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Guilin
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We took a short bus ride from Yangshou to Guilin. It was just over an hour. Guilin is one of China's major highlights as far as tourism goes. Many people come to Guilin as part of a package holiday. It is a shame that most don't get away to the smaller town of Yangshou. Guilin is a beautiful city with places of interest, but Yangshou is where you want to be for the really beautiful scenery and laid back atmosphere. Since we have enough time we decided to check out Guilin as well.
When we arrived at the bus station in Guilin there were a few touts trying to take us to different hotels. We just ignored them. From experience we have learned this is the best way to deal with them. If you even start to speak with them, they will never let up. Unfortunately a simple no thank does now work, in fact saying no thank you twenty times does not work! They always seem to have a look of shock on their faces when we actually walk away from them.
We spotted a lady who had just got off a bus. She had a large plastic shopping bag with handles. It had a live goose in it. All you could see was its head sticking out of a hole on the bottom of the bag. It was quite funny watching the lady carry it through the crowds of people. The goose was moving his head around looking at everything they passed.
Guilin has a population of 1.3 million. It is a scenic and green city, most of which lies on the west bank of the Li River. After checking out a few hotels we settled in at the Osmanthus Hotel, very close to the bus station. It is an okay hotel with some staff that can speak English. The price was 280 Yuan for a double, $40 Canadian. For a bigger city like Guilin this was a good price. The hotel had a restaurant, pool, air conditioning and all the other usual hotel amenities.
We did have some problems during our stay. We had originally checked in for 2 nights. The way most places in China do the check in is this. You pay one large amount of money up front that they call a deposit. It will usually be the cost of your number of nights stay plus an extra 200 Yuan. At check out you settle up the bill and pay more or get a refund accordingly.
After our second night we went to the reception desk and asked to stay another night. You think this would be a simple procedure. We had already payed the deposit for the original 2 nights, so we should just pay another 280, the cost of one more night. The girl at the counter said we had to pay another 400 yuan. We asked her why. She said you have to pay the deposit. We continued to explain we had already paid the deposit and just wanted to stay another night.
A man now came into the scene who looked like some kind of supervisor. He got into the whole mess and started punching numbers into the calculator to justify the 400 yuan. Then we questioned him and he punched more numbers, now he was getting embarrassed as he started to realize it wasn't adding up. He then said we were to pay 320 yuan. By this time we were tired of the whole situation and agreed to pay it, even though it was still wrong.
The next day when we returned to our hotel room after a day's outing, the hotel card would not let us into our room. We went downstairs to the reception desk. The girl scanned our card and said you need to pay more deposit. Jack and I both were getting really cranky with this issue. We said no we did not, we already went through this. A manager stepped over and immediately fixed our card and said it was okay.
Now if we could only have airconditioning! A lot of hotels we have stayed at use the same set up for the air conditioning and the electricity for the rooms. Your key has a magnetic device in it. When you enter your room you place it in a slot by the door. This allows the electricity and air conditioning to work. It stops people from leaving the air con and lights, etc on when they leave. No problem, this makes sense.
Every place we have stayed at does allow you to use the air conditioning all the time while you are in the room, except the Osmanthus hotel. The first day we were there the air con was on in the day while we had been in the room. The 2nd day we were not feeling well so made it a slumber day of hanging out in the hotel. They shut the air con off fairly early in the morning. It was not long before we were sweltering in our room. Jack phoned the front desk and told them it was not working. They said they would send someone to our room to look at it. Within a few minutes the air con magical turned on again. It didn't stay on for long though. We phoned again and got the same response, someone will come up to the room to look at it. Jack told them it is not broken, someone has shut it off.
A manager called us back and explained they only turn the air con on in the evening. The daytime it is cool with a breeze and we should open our windows. Believe me, it is not cool with a breeze here! We told them while it may be okay down in the lobby, but 10 floors up in our small room it is very hot. We also questioned why the air con was on in the daytime yesterday. He argued with us saying it was not. Jack told him it was absurd we were paying for an air conditioned room that we could only use at certain times.
That evening relief finally came at about 7pm when they switched it back on. We went to sleep that night only to awake sometime around 5am. Both of us were soaked in sweat. Judging by how sick and hot we felt, it must have been off for a while. Jack got on the phone again and called downstairs. They keep trying to send someone up to the room to fix it. Jack said no, just turn it on. Within minutes is was running again.
