After quite an uneventful train ride we arrived in Guilin, our last stop in China. We had arranged for our hostel to pick us up from the train station. This turned out to be a waste of time as the guy who met us just walked us to the hostel which was about a kilometre and as my back had been bad the last few days it annoyed us.
The hostel was actually one of the better ones we had stayed in, 4 bed dorm with air con. It was also very close to the town which was ideal and had a nice view over the river.
We had a walk around the town and found a nice little street cafe for lunch. We had the famous Guilin Rice clay pots. Rice is coked to a sticky consistency in the bottom of the pot and then you pick and choose your veggies and sauce to go on top. At just 20Yuan for both (2 quid) we were laughing. We also found a great little juice booth which did amazing fresh mango juices.
As the sun went down on the first night I couldn't believe the change in temperature. It was actually a nice change. A little bit of bite in the air but still fairly comfortable. I have to wear my Scarf!!
The Chinese staff in our Hostel were very cool and they taught me how to play the traditional game of Mahjong. I remember Nannie teaching me the electronic version on the computer years ago. The Chinese game is played with big ceramic tiles. It's so much fun and doesn't take long to learn. I got addicted! The Chinese generally use it as a gambling thing but we were just doing it for fun.
We did a lot of walking over the next few days. We also ate a range of food. Guilin unfortunately is proud of it's meat eating which is very in your face. Most restaurants like in Malaysia have seafood and fresh fish on display. We don't mind this at all. BUT...when they also have cage upon cage of live animals, rabbits, chickens, ducks, snakes, giant rodents, turtles it is a little to hard to handle. The cage's are very small for the amount of animals in then the poor rabbit at the bottom of one cage actually looked like it was suffocating. It really put me off meat for a while and Dave felt a re-newed gladness for this vegetarianism. We tried to avoid walking past them but it was every other street!
We found a great pizza restaurant where we were able to have a half and half pizza was yummy and we also found a sneaky Donut shop which we kept returning to. Have to admit the Chinese do donuts very well!
Guilin is probably one of the cleanest cities we have visited and a nice way to end China. We have really loved our journey however hard it has been at times. We are looking forward to the new sights of Hong Kong.
Next Stop Hong Kong
To see our pictures from Guilin please click on the link below;
https://picasaweb.google.com/112941139607408893724/GuilinChina18thTo21stSeptember2011?authkey=Gv1sRgCK-e8_H1-OmUIg#
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