Guilin and the Longshen Rice Terraces - Aug 20, 2008

At Guilin airport we were met by John, our guide for Guilin and Yangshou. Our original itinerary had meant we would arrive in the morning, however our flight had moved to the afternoon. This meant John was keen to fit in everything but in a much shorter time frame. After the action packed few days at the start of China our enthusiasm was starting to wane.

En-route to our hotel we stopped at the Elephant trunk Cave. We have discovered that the Chinese imagination is very good at creating animals our of rock formations. This particular case was a hole through the rock creating an archway with a narrow strip of rock into the water. With good imagination this was the trunk of the elephant drinking from the water!

By then we were ready for our hotel which was very good. The room was huge and the view was outstanding over the river with the impressive mountains in the background. The evening activity was visiting the cormorant bird fishing show. Over the ages the local fishermen had tamed cormorants to help them catch fish. At night the boat would sail into the river with a bright light on the bow which attracted the fish in the river. The cormorants have a piece of string/wire round their neck and would set off from the boat to catch these fish. Once caught the string/wire round their neck would prevent them swallowing the fish. They were trained to return to the boat where the fisher men would haul them out and turn them upside down so that the fish dropped into a basket. At the end of the night the fishermen would untie the ligature from the birds and reward them with fish that they would be a bale to swallow. It was fascinating to see how well the birds were trained and the size of the fish that they were able to capture. That said it did appeal more to me than Melissa.

Next morning we headed off to Longshen and the paddy fields. Again we started early to miss the crowds and we slept most of the way in our very comfortable SUV. Our guide underestimated our trekking ability and told us it would be an hour to get up to the top. We started off at Inca trail pace and soon had to go slower to let John keep pace. We reached the top in 40 minutes and were ahead of the crowds with a few photo stops on the way. The view was spectacular and reminded us of our trip to Sapa. On the way down we stopped at the Meiyou cafe for an excellent lunch including the top dish of the China trip: a chilli sizzling beef!

With another good sleep on the way back we then visited the Reed Flute cave. The limestone in the area had created a huge underground cavern with many Stalagmites (upwards) and Stalactites (downwards) which was brought to life with coloured lights. The Chinese imagination ran wild with rock formations in the shape of Christmas trees, mushrooms and even Santa Claus! Even though we had visited cave in Belize and Vietnam these very impressive due to the sheer scale of the cave.

Two more stops at Fu Bo Hill and Seven Star Park. They would have been more impressive had we not visited so many other amazing places plus it was very hot and we were tired. Fu Bo Hill was a cave with many carved Buddhas and a stalactite that nearly touched the ground. The local legend said that the end of the Stalactite was cut off as a show the sharpness of a mythical sword. At Seven Star Park Bill Clinton had given a (somewhat ironic) speech about the ecological responsibility of China and the US. The park also had a Panda enclosure with two Pandas that were supposed to be a couple but actually had to be kept separate as they fought too much.

In the evening we wandered through the main streets of Guilin which was active with hundreds of stalls. An impressive site however they were largely selling the same cheap items. We played it safe on the food front that night and Melissa had her ‘once in 5 year’ KFC meal.