Li River Cruise -- Guilin City

Today shall forever be known as the day I took 263 pictures. Did my dad proud today, and I know had he been here, he would have out photo-ed me in a heartbeat.

Guilin City

My guide tells me that Guilin is known for four things, mountains, water, caves and rock terraces. She promised we would see all of them today, and we did. We were working on a shortened schedule (due to the change in flight time, I now only have one day in Guilin instead of the day and a half scheduled.)

At any rate, for those of you who have never heard of Guilin, it is the area in China that serves as the inspiration for most of nation's most beautiful, scenic mountain, river, and mist watercolors.

(Oh by the way, before I forget, remember what I said about the Sheraton Xian having the best breakfast in China? Forget it, the Guilin Sheraton wins hands down. I wheeled and dealed my way into the Chinese breakfast buffet, and boy oh boy, was I in dumpling, sparerib and various other dim sum delicacy heaven. My guide had suggested I eat a big breakfast as the lunch served on the boat would come at the most scenic time, so I may want to eat late. Being ordered to eat a big breakfast was NO problem for me, so I had seconds of the spareribs with black bean sauce.)

Li Jiang River Cruise

The cruise itself was a leisurely four hours. It wasn't completely a meditative experience, as there were always about 50 people on the sun deck jockeying for the three best photo spots.

Furthermore, there were about six boats just like ours caravaning down the river, making it difficult to get a great photo of the river itself without tons of boats in the picture. Obviously, despite the boat caravan, I still managed to do okay in the picture taking area.

However, the scenery was unbelievably amazing. Great poets and presidents have used better words than I could come up with to describe it's beauty, so I settled for eating up digital camera battery time.

Life along the river was also fun to watch. Because we traveled on a Sunday, the banks were particularly active. In many of the villages, the farmers wandered down to the river with their children, just to watch the boats go by. Children waving, and we delighted tourists waving back.

Speaking of waving, the weirdest and coolest and just all around fun experience were the boat loads of Chinese tourists traveling in the opposite direction. They would all stand on the deck of the boat waving at us, and as soon as one of us would wave back they would all jump up and down and cheer and just go crazy. We soon started to wait for the Chinese tourist boats to go by, just so we could hear them cheering.

Of course there were the requisite vendors selling numerous products along the river as well. All of these guys would paddle by on these super narrow rafts (usually just five bamboo poles wide) that didn't seem very stable. Water would slosh through the poles, wetting their feet, which were bare anyway. However, bare feet and all, most of the guys also wore some kind of suit jacket. The haggling from upper sun deck to raft was a hoot to watch, and became almost as fun as searching for Chinese tourist boats.

So my guide was correct in telling us that some of the best scenery did happen during the lunch period. In fact, ultimately I ended up skipping lunch, as during this time, there were only two or three people on the sun deck.

If you ever find yourself taking this cruise, I highly recommend you pack a lunch box, or bring along some snacks as the best time really is when everyone else is downstairs fighting over the buffet line.

Drive Through the Countryside

After we landed, the guide and driver escorted me to a local jade museum (bad news, I’m now two pieces of jade richer, but of course I really needed the good luck stone for my business) followed by a lovely drive through the country.

The first peach blossoms were blooming, and in addition the rape seed flowers were blooming in the fallow rice fields. My guide, worried that I might starve (if only she knew my eating schedule, but luckily she can’t see this blog, as it is blocked in China), stopped at several roadside farm stands to buy me some fresh oranges and pomelos. Oh gosh, such sweet fruit off the vine.

Reed Flute Cave

Next we got to explore one of Guilin’s largest caves, the Reed Flute Cave. This place was huge underneath, so large in fact, that my guide told me that they often hold special events and dinners inside. There were so many carvings and shapes, but my favorite scene was this one shot outside of the reflecting pool. Kind of resembles a miniature cityscape, no?

After the cave, it was on to Fu Bo Hill (sigh, more steps) which offered a really delightful view of Guilin City. At the top, I made a new friend, who’s entire English knowledge consisted of “Los Angeles, Very Good” and “You Very Beautiful.” I’m such a sucker for flattery. By the way, too bad my thumbs up in this picture, as it is hiding my newly acquired jade pendant.

University Art Gallery

Our final stop, on this adventure-packed day was a stop at the Guilin University Art Gallery. The University is the home of most of the most famous watercolor, oil painting and waterink masters in China. Many of them are professors at the university, and many of their works are on display at the art gallery. (Can you just hear my wallet crying out.)

At any rate, we took a brief overview course about Chinese watercolors, and you can kind of see my masterpiece behind me to the left. I wanted to buy this teacher’s art work, but he was a little TOO experienced (in the price range area) for my tastes. Didn’t stop me from buying some other watercolors (did you notice the use of the plural “some” as opposed to the singular “one” here) from some of the University’s more gifted students. Bad, bad, bad. BAD.

My official driving tour had ended, and with a warning to be ready tomorrow morning at 6:45 am sharp, my guide headed out.

Not being in the mood for more hotel food, today I wandered over to the Guilinese Good Luck restaurant. Their fabulous menu had the weirdest and coolest stuff on it, and I just couldn’t decide for the life of me what I wanted. I ended up with a beef soup with cilantro, a plate of noodles, another Guilin specialty of deep fried pork ribs. Sounds gross, should have been gross, but tasted SO good. My final dish was a barbecued pigeon (served head and all.) Also a new favorite for me, although I’m probably going to leave the pigeon hunting to the professionals.

With a 5:30 am wake up call, I didn’t even care that I was in bed by 8:30 pm and asleep by 8:31.