Hotel New Plaza Guilin

... 5 minutes), took a boat (in the dark, they gave us flashlights) where 2 guys poled us through, walked, took another boat (poled us through) to the exit of the cave on the Li River, then switched to a bigger boat with a motor on the Li River back to where we started. That tour was close to 2 hours.<br><br>The second place we went was a "scenic" area near the Li River. This place was equally interesting with ...

Guilin's Diecai Hill Park <br><br><br>After visiting Fubo Hill, my Mother and I headed to Diecai Hill Park. This park is also located on the banks of the Li River and is just a bit south of Fubo Hill, within easy walking distance. About fifteen minutes. I like this park, not only for its natural beauty, but for its bird aviary. Diecai Hill is quite a long sprawling hill. It covers a large area and luckily because I work for China Odyssey Tours, I get in free. <br><br><br>Like so many ...

... train were horrible. I cannot even describe the smell. Luckily Hand Sanitizer was abundant. <br><br>When we arrived in Guilin it was very hot and humid. We lugged all our gear off the train to the terminal and then made our way out to the parking lot to meeting our foreign office representative, Goa. <br><br>A flight would have been easier, but the train provided the chance to see alot of the country side which became more and more beautiful the father south we traveled. <br><br>

... own travel agency, Clint wants to open up two more schools. Julia has an idea to open a farmer style eating place on one of the popular bike routes. All of them were in today. 05-24-09 NO RAIN The rain has stopped again. We had a couple of really good down pours. Right now it is over cast. I am back to my regular routine. It is a weekend and we tutor local kids at the Juice Bar in the mornings. It is a combination of games, singing ...

... a demonstration of chinese Art by one of the professors (one for you Lucy) Silk painting is traditional here but alos water colours in certain places. We spent some time looking around the University ( or at least I did) Watching the students painting and practising Tai Chi. This would be a very different life from a western university student, very controlled and working hard are the themes here. I understand now why Chinese students in England work as hard as they do.

... starodavnih stilov okrasja z moderno arhitekturo in posnemanje nasega nacina zivljenja. Tako je mogoce videti urejene restavracije, ki se zgledujejo po podobnih ustanovah na zahodu, s to razliko, da imajo tukajsnje restavracije pred vhodom razstavljene zive zelve, kokosi, zajce, race, ribe, kace, morske prasicke in se mnoge druge zivali. Tezko bi si bilo na zahodu predstavljati, da bi si obiskovalci zeleli izbirati svoj naslednji obrok med zivalmi v kletkah preden bi ...

... new directions to an Internet cafe WITH use of USB, we slowly made our way there to get some blogging done... Even with our new amazing directions it took time to find, and actually I think we ended up in a completely different internet cafe, but still... Unfortunately for us, bot Flickr and Travelpod were blocked from this cafe... we thought it was the whole of China, as we found websites claiming that was the case... but when we got back to ...

... beautiful red jade dragons there and initially tried to tell me we could take them in our luggage (all 16 kilos of them) until I had a hissy fit and he gave in and agreed to post them home. Finally we headed back to the hotel and had Room Service for dinner and watched the Olympics (in Chinese of course, but never mind) and I packed, before going to sleep, ready for an early start the next morning for Yangshuo.

... the day, it was a lite rain for most of the day, which was nice to keep the temp down. We also ended up losing the trail and sort of creating our own part of the way. Which was fun as we were doing some jungle trekking at one point, when we were furthest from the trail. But we eventually found our way back and in one piece so that's all that matters. As we walked through the terrace, we would see some farmers every once in a while. The manual back ...

... the vehicle in front of him, despite any blind corners. The late night traffic jam was also very interesting as I thought we'd be way out of "town" only to find at all hours of the night the Chinese are in their shops, walking to work (I assume) and generally out and about. The roads in some areas are like home - even better really and others look a lot like the ones ...