Looking for a city trip with a difference? Got a day or 2 to spare? Why not "hop" over to Guilin for a weekend break... :P It's amazing how you can take one short fligh
t here and be in the middle of another province, which might as well be yet another country, with scenery right out of a movie. One minute you're in the heart of highrises and traffic, the next you're in rolling countryside. EVERY city is huge and impressive here, and Guilin was no exception!
The Lindsays know how to travel in style - so they'd arranged to be met at the airport by our English-speaking guide (Sandy - a man!) and personal driver/minivan transportation who took us to the Bravo Hotel to check in. When I entered the room I was to share with Wara - we found that someone was still in it! So I huffed and I puffed and I nearly blew the reception desk down... getting us an upgrade to a clean room (important) with a nice Lake View (not important, but cool nonetheless!!!). The first point of interest in Guilin was the Reed Flute Cave. Having been in Limestone caves before (Waitomo, NZ) I was prepared to see lots of dripping rocks and maybe a tourist or two. What I wasn't prepared for was fluorescent lighting, guides with megaphones, and about 1 trillion Chinese people (school's out for summer!). Nothing like a giant crush of fast-talking Chinese people to really make an endless maze of caves seem slightly claustrophobic! The small (man made) lake with the authentic back-lighting in Bright-Blue-Floodlights did make for a nice picture though...
The next stops were all sales stops. Giving us the "opportunity" to acquire high-end "exclusive" products at a very "low price". Riiiiight. First we stopped at a pearl farm - though the farm was nowhere to be seen. We were treated to a fashion show with
models sashaying down the catwalk in ill-fitting dresses and showcasing enormous pearl necklaces, rings, bracelets... you get the picture. Next was the silk-making factory where they use silk pods to make duvets. Looks easy, but definitely is not. We tried to stretch one pod to cover the duvet table... only to find that none of us had enough oomph to complete the job! We spent a good 3 hours in the showroom watching Mrs Lindsay painstakingly select just the right design... only for me to talk her out of it! Sorry!Wish I'd talked us all out of dinner though. Look, I know I'm in China and thus I am going to have to adapt. Crispy Seaweed and Sesame Prawn Toast are not Chinese and are just a myth created by the English to make it all seem quite tame. I truly like the real Chinese food - as long as it
doesn't involve chewing on claws/feet of any kind and spitting out knuckles/bones. BUT I really don't like mystery meat - I like to know what I'm eating and what animal it came from. Well, in a true case of be-careful-what-you-wish-for, there really was no mistaking the origin of the "chicken" dish we ordered at the hotel restaurant. Cold, boiled chicken (head included) with its congealed fatty skin-layer attached with super-glue... dee-lish! The chook's tongue hanging out the side of its beak really added a touch of je-ne-sais-quoi. This might just be the best diet ever.
doesn't involve chewing on claws/feet of any kind and spitting out knuckles/bones. BUT I really don't like mystery meat - I like to know what I'm eating and what animal it came from. Well, in a true case of be-careful-what-you-wish-for, there really was no mistaking the origin of the "chicken" dish we ordered at the hotel restaurant. Cold, boiled chicken (head included) with its congealed fatty skin-layer attached with super-glue... dee-lish! The chook's tongue hanging out the side of its beak really added a touch of je-ne-sais-quoi. This might just be the best diet ever.
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