April 1, 2015

We have just finished up three days in Guilin, China. If there is one place so far that we were wishing that we could spend more time, it would be here. There was so much to see and we didn’t even scratch the surface on the things to do.

As soon as we arrived, we got to our hostel, dropped our packs and headed out for the afternoon. We still seem to have trouble finding our hotels/hostels when we get into town, but we always figure it out eventually! J We were staying pretty close to the Li River, so lots of the “touristy” stuff was nearby. We spent the afternoon at Elephant Trunk Hill and walked all around the park that they have there. We were able to climb to the top of the mountain and see some pretty nice views of the area. We also climbed down into the center of the cave and spent a while just hanging out.

After that, we were a little pooped from all of the traveling and decided to head back.  On the way back to the hostel, we saw a stand selling Bamboo juice.  Ever since the pandas in Chengdu, Hayden has been saying that he wants to be a panda bear, so this was his chance.  He did try it, but wasn’t really a fan.

The next morning, we got up and wanted to go see the Reed Flute Caves first thing in the morning. We took that public bus out to the caves (gotta love the $.20 bus fare!) When we got to the caves, the lady told us that there was an English speaking tour at 10:30, so we decided to wait…it turned out to be perfect because we were the only ones there and got a private tour! The caves were BEAUTIFUL! The lights made it took so cool and they had a really neat movie about the history of the caves. We were very impressed with the entire tour.

For our final day in Guilin, we signed up for a Li River cruise. We knew that we wanted to take this cruise ever since seeing the geography in the China movie at Epcot. J The “Dragon Tooth Mountains” are along the river and they were definitely worth seeing! The cruise took about 4 hours and was a relaxing ride down the water. The views were fantastic and we met several nice people on the cruise. Hayden made a friend that was his same age, so they spent the entire cruise running around and playing.

We finished up the cruise in a little town called Yangshuo. We really wished that we could have stayed another night to hang out in this town. They had local fisherman that would take you out on a little bamboo raft and show you how they fish. They have trained birds that will dive for fish and bring them back to the top where the fishermen will take them out of their mouths and collect them. It’s a little sad because they tie off the bird’s necks so that they can’t swallow the fish, but it’s not tied tight at all and they give the birds the small fish at the end.

The very end of the trip was a little dramatic because our bus had a tire blow out!  We had to pull over into a local auto place and we got to watch the guy change the tire for about an hour or so.  Luckily, they had a spare and we made it back by 6:30 pm or so.

Overall, it was a very cool three days and now it’s on to Hong Kong!!