We ended up booking one more night at this place, heaven knows why, but we did. We did make some stipulations when we payed though. We made sure they were not going to lock us out of our room again, and the air conditioning would not be turned off in the night. The lady we spoke to this time was very apologetic. She said the air conditioning would not be turned off. She explained to us that the scan card for our room would only be set for the original check out time and we would have needed to bring it down to have the date changed. That is why we got locked out of our room, she apologized again.
We spent time just wandering the streets of Guilin. It felt nice to be in a bigger city with department type shopping stores and amenities. It was a strange place though. For such a big city we were having more people stare at us here than ever! People just couldn't take their eyes off us here. They were so rude about it too. They wouldn't just take a quick look, it was a good long stare. They would crank their heads around as they walked past us. It was getting really annoying. People just have no tact here. They would gawk at us and sit and talk about us, it was so obvious.
Then things started to turn really ugly. Two days in a row I got touched by a guy. Both times the man was about the same age, I would say in his mid fifties. I don't know who to heck these guys think they are and what right they have to touch me. Both times they grabbed my arm. The first guy grabbed me and mumbled something. I was so shocked I didn't have time to react. The second time the same thing happened. Jack and I were walking down the street side by side and this guy was walking past us. He reaches out and grabs by arm up by my shoulder. This time I turned around and shouted at him while I held my finger out. I yelled "DONT TOUCH ME!" It was loud enough to get quite a few other peoples attention around us.
The thing is, the guy still didn't seem to clue in that what he did was not appropriate. He obviously didn't speak English, so he wouldn't have understood what I said. You would think my yelling and reaction would get the message across though. He just looked at me with a stupid grin and mumbled something in Chinese as he walked away. Thank goodness no one else has done this to me again, because the next guy is liable to get knocked out, if not by me then by Jack.
We have to just grin and bare the fact that we are and will continue to be like a freak sideshow throughout this whole country. Otherwise we will never get through the trip or enjoy it at all. So fine, stare, gawk, point at us and talk away, but touching me is where I draw the line! Jack has turned it into a game now when he catches the old perverts who like to gawk at me. He stands in front of me so they can't see. They get really annoyed, sometimes they try and move to get a view again. Then Jack moves again to block them, it is quite funny.
Another thing that has surprised us in Guilin is the lack of food for us to eat. Of course we didn't think being a vegetarian in China was going to be easy, but for a big city like Guilin we expected more options. It is not just vegetarian food we were seeking, we were really craving some western food. We had been eating Chinese and Asian food for over 3 months now. The Lonely Planet was of little help for us here, mind you we are finding the LP book to be of poor quality for information on many occasions on this trip. They just don't seem to be as good as they used to. Two of three places we checked out in the LP to eat at no longer existed, and it is a new edition.
When we have mentioned that we are vegetarian to other tourists and local Chinese people who can speak English, they tell us that China has tons of vegetables. They say we should be able to get a huge variety of dishes cooked up for us. We have asked for a plate of mixed fried vegetables on many occasions. Sometimes we get a great dish of food served to us, other times we have got a plate of snow peas with a few shavings of carrot thrown in for some colour I guess. Another time we got a big plate of something that was like a spinach, it had been cooked to death. This was from a menu that read fried mixed vegetables. I don' t know how this dish could have been considered to match its description. If we have managed to communicate that we are vegetarian and don't eat meat we get looked at as if we have just landed from outer space. As if we didn't have enough to get stared at, this really tops the cake. Two foreigners, one with weird brown spots all over her face and arms, red hair, big boobs, with a 6 foot 1 tall guy with a mustache and goatee, hairy arms and legs, and now we don't eat meat. We must come from Neptune!
The fun at restaurants continues.... we found a place on the main tourist drag in Guilin, I think it was called the Coffee House. It claimed to serve pizza and sandwiches. We do eat fish, so we were excited to see Tuna sandwiches on the menu. We ordered them and waited in anticipation. When they showed up we were a bit surprised. We each got only half a sandwich cut into two triangles. There was even less because for some bizarre reason everything you order in China with bread has the crusts cut off. There was a sad amount of stringy looking fries on the plate as well. The big surprise was when we opened the sandwich to take a look at it. It had a bit of lettuce, some cucumber and then a bit of creamy looking sauce with some onion bits in it. We called the waitress over to tell her we could not see any tuna in our sandwiches and they must have forgot to put it in. She looked at it and started to point at the sauce saying it was mixed in it. Jack and I just looked at each other and smirked, okay I guess this is how they do tuna sandwiches here. I think they may have put some tuna juice in with the sauce, that was about it. We could not see the smallest bit of tuna no matter how hard we tried. We were really hungry so we devoured what little there was and asked for our bill. We then set off to find dinner number two. Sad that you have to get two meals to fill you up. The darn sandwiches were not cheap either, I think it worked out to about $6 or $7 Canadian each!
