sad, in my opinion, but I bet those people feel fine/happy just living off their own land and not
Paradesa Hotel
We had a great deluxe room. I liked the hotel.desiring anything more. Guilin and Yangshuo don't seem to have really anything going for them except for tourism (and farming). Good thing their karst mountains are a sure thing - it's not like their main attraction is a temple and it could possibly catch on fire one day, destroying their economy. I hope Guilin people take care of their environment, esp. keep their water clean. I couldn't live in Guilin/Anhui, etc. It's too rural. We couldn't even get an ATM (China Construction Bank) to take an international card in Guilin.
Cherry asks us if we want to go rafting on the Yulong River (extra 200-300 rmb). I admit I was a bit unethusiastic about it since I was pretty mountained out and it sounded like a rip off. However, we came all the way there... we might as well, right?
We first visited the Big Banyan Tree - 1400 year old tree. Big tree. The surrounding park was nice. See pictures. The we stopped to take pictures of Moon Hill. They try to block the are with flower bushes so you can't take good photos, and to get on top of the ledge/steps, the local person charges 1
Big Banyan Tree
1,400 Years Old! rmb. Our tour guide warned us before we got out of the car. I don't recall stepping on the step, nor does CL since we were both careful, but when we hopped into the car, a young girl comes out and says, "You owe us 1 rmb" Good grief, are you kidding me? She stands in front of the car so we can drive forward. I felt like picking a fight (I'm much fiestier now), but I decided that she and her family were
that pathetic to have to pick on tourists, that I forked out the 1 yuan as a donation. Sheesh!
We headed to our rafting excursion which turned out to be fun, relaxing, and the mountains were
still beautiful. Apparently I wasn't as mountained out as I thought. The river water was cool and clean and I hung my feet over the raft. The rafter gave us a chance to try our hands at rafting and I couldn't even get the bamboo rod into the water - it's so deep!
Me, CL, and Cherry were on one raft together. A woman from the rafting company will sing a few folk songs to you.
Terribly tacky, Big Banyan Tree
Surrounding park area I thought, but it turned out to be fun/funny. She tried to get us to sing as well - but in Chinese! haha. I was humored by it. Later she asked a group of young men on another raft to sing to improvised folk songs to us. And they did!
On the raft we also saw a "fishing show" which is where a fisherman shows you how he catches fish using is cormorants (birds). The necks of the birds are tied and the fisheman pulls out the fish from the birds' throat! Fascinating!
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non-member comment
how does the fisherman guy CATCH the birds? don't they fly away?