Chinese National Day holiday 1 October – 7 October

First of all we want to thank our group of Chinese friends who helped us make this trip to Guilin possible. From helping us to buy our tickets, getting us to the airport and then home again, we are so grateful as it’s not easy to travel around China when you don’t speak the language and are not used to the traffic and numbers of people. Thank you! And a very special thanks to our new friend in Guilin who went out of his way to ensure that we enjoyed every moment of our time in Guilin. Thank you Ma!

“Guìlín (桂林; Guìlín) is a city in North Guangxi, China. Guilin is a scenic town and one of the best-known tourist destinations in China. There are many scenic places within short traveling distance of Guilin. These include Longsheng with its famous Longji rice terraces; the Li River, a scene of which is printed on the back of ¥20 bank notes; Yangshuo, a small county downstream from Guilin; and much more.

Guilin is a beautiful city. The town center is surrounded by two rivers and four lakes and studded with sheer sided karst mountains. Guilin itself is like most other medium size Chinese cities, other than that it has a large number of western-style hotels, tourists and is relatively free of air pollution. Many Chinese domestic tourists also flock to this area. What makes it special is its proximity to many picturesque limestone mountains and formations.”

It helps to have connections and Ma booked us into this very comfortable, clean little hotel in one of the back streets – not a tourist hotel so we also didn’t pay tourist prices. What a pleasure! R340 a night for the room during Chinese National holiday, after which the price dropped to R210 a night for the room.

Lijiang river cruise

Day 2. Ma fetched us at about 7 am to take us to the terminus for a 5 hour river cruise to Yangshuo village.  There must have been at least 40 cruise boats lined up ready for its passengers. There were ramps between each set of 5 boats so you had to cross one boat to get to another.

As we headed out and looked around I felt like we were in a flotilla. It reminded me of the TV footage of the ‘sail pasts’  we saw of the flotilla of ships and boats  going up the Thames to honour Queen Elizabeth’s diamond jubilee in 2012. On the video (Cruise on the Li River Guilin) the ships and bamboo rafts heading past us had disgorged their passengers and were heading back to base for the next lot of passengers. There are two terminus on the river so we reckoned that there must have been at least 80 cruises ships taking this trip each day.

We had lunch on the boat and altogether it was a spectacular trip.

 

When we arrived at Yangshuo  Ma was there to fetch us and we had lunch at a river side restaurant which included hawk. We met up with two of the university students from Guilin, Jing Jing and Xin Xin. They were to accompany us on the next part of our trip. Initially they both hesitated to speak English but soon relaxed to practice their English – charming young ladies. We left them shopping at Yangshuo Pedestrian Road and Ma took us on the way to a hotel he had reserved for the afternoon so we could have a nap – he showed us such thoughtfulness and kindness.

However, we never got to the hotel because of the traffic jams, and we needed to get back to the Yangshuo to see the show, Impression Liu. We did an about turn….  He said the people of Guilin usually don’t go out over this time of the year because of the traffic but this didn’t deter Ma from giving us a holiday of a lifetime. Driving in China, especially during the very busy season of Chinese National Day holidays is another story. I think even our Durban taxi drivers would be intimidated.