Can you take any more restaurant problems, here is one more. I ordered Pumpkin soup at a restaurant and got a corn chowder brought to the table. I questioned the waitress about it. It was not that they had given me the wrong soup, she explained they did not have any pumpkin soup. Wouldn't you normally tell the customer this and give them other options. Then after we had been seated for 15 minutes, got drinks and placed our food order the waitress comes to our table. We are made to lift everything off the table, our cups, teapot, salt, pepper, cutlery, napkins, etc, so she can put a table cloth on it. We are completely baffled by this, nothing was wrong with our table, no one else got a table cloth that was eating, and there was even another couple of westerners sitting behind us that didn't get one? We were warned about how many things here are done very backwards from other countries, we are certainly experiencing this.
It was a big effort to find every meal here it seemed. Yangshou at a mere 300,000 was easy, they really catered to westerners there. We would find many restaurants in Guilin, but even the ones with extensive menus had meat in everything. Even a bakery is not safe here. They put meat into the buns. A lot of the baking has this stringy sawdust looking stuff stuck all over it. At first I thought it was a sweet sugar looking substance, but was quickly turned off when I found out it is shredded pork. It's not that we try to find western style food everywhere we go. What would be the point of traveling around the world to do that? You do have to keep in mind that everything at home that is a pet here is eaten and a lot of the other food is not identifiable. It's just not a country we are very willing to experiment with the food!
In desperation we went into KFC to have some fries. KFC is everywhere here. Even the smallest most remote place will have one. As does the rest of the places we have traveled. Small places in Africa had them too. If you eat chicken you can literally survive around the world off KFC. They are like full size restaurants here. The one we went into was huge. We couldn't get out of there fast enough, tons of kids running around, people everywhere, then the staring of course, like they have never seen a foreigner eat fries before! It was the blaring music that we couldn't stand. We had to yell across the table to hear each other. It seems everywhere in China is noisy. They love noise here, they can't get enough of it.
Then we made the ultimate sacrifice. For the first time in over 10 years we dared to enter a McDonalds. Ughhhhhh, we can hardly look at ourselves. We were starving for something other than a bowl of rice or noodles. We ordered fries and in great fear decided to try a Filet O' Fish. It was just like I remember them years ago. A square fish stick cooked up and globbed with tartar sauce and put in bun. At least it was something different.
We did manage to find some good food at a place called Rosemarys. It is also in the main tourist section of the city. We ate there several times. The pizza, risotto and soup were all good. The veggie pita was not, don't try it. It was stuffed with potatoes and fried onions, it was all very greasy. This was yet another place we have been to that has a picture of Bill Clinton when he was here. This guy really gets around.
While walking around we came across the Sheraton Hotel. We decided to go in and check out their restaurant, surely they would have some descent food. Our meal ended up being about $50 Canadian, but it was worth every penny of it. Jack had some spinach and ricotta cheese ravioli with tomato sauce and I had a piece of baked salmon imported from Norway. My plate also had garlic mashed potatoes and a bunch of vegetables cooked to perfection. Yummmmm.
We went into a grocery store, well what they call a grocery store here. First of all every place like this seems to have more candy than anything else in the store. There's aisles of it. I guess nutrition is not important. There happened to be a sale happening at this particular shop. I can't begin to describe the chaos. I have some of it on video, so ask to see it when we get home. There were two main sale items, these large containers of fish oil and fresh packages of large squid. You would think the world had come to an end. The till line ups were going to the back of the store. People were pushing and shoving in all directions. It looked like there was more than enough of this oil to supply half of China, but the people were attacking the displays like vultures. I would have loved to have taken a decibel reading of the noise level.
On top of the volume from the sale, in certain areas of the store there are demo stations. These are much like we have at home, a lady with a table of products that you can taste in hopes that you will buy it. The difference is at each station there is a mega phone with a blaring pre-recorded speech about the product. It repeats over and over. Unfortunately this was the only place we knew of to get a few items we wanted so we stayed through the madness. You can imagine the anxiety level by the time we finally made our way through the checkout.
Line ups...... No space can be left at anytime. That is if a proper line is formed. I don't have enough writing space to start on the complete lack of how to queue in a line here. To add an update to this, we have been told it is one of the main thing being taught to the public for the Olympics in Beijing. How to form a line for something! If you are standing in a line here, even if it is at the ATM machine, you can not leave a space. Someone will budge in front of you.
