Guilin....China

  My last blog had me arriving back in Nanning after my train trip to Behai. I had posted a blog earlier about my bus ride to Sanya from Nanning (itoddmac.blogspot.com) and what an ordeal it was. I also posted a blog on this site (itoddmac1.blogspot.com) about my experience with climbing up a military mountain and the details that followed. Both of these previous blogs go together with this blog; I had decided after the reckless driving and the smoking on the bus from Nanning to Sanya that I would fly to Guilin. I was fortunate to have my friend Star in Sanya, despite the crazy scene with the military I had a great time with her and her family.

                     

    My flight to Guilin was 1 one hour and 20 minutes. The airport was 26 kms from the city so I caught a bus; the scenery was nice, there were many small limestone hills across the horizon and surrounding the city.

                     

 Once I was in the city I walked around and eventually found appropriate lodging. I went out and bought a map so I could familiarize myself with the city; and took a few photo's.

                    

 The Li River is a focal point for the city, many locals either fish in the river or use it to travel.

                                   

I found out quickly that the locals were very friendly, there were many foreigners in comparison to other places and these friendly locals seemed to be very genuine. The first park I walked past was Elephant Hill and it was 230 RMB to get in so I just kept walking. I arrived at a small lake connected to the Li River and there were 2 pagoda's for which I paid 30 RMB to enter them.

                      

The tallest pagoda was 1,000 years old and just amazing as far as pagoda's go. This pagoda, at 350 tonnes, is the largest structure made of copper in the world. There is a tunnel under the water that joins this old pagoda with the other more recent structure; in the tunnel there were 1400 year old stone statues and other artifacts.

                                   

After taking photo's from all angles of the pagoda's I went up to the top which give me good views of the surrounding area; too bad there was so much haze. All the tourist brochures have clear blue skies, maybe in the winter there are days with such a view, OR...the photo's are altered.

                      

    I waited around for the sun set when the pagoda's were lit up; they were very beautiful.


                       


I walked through the large street market that locals set up every night on the way back to the hotel,

  In the morning I was out early walking the streets, this city is very clean by Chinese standards; rarely did I see motorcycles on the sidewalk or hear drivers honking their horn. There were some men taking their morning swim in the Li River until the tourist boats approached from the distance. I could see 11 of them rounding the bend, who knows just how many in total. Guilin also has some rice terraces close by for the tourist to view, along with the jutted limestone cliffs.

                       

   I made my way to the Seven Star Cave Park and it was a great destination. There are many wild monkey's living in the park, they are always so entertaining; it was hard not to take too many photo's.

                                         

 I climbed to the top of one of the peaks, it was difficult enough to ensure there were no tourists up there. Although there was a lot of heat haze the view was nice; there were so many different colourful butterflies; sitting up top was very tranquil. Once back down from the peak I checked out the rock galleries, there were several buildings that housed these spectacular rocks.

                         

  In this park there is also the Camel Rock, it is hard to tell from this photo but the formation really does look like a camel; one can search on-line (camel rock guilin) to see a better shot.

                         

  The next day I left the hotel early to try to escape the heat. I went to the Kings Castle which is part of a small city surrounded by an old wall. I then went to Jingjiang Prince City which was pretty nice, this is the Chengyun Gate.

                          

The rest of the day I walked around to take in the scenery, the atmosphere in this city is excellent for tourists; with clear visibility the scenery could be very nice. My experience in Guilin was very positive and it was no surprise why tourist come to this area.

 There was no day train heading north from Guilin so I booked the 10 hour journey to Hengshan with a 12:45 am departure time......more hard seat hell and a sleepless night BUT, moving on and discovering new territory i