Guilin

Bullet train again from Chongqing to Guilin, a beautiful city surrounded by dramatic limestone karsts. Very hot and humid, quite surprising as we are halfway through autumn. After checking into the waterfall hotel ( which incidentally had the biggest bed I've ever seen - had to be almost 3m wide), we visited the Sun and Moon Pagodas which are also known as the Gold and Silver Pagodas. We strolled through the busy market Street selling the usual assortment of street food and souvenirs. The speciality here is foods such as icecream, yoghurt and tea flavoured with the local osmanthus flower which is also used in perfumes and soaps. The Waterfall hotel has a performance every night for 10 minutes where thousands of litres of water cascade over one wall of the hotel. There appears to be jets for fountains but they didn't come on, and we were under the impression there were supposed to be a light show but that was also a no show. So basically, all we saw was a building in a heavy rain storm with some music - not that impressive.

We only had one night here, then had a side trip for 2 nights before returning to Guilin (I'll cover the side journey in a separate footprint). Upon returning, we visited a tea plantation and learnt about the picking and processing of the tea leaf, followed by a tea tasting ceremony. Then it was a trip to Yao Mountain by cable car - about 900m above Guilin - for some fantastic views. Back to the same hotel and this time the view from our room was over the lake and Pagodas - very nice.Read more