Photo Series Guilin Solitary Beauty Peak

This is one of the most talked about places to visit in Guilin, but we weren't all that impressed - to its credit, we visited around lunch time and were starting to get hungry/grumpy. You walk up the peak and are supposed to get a good view, but there were better views elsewhere in the city.

The highlights were definitely

• the cave underneath with the engraved... I think they were saints, they were all associated with a year, so you were supposed to find yours and pray to it.
• the buildings in the park - they are school buildings now, but used to be the mansions of Prince Jingjiang
  

Photo Series Guilin Reed Flute Cave

Since there are fuzzy mountains all over this area, there are also many caves with stalactite/stalagmite. They light them incredibly well, with tasteful-as-possible disco lights - lighting seems to be a theme there, more on that when I get to the Yangshuo light show. Reed Flute Cave is the only one in Guilin, and it was quite amazing, although had we known we might have skipped it in favor of the ones outside of Yangshuo. Apparently those are bigger and have mud pools and clear pools that you can swim in.

This was entertaining, though, because there are formations in the cave that have been "identified" and named and the guide refers to them completely dead-pan when in fact they are hysterically random. So there was the mosquito net, the vegetable patch (he identified each melon and lettuce), the old man, the lion saying goodbye to the visitors, etc.

I bought two reed flutes for Ava and Spencer, but after hearing the annoying kid on our tour play with his the whole time I might decide not to pass them on.

Guilin on wheels

Day one we decided to rent bikes from Backstreet Hostel and tour the sites. Considering I just relearned how to bike this summer, I did an incredible job.

Guilin is an interesting place. It doesn't span much distance and it is relatively country (it's a tier-3 city), but the city itself is bustling, polluted and crowded. At night we even noticed that all the clubs had metal detectors at the entrance - we decided to pass on the nightlife.

Guilin is RULED by bikes. There are huge intersections of two or three multi-laned roads and no traffic lights, but strangely it is not bedlam. The cars drive at the same speed as bikes and motorbikes and everyone seems to get through alive, however miraculously. Almost all the motorbikes were also strangely silent, which was scary when they suddenly appeared next to you. Their silence was completely made up for by the insanely load tractor/van contraptions that filled the streets. It seems the farmers make these three-wheeled vehicles that look like a tuk tuk and a donkey cart mated and the farmer then strapped a tractor engine to its side. They looked like Mater from Cars.

The city is filled with parks and little mountains and is cut by the Li River - that's what this area is known for, the Li River, Lijiang, and these mountains that Jodee called camel humps. I think they looked more like the bent knees of hairy giants.

Riding in style

So this past week I spent 3 days in Guilin and Yangshuo, which was exciting, but equally exciting was how Gloria and I got there. While Jodee took a short 2-hour flight there, Gloria and I thugged it out on the 13-hour overnight train from Shenzen. We didn't have tickets and were late leaving class Mon afternoon, so we ended up having to run across the border, through the station, down the ticket line (we cut, like try Chinese natives - although unlike them we politely asked permission), and across the platform until finally one of the stewardesses took pity on us (at this point we were sweating and crazy-eyed) and sold us tickets literally as the train was leaving the station.

We had a soft sleeper (best class) there for about $60US and a hard sleeper back for about $35US. The soft sleeper has 4 to a room (although we were lucky enough to be alone), a locking door and a western toilet. The hard sleeper has SIX to a room (the top bunks are like submarine beds, no sitting up), no door (which means the cigarette smoke from the hallway comes wafting in) and a "Chinese toilet," which is code for gross gaping hole.

Otherwise, both classes are relatively similar. We got thick comforters and comfortable pillows and clean sheets both ways. They even have outlets in the rooms.

The food was remarkably good for train food. We got salty scrambled eggs and pork with green chili peppers and rice. They even sold ramen bowls that you could fill from the hot water taps in each car.

The train ride wasn't the end of it, though - I became a true backpacker extraordinaire this trip because I stayed in hostels BOTH nights. And actually, it wasn't as traumatic of an experience as I thought it would be.

In Guilin we stayed at Guilin Backstreet Hostel which was very centrally located near the night market and the pagodas in the lake. It looked dirty because the whole place is so poorly lit, but I didn't see anything all night and I definitely looked. Of course we had to shower over our toilet, but that seems to be the norm in Chinese hostels.

In Yanghuo we stayed at the Yangshuo Culture House which was INCREDIBLE. The place is so spotless that I managed to almost forget that our bathroom was a HOLE. The guy who runs it, Wei, does a bunch of other things - teaches Mandarin, caligraphy, tai chi - and offers 3 meals a day for free if you are around. We were only around for one dinner and breakfast, but it was incredible. There were about 12 of us at dinner and they must have brought out 20 dishes: sweet and sour fried chicken, eggplant and beef, chicken with peanuts, Chinese mushrooms, regular mushrooms, these dumplings with fried tofu instead of dumpling skin (my fave of the evening), snap peas with chicken, string beans with pork, etc. Finally we had to ask when they were going to stop bringing out food and they said: "When you stop eating." Seriously amazing.

Photo Series Bangkok Food

The great thing about food in Bangkok is that it is usually a dollar per meal. And they are willing to put a fried egg on top of anything - rice, curry, noodles, whatever. Also there is the vinegar/red and green peppers hot sauce everywhere, my favorite!

However, because of how people make money there, do not under any circumstances follow suggestions/recommendations given to you by people who say they know the owner or can get you a discount or (if they're cab drivers) will take you there and wait for you to take you to your next destination. Those are always terrible tourist traps and are over-priced (meaning $10) and they're just trying to get a cut. Ugh, not even at meals can you escape it.

There were also these fresh-squeezed juices available everywhere, mostly dragon fruit and clementines - I'm not even a big fruit fan but these tasted like they were made of straight candy, and in the heat it was like the best thing we had ever eaten. I wish I had brought boxes of this stuff back.

Ayuthaya

Our last day we took an hour-long bus ride (private, totally worth it, I think each of the 7 of us paid $10US) to the old capital of Thailand. It's a town just outside of Bangkok that is filled with the ruins of this old city. There are 4 large areas with large bits of walls and temples and buildings, but in addition to those as you drive through this suburban town there are random ancient buildings everywhere, just between modern buildings or on the side of the highway! It was a very nice way to finish the trip because it was very relaxed and our driver was so great - he's the one that stopped on the side of the road to buy us this local dessert so we would try it.

I love how in Thailand religion is very alive and these temples, even the relics, are actively being used still. They decorate the buddhas with robes, even some of the broken old ones. We went to visit a huge ancient gold buddha and people were throwing yellow robes over it (there were people on top of it to catch the robes and pull them over) and then draping the robes over the people praying down below. It was very dramatic, visually speaking, although my fascination could have been due to the immense amounts of incense making me drowsy/high/bizarro.

What was a little more surprising was that in this town we visited the king's summer palace and there were people kneeling in prayer in front of a statue of the king... I heard they still believe in a type of divine monarchy, but it was very strange to witness it. Although I guess it's not that different from worshiping a sculpture of Buddha or Jesus.

Photo Series Bangkok Wat Arun

Wat Arun was definitely my favorite site. It is a temple in the Cambodian style, which is very beautiful. More green and blue than red and gold. The view of the river is also very beautiful from the top of the temple - accessible by the steepest, tallest stairs I've ever climbed. (Much scarier to come down than the Mayan pyramids in Mexico.) Now I really want to go to Cambodia.