Nǐ hǎo Guilin!

Day 1

Unfortunately there was no overnight train from Chengdu to Guilin so I had to spend my first day mainly traveling, as even though it was a fast train (not quite as fast as the bullet trains) the journey took almost eight hours. I arrived at the station and was met by a sea of taxi drivers all shouting “taxi, taxi!” but managed to ignore them all and find the local bus which took me almost to my hostel door. It was about 5pm when I arrived and I was pretty tired after the journey so I just took advantage of their free laundry facilities (yes backpackers do actually do laundry!), had some dinner and went to bed.

Day 2

I booked myself into the Li River Bamboo raft tour for the day and was picked up by the tour bus down the road from my hostel. Unfortunately there was no other guests booked on it from my hostel so I would have to make some friends during the trip. To my complete surprise when I get on the bus the first face I saw was Liza, a french girl I had met at the hot pot party in the Chengdu hostel, who was also travelling alone. We had talked for ages but forgot to exchange details, so I like to think this was the universe giving us a sigh that we need to be travel friends. We also found out during the journey that we were actually planning to follow the exact same route (to the day) for the next 10 days. Spooky. The bus dropped us off at the edge of the river where we were put into groups of four and led to our bamboo rafts (or rather “bamboo” rafts as they were actually PVC piping in the style of old bamboo rafts... not quite as authentic). Our tour guide from the bus told is that we would have a 45 minute raft trip down the river where we would then take an electric buggy for 5 minutes to a photo point, we would then walk along the road cross the only bridge in the area to a small village where she would meet us with the tour bus again. She repeated this five times and gave the most detailed instructions of our route that I jokingly asked how many people had she lost on these tours to which she replied “no one mam!”. She then left us with our raft driver to enjoy the river. The journey was really nice, especially since I have mainly been in cities up til this point so any form of nature is a welcome site, although maybe a few dozen less rafts on the river would’ve made it even better. After the raft journey we followed our instructions and made it to the village and bus stop (it was literally one road, how anyone could get lost is a mystery to me... two people did though!). The tour bus then took us to Yangshuo where the tour finished. Most people were staying in the town but me and Liza wanted to sightsee and then get the bus back to Guilin. We decided to rent some bikes and do the recommended cycle route outside the city. The route took just under tour hours and took us along the Yulong river (which joins the Li river). This was probably one of the most enjoyable things I have done so far in China. It was so peaceful by the river and being in the bikes was a welcome break from all the walking I’ve done until now. After our bike ride we headed to the bus station (aka nondescript car park) and too the bus back to Guilin.

Day 3

Liza and I decided to book a tour to the Longji rice terraces, about a two hour car ride away, and the main reason I stopped in Guilin. Two German guys from her hostel and Danny, my Irish roller disco friend who arrived the night before joined us, making a nice group to trek the rice terraces. As the group was small we took a private car there so were able to sleep on the was. Our driver dropped us at the entrance and pointed to the car and held four fingers up, which we took to mean that we should meet him back there at four. We hoped. As with any tourist site in China that involves a slight walk there was a cable car up to the top of one side of the rice terrace. But being the adventurous (and cheap) tourists we are we decided to hike the whole way. And let me tell you, hiking up a rice terrace in the mid day heat is no easy task! We followed the route on my Maps.Me app and headed to one of the many viewing platforms. Unfortunately it was not right season in china for rice harvests so most of the terraces were dry, however the actual engineering of the terraces (which were built 600 years ago) was pretty damn impressive. After the first viewing platform we were joined by an initially scary looking white dog who we later named White Fang who literally led us through the woods for an hour to the next viewing platform. Every time we thought we might be lost White Fang would appear and lead us in the right direction. Pretty good tour guide! By the time we reached the second viewing platform we had been hiking for three hours so we decided to miss the third and final one in favour of having some much needed lunch (more like early dinner). We headed back down to the village at the base of the terraces and had a very basic dinner of, you guessed it, Rice! (And vegetables). We then trekked back to the car park to the welcome site of our car and driver where he had left us. Needless to say after all that walking we all slept most of the way back to Guilin.

So there you have my two days in Guilin, quite a different side to the China I had seen up to this point. Next stop is Guangzhou for a day before I get the train to Hong Kong.

Until next time!

Zàijiàn!Read more