First let me explain how we got to Guilin. Obviously by airplane, but that’s not what I meant. In March I contacted China Highlights, a travel agency in China that specializes in private or group tours, customized to fit the schedule and budget you present them with. I was pretty much immediately in touch with Ruby Zhou, a travel consultant. She was responsive, super nice and her English was all that I could want or need. Ruby put up with my back and forths on what was “doable” in regard to price and oops… she also put up with some minor faux paux about dates. For some reason I started out telling her we arrived in China on the 12th and left on the 18th. Truth was we arrived on October 8th and left the 19th. MORE time to explore! Around the same time I paid more attention to our flight details I also starting paying attention to Ruby’s signature line. All those emails and I just noticed that she lived in a place called Guilin.
Mark and I Youtube’d Guilin (as you do) and loved what we saw. Karst mountains, gently flowing rivers, bamboo rafts, caves, steep rice paddies and so much more. We had to go so I asked Ruby to add the extra days to a part of the trip that was in south China.
Back to our guide: Jason started out by saying he thought we’d probably seen some great museums and enough of them. Our first outing was to a very old part of the city. This part of Guilin was donkeys years old. When the trade route was solely the river and goods came up from the big city or down from Guilin and trading happened at the dock or close to it.
I loved walking through the old town. Jason let me borrow an umbrella, since today it was kinda rainy. The shiny street, old doors, umbrella colors and characters that we met were great.
We wondered about the deep but narrow homes that bordered the streets and Jason asked a random guy if we could step into his home and take a look around.
The guy who stepped out of his home just after this plan happened to be a retired teacher, his father was a teacher in the area too and his daughter was following in his footsteps. She had married a Japanese guy and moved to Japan and I couldn’t quite gather if that was approved of or not. His home was decorated with pictures of family, a cigarette collection, lots of wood carvings and a minah bird in a cage that said “ni hao” when I talked to it.
And then there was the afternoon. Actually I had asked Ruby to add Flute Reed Cave to our itinerary. Another Youtube discovery? Perhaps.
The cave, stunning in natural beauty was lit in a way that I will call truly Chinese. Lots of colored lights. Magnificent and fun and rather psychedelic.
That evening Mark and I used our time not to relax and do laundry, even though both were overdue, but to walk along the river and into town.
With some direction from Jason we enjoyed a beautiful walk followed by an enlightened visit to the pedestrian mall. We kinda gambled with dice we found at an outdoor restaurant while sampling Vietnamese rolls, then happened upon street food to make anyone squirm. Spiders, centipedes, scorpions, larvae and more… all skewered and fried. We took pictures but hell no… we didn’t eat it!
What we did eat, was half of a nearby bakery.
My fav... the matcha green tea roll with cream cheese type filling. Yummy!
We walked home the less scenic route, through the city and via underground tunnels to cross complicated wide and busy streets.. It was not advised by Jason, but we did it anyway. It’s not often we go against the advice of our guide! LOL Rebels.
Mark and I Youtube’d Guilin (as you do) and loved what we saw. Karst mountains, gently flowing rivers, bamboo rafts, caves, steep rice paddies and so much more. We had to go so I asked Ruby to add the extra days to a part of the trip that was in south China.
Back to our guide: Jason started out by saying he thought we’d probably seen some great museums and enough of them. Our first outing was to a very old part of the city. This part of Guilin was donkeys years old. When the trade route was solely the river and goods came up from the big city or down from Guilin and trading happened at the dock or close to it.
I loved walking through the old town. Jason let me borrow an umbrella, since today it was kinda rainy. The shiny street, old doors, umbrella colors and characters that we met were great.
We wondered about the deep but narrow homes that bordered the streets and Jason asked a random guy if we could step into his home and take a look around.
The guy who stepped out of his home just after this plan happened to be a retired teacher, his father was a teacher in the area too and his daughter was following in his footsteps. She had married a Japanese guy and moved to Japan and I couldn’t quite gather if that was approved of or not. His home was decorated with pictures of family, a cigarette collection, lots of wood carvings and a minah bird in a cage that said “ni hao” when I talked to it.
And then there was the afternoon. Actually I had asked Ruby to add Flute Reed Cave to our itinerary. Another Youtube discovery? Perhaps.
The cave, stunning in natural beauty was lit in a way that I will call truly Chinese. Lots of colored lights. Magnificent and fun and rather psychedelic.
That evening Mark and I used our time not to relax and do laundry, even though both were overdue, but to walk along the river and into town.
With some direction from Jason we enjoyed a beautiful walk followed by an enlightened visit to the pedestrian mall. We kinda gambled with dice we found at an outdoor restaurant while sampling Vietnamese rolls, then happened upon street food to make anyone squirm. Spiders, centipedes, scorpions, larvae and more… all skewered and fried. We took pictures but hell no… we didn’t eat it!
What we did eat, was half of a nearby bakery.
My fav... the matcha green tea roll with cream cheese type filling. Yummy!
We walked home the less scenic route, through the city and via underground tunnels to cross complicated wide and busy streets.. It was not advised by Jason, but we did it anyway. It’s not often we go against the advice of our guide! LOL Rebels.
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