Plaza Guilin

... airport. Our plane left for our one hour flight to Guilin at 415 PM. Had to go through customs in Hong Kong and in Guilin since it is like two countries although Hong Kong is a providence of China. Both entering and leaving China, you have to fill out health cards showing where you have been and where you are going including flight numbers and seats in case someone near you comes down with some ...

... them before you eat them but they were sick anyway. Like eating raw pastry dough! All in all, we're at a little bit of a loss with the food here so far. Still testing the waters for what's good. The shops were mental busy. Floors upon floors of stands selling all kind of technology. Guys walk around the streets and shops holding up ads for products like they're on strike. They walk with five or six of them in a row. It looks so strange. As our French friend ...

... after 7pm when we finally got the last load upstairs. For you who do not know I live on the 5th floor and no elevator. Lucky we had some of the students for the Open Talk come by after school to help us. We have enough stuff to open two small stores and really nice stuff to. A great variety of home decoration things. Over 300 framed pictures and the list goes on and on. Lucky I am leaving for Guilin and then off to Shenzhen. The gals at the Juice ...

... said that maybe just to lunch. I said that would be fine. They took me to the restaurant next door to the hotel. Its specialty is Beijing Duck. I had had duck in Beijing. This was pretty good but not quite the same. After lunch which took a few hours. The duck is prepared in a special oven and takes over 45 minutes to prepare. The rain was still coming down pretty heavy. I said I was tired and thought I would just rest for the day ...

... klein beetje zielig voor de beestjes dat ze niet hun zelfgevangen visjes mochten opeten. Maar ja, dit is traditie... Het touwtje om hun nek vond ik ook geen prettig gezicht. Uiteindelijk zag je wel hoe de beesten op de terugweg verlost werden van hun touwtje en de zelfgevangen visjes wel mochten opeten. Volgens mij is dit ook eigenbelang van de visser. Enerzijds omdat de toeristen het anders te zielig vinden en anderszijds omdat de vogels niets meer ...

... mock marriage of the Longsheng people! to start off i had to choose a wife, not wanting to offend those i didnt choose, i picked the smallest for comical value and was then dressed up accordingly. the ceremony was then started an i had to unveil my 'wife' dance around a bit and unfortunately sing a love song to her in front of the crowd of 50 odd people (they manage to get karaoke in everywhere!). now i hate singing, i mean hate it and so when i forced to do this the only ...

... cosa que no resulto tan difícil, en dos horas estábamos de nuevo en Guilin en la estación de buses donde por primera vez vimos los perros que tenían listos para matar y comer...horrible. El segundo dia en Guilin estuvo muy malo, nos alcanzo la cola del Tifon que toco tierra en Hong Kong, pudimos ir al pico mas importante de la ciudad pero nos toco bajo el agua y con mucho viento. Asi que de ahí nos fuimos a la cueva de la flauta de junco que resulto un verdadero espectáculo, las ...

... not to mention backup all of our files from this past term of teaching, etc. using the brand new portable hardrive we recently purchased. But, the computer gods had another scenario in mind, apparently, and are laughing at her frothing consternation and lamenting over the possibility of irretrievable loss of photos, files, music, etc. that seems almost certain at this point. So, the update and photo work may have to wait just a wee bit longer and ...

... experiences. I'm not about to suggest Guilin is an 'amazing' place but from what we saw in the six hours we spent here, I'm sure at least 24 or 48 hours would have been more than enjoyable. We arrived at about 11am after an extremely wet 4-hour bus ride from Yangshuo. The rain didn't let up at all during the journey or after our arrival so we elected to book a same-day overnight train all the way to Kunming in order ...