Guilin

Our next stop was a quick one: Guilin. This is really just a launching point into our rice paddy adventures. It's also the major city on the Li River and the beginning of many cruises down the river into the Karst mountains... but that story is for my next entry.

We decided that we needed a nicer hotel after the hot and stinky room in Chengdu so we booked a night at a three star hotel this time. It was very nice! We were actually lucky to get a hotel since we forgot it was Friday.

Guilin was literally a breath of fresh air after Chengdu. The population is still 170 million, but it felt like a smaller town. Our hotel was across from the Li River and there was a pedesterian walkway alongside the river. After checking into the hotel we wandered along the river to Elephant Trunk Hill. It seemed to almost be a resort town as there were many swimming spots along both banks of the river and tons of people swimming. Also a great number of people fishing, but without much luck.

The walk to Elephant Trunk Hill took us about 30 minutes. The main attraction (as you may have guessed) is a cliff protruding into the water that looks like an elephant with it's trunk in the water. It's a huge tourist attraction with the requisite number of souvenir vendors. There was even a guy with a trained monkey looking for money for photos.

There were a lot of people offering rides on their bamboo rafts, or a fish dinner on board the rafts. We took the cheap approach and just walked around the park and under the trunk of the "elephant". The park was nice on its own with elephant themed statues and benches.

The only other adventure this night was our dinner, which was very well summed up in this email by Tanny:

well, we took too long resting, and didn't get back out for dinner until almost 8pm. pretty late for dinner by the looks of the restaurants we saw. we finally found a restaurant with people still eating, and went in. the waitress showed us our seats, gave me the *chinese only* menu, and stood beside me waiting for my order. let me tell you, that's a lot of pressure. so i was browsing the menu, and picked some friday special - with rice and ribs, i think- and picked something from the local specialty page - something with meat, i was careful not to pick anything that has seafood, or organs. so we waited and waited, and the waitress brought us soup. i was confused - didn't think i ordered soup, but maybe i read it wrong. and we ate it and it was yummy. and then we got the other dish - some sort of meat pattie in a bit of broth. looked ok. smelled like pork. so i took a bite, and there was something crunchy in it - like bones. I panicked for a sec and thought i had ordered snake by accident. i tried to look all non-chalant so josh would try it too. but he knew something was up, but he tried a small bite anyway. we decided that it smelled and looked like ground pork, but the bone thing was a little alarming. i took another spoonful from the dish and scooped up something black and round. josh asked, 'is that a bird's head?' i took a look and said, 'why yes it is.' josh stopped eating at that point, i kept trying to eat a little bit at a time - afterall, it is the local specialty. after this josh kept hypothesizing on what i'm actually eating. in the guidebook, it mentioned all the weird local delicacy, like snake, and rats. that definitely did NOT help me eat the food. anyway, i ate all i could and asked for the bill. before we left, i asked the waitress for the menu again so i can write down the words in chinese so i can get it probably translated when i get home. no need - i know the words. we got sparrow with steamed meat pie. i got the meat pie part but managed to miss the sparrow when i ordered. apparently, we were quite the attraction at the restaurant, the guys at the other table kept looking over at us, and when i asked for the menu at the end, everyone was looking at me wondering what i was up to. one guy even got up from his table to hold the menu for me as i was writing - what a gentleman.