Personal space...... In China forget it, you have none. Your little personal space bubble you have been living in is gone! People will sit almost on top of you in seats. You have to learn to push and shove your way through people. No one says sorry if they bash into you. When you first arrive you find yourself standing and waiting to get through somewhere. You have to soon give up all politeness you have brought with you from home. It will get you no where here.
Washrooms...... All dignity and privacy will go out the window. You will develop a great tolerance for smelly washrooms. Smells that would be at the top of your gagging list at home will be placed as acceptable on your tolerance level. Some of the weirdest signs are in the washrooms. No flushing of paper for smoothing of pipeline, we had in our hotel room bathroom. This toilet is for urination only a 50 Yuan fine for other was in a restaurant washroom. One squatter I went into had the entire stall covered in mirrors from floor to ceiling, you can bet this gives a lovely view of yourself.
I don't know how many times I have been shocked to be in an upscale place and find that they have squatter toilets. The other thing is you must carry tissue with you at all times. If a place supplies western style toilets there is usually paper supplied, but hardly ever if it is a squat toilet.
We have witnessed all kinds of strange things on the streets here. Apparently foot procedures on the street are quite common. Small surgeries are even performed. We witness this several times. Some guy sits on a small wooden stool and has the patient do the same. He has a small selection of sharp metal instruments. We saw one guy that must have been getting something like bunions cut off, his foot was pouring in blood. All this was happening right in the city on a sidewalk along a major road.
The driving is crazy, even how the people walk is very different. All the ways in which you expect someone to respond or move are not what you would expect. Jack got hit by a girl on a scooter. Jack was walking along the SIDEWALK when this girl just came up and ran right into him, her tire stopped in between Jacks legs. Luckily she wasn't going to fast or there could have been some injuries. If you are walking people will not move out of the way, you have to move. If you keep going they will walk right into you. When the walk signal goes on for pedestrians to cross the street, the traffic keeps turning through the pedestrians. You have to try and weave your way through it to get across. At first we would just stand there in shock as it looked like people were going to get killed. Now we can weave our way across any busy street with the best of them. You have no choice, otherwise you would never get anywhere.
Quite often on a busy road you will see a couple of people that tried to cross the lanes of traffic only to get stuck. They stand in between two lanes of speeding vehicles waiting to get across. I can't stand to look. We love watching the intersections when the traffic is waiting for the light to change. There will be a group of sometimes a hundred or more bikes that have made their way up to the front of the cars. Then the light changes and you see the bikes and other vehicles all weaving and dodging each other through the intersection. Surprisingly they all seem to avoid hitting each other.
There are some interesting fashion styles here. I think they are eternally stuck in the 80's. The hair do's are crazy. The more dried out, frizzed out, fried and bleached your hair is the better. This goes for guys and girls. All the clothing has to have as much stuff stuck on it as possible. They cover everything in lace, buttons, zippers, snaps, bows, sparkles and crazy pictures. Short knicker style pants or skirts with knee high fish net stockings and high heels with a puffy laced shirt seems to be a big hit!
Then there are the welders masks that the women wear. They are a huge sun visor with a dark plastic shield. It swivels down to cover the entire face and neck area. These are worn while walking around and riding the scooters and bicycles.
We witnessed an armored car and the crew picking up money from a bank. The guys came out carrying the bags while several other men surrounded them holding pistols up in the air with both hands. This was a little disturbing to say the least!
While we were walking one day it started to downpour suddenly. It got really ugly there was tons of thunder and lightening going on all around us. There was barely any pause between the thunder and the flashes of lightening. We knew the storm was right over top of us. We huddled under a stores overhang with many other people. The streets started to flood instantly. We couldn't believe the amount of water coming down. It was a long time before we could leave the overhang to continue to our destination. It finally let up a bit, but we were still getting soaked as the rain was coming at us sideways. We found out later that day on the news that the area around Guilin had received 18cm of rain in a 6 hour period!
 
 
We took a boat tour of the water system. It is called the Four Lakes, Two Rivers Project. They have connected the lakes and rivers for ease of travel around the city. The rivers flow into the lakes keeping the water in the lakes fresh. It was a nighttime tour, so many things along the lakes and rivers were lit up. It was really enjoyable, we definitely recommend it. There are two locks that the boat has to go through because of the different heights of the lakes and rivers. One is a lift type lock where the boat is raised or lowered in the water on a platform. The other one fills up the lock with water and raises the boat up. We got to cruise along seeing all the lit up pagodas and buildings, as well as many bridges and water fountains in the lakes.
