06-06-20
Spent a bit of time in Yanshou and Guillin. This is one of Chinas most scenic areas. It says in the book that if you say to a chinese person that you are heading there, you can just watch their eyes light up. This is true, and the scenery is amazing. This is the Li river valley which is famous for its zany landscapes. If you're ever been in a chinese takeaway waiting for you curry chips and you see a calendar with some lovely paintings of spikey mountains, rice paddies and jade river valleys, that's the place. I took the boat cruise down the Li river and opted for the Chinese tour rather than the English tourist version, which was great because it was much easier to ignore what the guide was ranting on about, and they don't half go on a bit. Guillin is a region famous for its cuisine. Local specialities include snake soup, wild cat, bamboo rat which you can wash down with a glass of snake bile. Actually I was a bit disappointed with the food because the menus were all in chinese. And I didn't want to risk ordering in chinese. God knows what you might get served to you. You might end up with chicken or duck or potatoes or something.
I was a little disappointed with the service in the gourmet capital. Usually I try to roll with it, when in Rome and all that. But I do object to waitresses farting very loudly beside my table, especially when I'm having my breakfast. I know it was them as apart from myself they were the only ones there. They were having a right old giggle about it too. My waitress on the boat cruise didn't impress me much either. She spent a good 5 minutes squeezing her spots onto the dining room mirror in between courses. One star find here was Johnsons baby lotion. A needle in a haystack of ramshackle hocus-pocus vendors that pass for pharmacists out here. I'm sure some of the potions they've given me here have eye of newt and tongue of frog. Although that's got to be on a menu somewhere here. The baby lotion is for chapped thighs that I've picked up from jogging in the heat, humidity and pollution. Normally if you go into a chinese Chemist and try to explain that you have a skin rash at the top of your thighs, using only sign-language, they produce all sort of goodies, including stay-hard cream from a pharmacist in Beijing. So baby lotion was like gold-dust.
This was also a great place to watch the world cup, and I ended up bumping into an english guy 2 matches too late. He hated the England football team more passionately than any scotch or irishman, and always cheered the other team. Get this. He thought the english pundits were too jingoistic and that they harped on about '66 too much. He was preaching to the converted. Like myself, he was a wine buff and we got to watch the Australia/Brazil game in a chinese Ozzy-pub drinking some excellent Australian Merlot. It was an excellent night, whatever the score was. More thumbnails ...
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