XinGui Hotel Guilin

Our first holiday of the year coincided with our first paycheck of the year. How convenient. The National Day holiday, which celebrates the founding of the Peoples Republic in 1949, provided us with an 8 day holiday after a mind-numbing 30 days of work. It is, however, our last real holiday until Chinese New Year in February, 2010, when we will have a month off. Time to get in to a routine here and save some yuan.

We ...

... I've decided it's worse than in india. In India they stare at you because they think of you as a rich American privelidged person and they've never seen one in real-life before. In China they stare at you vbecause you look weird, I think. They stop in the street and stare, they follow us, they point and laugh at us, they whisper to their friends about us. I think to them we must look like Neanderthal Man! Maybe i'm being a bit harsh on them but that's sure ...

... are going to have a ball with all this stuff. Just looking through some of the boxes as they brought them up was like a huge Christmas, birthday, whatever party.

Had Open Talk a little late and had a dinner brought in for all the helpers.

Thursday, September 17th: Getting ready to go to Guilin in an hour. Thought I would get this off to all of you. By the way if you see anything you would like to buy email me hahaha.

... At first they could not find me in the reservations. I took out my passport and they could see the spelling of my name and said oh yes here you are. The hotel is very nice and the rooms are big with all the amenities. So just as I was settling in I got a call from the lobby. They were sending someone up to get my passport. In all the confusion at the desk they forgot to record it. It was good because I had just searched the room and ...

... Norea and Sian that we met in Xi'an so it was good to see some friendly faces. At 12 there was massive amounts of fireworks going off everywhere. I mean everywhere. It was pretty spectactular. People we lighting fireworks from their hands and bangers were going off within 5 yards of you. You would never get it in England due to the health and safety beauracrats but it felt completely safe until you gave a firework to an American who had no clue what they were doing.

... of the boat... it's a traditional method of fishing done on the Yulong river, where cormorants catch fish, but cannot swallow them because of a ring around their necks... The fishermen then remove the fish and put the birds back in the water to fish some more. At the end of their run for the evening, the birds get rewarded with a few fish, and the fishermen take home their catch... it sounds like it's not much fun for the cormorants, but the ...

... stop at that moment! Hope to come another time and spend some days here in the tranquility. Bicycling in Yangshuo was also a pleasure, you never know what to discover in the countryside, the buffalos, the hardworking farmers or the stone-climbing fans. The rest of time, we just walked around Yangshuo Xijie to find nice food, western or local. The roast chicken in Yuanshiren was ...

... Finally we walked along a river and viewed Elephant Hill. Elephant Hill is located at the confluence of Li River and Peach Blossom River in the southwest of Guilin city. It looks like a huge elephant stretching its trunk drinking water hence the name.

... I take it that for many reasons the Chinese prefer foreigners to go dine in more upscale restaurants. But I increasingly liked it like that. The only possible downside to it was that on my own I would have no way of ordering what I would like to eat there, for in places like this one there was neither a menu nor anyone spoke English, but for the moment it didn't matter, either, since Yan Hua was with me all ...