 
There is one village near the end of the trip that is quite impressive. There are lit up pagodas and buildings everywhere. Two glass enclosed buildings have special performances on the water just for the boats when they come by. One has Chinese violin players and the other has some traditional dancers. We passed by two pagodas that are quite well known in China. The sun pagoda which stands at 42 meters high and is made of copper. The moon pagoda a bit shorter is made of marble. They are quite impressive whether you see them in the day time or lit up at night.
We also went to a place called Jing Jiang Princes City. It was an ancient walled city, and is now a park and Guanxi University. We climbed up many stairs to Solitary Beauty Peak in the Park. We got a great view of Guilin in all directions from the top.
 
We went to Seven Star Park as well. It had very nice grounds for walking around. We climbed the peak here too. The entry fee to the park includes the entry into a very large cave. It used to be full of water and was used a long time ago as a transportation system with small boats. They have set up coloured lights inside to give some neat effects with the stalactites and stalagmites. Apparently this gets very repetitive with the parks here, they all have a peak to climb and a cave to see. Once you have seen one, you have seen them all. They made it very cheesy inside the cave by putting photo set ups in two spots. They try and get you to shell out money by taking your picture near some of the nicer areas of stalactites.
 
 
 
 
We took a taxi back to one of the areas we really liked on the night boat tour. It is called Mulong Lake Park. It was quite different looking in the day. It was a very tranquil place to wander around when we were there. The park is situated around a lake. We basically had the whole place to ourselves. We have been very pleased with getting taxis in China so far. All of them have used the meter and taken us to exactly where we asked them to go. A big change from what we experienced in Thailand. In the park there were some students practicing to do a play of the Sound of Music. It was quite funny to be walking around and hearing Doe A Deer being sung.
 
There is a place called the Waterfall Hotel that is worth checking out if you are in the area. Every night at 8:30pm the entire back side of the hotel is turned into a gigantic flowing waterfall. Music is played while the water flows for about 10 minutes.
At the end of our stay in Guilin we took a cruise down the Li River. It goes one way and actually took us back to Yangshou. The price includes a bus trip back to Guilin. They only give you about 40 minutes to spend wondering Yangshou before you have to get on the bus. That's such a shame for the people who will have this as their only opportunity to see the town. Since we knew Yangshou well and how to get the bus back to Guilin we decided to take a local bus back ourselves. We took the opportunity to stay in Yangshou and have some lunch and make it a much more relaxing day.
The boat trip was about 3 hours in length. We could have done this river cruise while we were in Yangshou. It is a lot cheaper than doing it from Guilin, but we didn't have very good weather while we were there. We also heard the river cruise from Yanshou is not very well organized and you spend most of your day waiting around. The boat cruise from Yangshou is much shorter as it only goes on a portion of the river that the one from Guilin does.
The boat cruise gave us some incredible views along the Li river. We coasted along as the water wound through tall pointed mountains. It was amazing how they towered along side the shore. There were waterfalls coming down the sides of some of the Karst cliffs. We passed by other tourist boats. Some areas of the river had grass islands with grazing water buffalo.
The trip included a lunch, but it wasn't very good. It consisted of a big plate of corn and peas, some rice, dumplings and bananas.
We passed by fisherman in small boats as well as guys trying to sell us stuff. You have to picture this, we are in a big boat with two levels. It holds about 100 people. Some of these guys are on either a bamboo raft or a small wooden canoe type boat. They catch up to the boat and grab onto the side of it. They reach up to the people on the deck holding out items they have for sale. You would barely be able to reach the items they were so far down. They had things like carved wooden buffalos, marble Buddhas and many other trinkets.
We had a great time, if anything it was a great opportunity to meet people from all over the world. It would be nice if you could get onto some of these areas of the river at sunset or sunrise, you could have some incredible photo opportunities. I have seen some beautiful pictures done at these times, but I don't know how the people got them. Maybe they hired a private boat to take them out.
Guilin despite being a bigger city is still a nice place to visit. It is a very pretty city if you take the time to get out of the main areas and out into the many parks and green spaces it has.
See you in Longshen and the Rice Terraces
Latest Comments (1)
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guilan (reply)
Jul 5, 2006 19:14 EST by 6793026
it was my first time hearing a hotel turning off the air con. I have had it happened to be in Europe but in a chinese hotel. I guess whatever it takes to cut off their bottom line.
As to getting what you want to eat, I guess you found it the hard way that all their buns are usually pork, bbq pork, or curry meat fillings inside. KFC is bigger than McDonalds in China. THe variety and ... show all
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