Guilin - old turtles and expensive fish

Monday, September 15th written by Alan

Priscilla managed to convince Erik to go for a run at 7:45am, while I was lazy and stayed in bed. I was still recovering from the late night drinking in shanghai and the exhaustion of walking around in the heat. It seemed like Priscilla and Erik had a good hour run, snapping photos along the way. The ran by the Li River and saw fishermen, old folks exercising, and people swimming in the river. Erik even found the restaurant that he wanted to go to the night before. He also claimed he found a laundry, which I got a bit excited for...to only realize he meant we could wash our clothes in the river like everyone else.

We all met downstairs at 9:30am, ready to head out sightseeing using the hostel free shuttle. It turned out that the timing of this shuttle was a bit vague so we all had breakfast before eventually departing. The first stop was at solitary peak which is Guilin's equivalent of the forbidden city minus any of the original buildings. There was not really that much of interest apart from the peak itself which we climbed 306 steps to get there. From the top there was a great view out over the city and the Karst limestone peaks in the distance. This is the landscape for which Guilin and the surrounding area is famous for.

After the solitary peak we headed to the reed flute cave nearby. As usual there were some old ladies hassling us as we entered. Again I was disappointed to discover that they weren't trying to set me up with their daughters; this time they were offering a ride in a bamboo raft up to the cave. I was somewhat skeptical of this as I didn't think a raft would be magically climbing up to a cave. The woman was persistent though and it only cost 30 RMB (~$5) for all 5 of us, so we relented. It turned out that we were going to be punted in a raft across a narrow lake. It would only have taken us about 2 minutes to walk but it was fun nonetheless. Erik, Priscilla and I were in one raft, while Steph and Louisa were in the other raft. Obviously Erik and I shouldn't have had such a big breakfast as the raft was sinking a bit.

The cave itself was pretty impressive. There were lots of different rock formations consisting of stalactites and stalagmites. I would like to tell you the difference between the two, but as the commentary was in chinese and I can't remember from school I will have to refer you to wikipedia instead. The largest of the caverns was impressively large and Priscilla was able to take some good photos.

We also got to see some very old turtles which they claimed were over 1000 years old. It was all rather strange as people had loaded their backs with banknotes and other offerings. Also they had a pool full of baby turtles. You could try to drop a coin on their backs and if it stayed on for 3 seconds you could keep the turtle. I didn't want a turtle and didn't want to hurt its back, so I deliberately missed (that's my excuse anyway!). Erik on the other hand dinged a coin on one of the turtles backs, but it did not stay on. Needless to say I will be reporting his animal cruelty to the norwegian turtle welfare society shortly.

Afterwards we braved the public transport system taking the bus back to town. This went without too much mishap apart from trying to get on the bus going the wrong way.

Back in town we looked around for somewhere to eat lunch. We found a local spot called KFC where we had a basket of chicken and fries, washed down with pepsi.
We headed back to the hostel and rested for a while before getting showered and ready to head out again. While we were getting ready Priscilla discovered a little spider crawling across the ceiling. I thought I would do the manly thing and get rid of it, unfortunately I wasn't quite tall enough to reach it. I decided to jump up and try and grab it which was a mistake as instead of catching it, the spider fell on the bed beside Priscilla. Luckily after a few screams and before Priscilla killed me we managed to locate it, and I completed my exterminator duties.

Prior to heading out we decided to play a few games of asshole. I had a much better run of luck than normal while Erik's beginners luck appeared to have run out.

We decided to try the restaurant Erik had located earlier for dinner. On the way we stopped to take pictures of the two pagodas which are very impressive lit up at night. Priscilla was able to use her tripod again and take some good long exposure shots.

We made it to the restaurant only to discover it was closed. Instead we decided to try another restaurant nearby. We decided to try some fish and a few other dishes. It was Erik's duty to pick out the fish and he was led outside to pick the fish from the tank. I think the waitress must have seen dollar signs in Erik's eyes as she straight away picked the largest fish and slammed it on the pavement before bashing it on the head. The fish ended up costing 420 RMB (~$63) but it was delicious.

After dinner we headed back to the hostel and played a few more games of asshole. We invited a couple of dutch guys to play with us. One of them had pretty bad luck and was asshole for the whole time he played. Around 1am we called it quits and headed to bed.