Guilin – Night-light Robbery!

Sun and Moon Twin Pagodas

Twenty hours later… we finally pull into Guilin train station, having grown tired of trying to get comfortable on our bunk beds and stretched out into the tiny aisle seats as the train emptied. Guilin has a small station so it is not the organised chaos of larger cities, where you are siphoned into smaller clusters until you’re standing bemused on a train platform: instead, you are tipped out into a station square where taxi drivers and hotel owners accost you within moments. Seeing as we were at the station, we decided to buy our train ticket onward to Nanning for a few days later, so we wouldn’t need to think about that nearer the time. Bradley set off to sort that out while I held the fort with the bags, and although I was invited to stay at several different hotels and enter several nearby taxis, I patiently ignored these requests and observed the square around me. It seemed that everywhere I looked, there was someone with a satchel of information on some tour, or hotel, or bike hire establishment… this was the kind of tourist trap we had somehow avoided so far throughout China. Fortunately, we had already booked somewhere to stay, so we didn’t need to linger too long or ponder how to proceed, and jumped on the bus heading toward our hostel.

The Backpacker Hostel was located just off the main pedestrianised road into town, and run by some very enthusiastic and helpful people. We had a really spacious bedroom, with some lovely traditional furniture and a view out to the main streets below. We quickly ditched our backpacks and headed out to stretch our legs and check out central Guilin.

Which may have been a mistake, as the next thing we knew some pesky creature had stolen my iPhone from my bag. A note here on security – we’ve been careful and all that, and should know better from our previous travel experiences that you have to be so careful, but until this point I guess we’d had no trouble, and so perhaps we got a little complacent? Who knows, but it was a costly mistake, and didn’t bode well for our stay in Guilin, which was a shame as we’d been really looking forward to our time here. We beat a hasty retreat to the hostel to sit down and reset all my passwords and so on, which took up most of the evening.

Inevitably, the next day was spent feeling a bit blue and annoyed. Bradley very kindly offered to buy me a new phone as an early birthday present as he knew I’d be missing the ease of communicating with friends and family, so we spent most of the day trooping through the endless phone shops and pondering whether to buy one or not, when we changed our minds and opted for an iPod Touch instead. 

Secretly I don’t think I wanted to get anything new to figure out (as I’m not very technically minded) so something that works exactly the same as my phone did seemed ideal – and the phone/text part is very little use out here! I’m now in a very happy relationship with the iPod! Oh Apple, you really are too attractive. Of course, it does make you feel a little like an over-privileged child to be in a position to have a replacement in your hands within days, but there is no denying we have the money available for a situation like this. It highlights how very fortunate we are, even if we are on a budget.

 

One lovely highlight in Guilin is the Sun and Moon Twin Pagodas, both situated in the middle of a lake in the centre of town. They look gorgeous by day and are also lit up beautifully at night. Most walks around the town take in the Pagodas – and the outskirts of the lake are an enjoyable walk too, comprised of elegantly landscaped gardens and an army of sculptures. You can go onto the Pagoda island, but the view from the lakeside was so impressive we were content with that.

'Bom bom bom - by-i-yah,
Bom bom bom - by-i-yah'

It was only round the corner from our hostel, and we returned several times to wander by the lake before we left Guilin (it was also a great shortcut to avoid the main tourist street!).

Guilin is surrounded by beautiful scenery, and bike rides, but as we are going to Yangshuo as well we decided to save the nearby countryside for there. Instead, we had the famous Longji (Longsheng) Rice Terraces to visit, otherwise known as the Dragon’s Backbone Rice Terraces (because the mountain looks like the back of a dragon, and the terraces look like scales). We booked a day trip out there with our hostel, perhaps our second mistake in Guilin! You can make your own way out there, but it relies on the mysteries of local buses and not getting lost in the countryside as you walk from town to town, so we decided a day trip might be safer. 

Unfortunately, it was a very ordered day (without the hiking time we’d asked for) and involved less than two hours on the terraces, including the lunch break and the walk through Ping’An, a village at the heart of the rice-growing operation here. But these two hours were very special and made the day worthwhile – the rice terraces look incredible from the heights reached by the bus, and even more so as you walk through Ping’An, which follows a path to the top of the terraces. Ping’An is essentially one narrow stepped walkway through tall, narrow houses, with craft stalls on the steps and the occasional restaurant scattered through the town. 

The tour guide led everyone to a busy, crowded restaurant and seemed very confused when we decided, along with three other backpackers we’d got chatting to on the bus, to pick our own lunch destination. We got a headstart on the tour group and reached the top of the village, and from there found some even more spectacular views of the rice terraces. 

The autumn rice terraces are starting to turn golden from a vivid green, and the rice is close to harvest. The rice terraces are farmed by local minority Chinese villagers, including those from Ping’An, although it must disrupt community life to have so many tourists trekking through your livelihood! We were also told that very little money from tourism (e.g. entrance fees to the terraces from tour groups) is fed back into the minority village communities, which seems very unfair since they cultivate this incredible sight.

The rest of the day was taken up with a delicious lunch at a small restaurant we found on our way back through Ping’An, and waiting while the rest of the tour group went to the Yao Long Hair show. We might have felt more in the mood for it ourselves if we hadn’t had to pay extra on top of the tour price (the itinerary for the tour had stated that the show was optional, and we could do an afternoon hike instead if we preferred… which we’d all been told we could easily do, except that we couldn’t as there was nowhere to hike to or from). All this deviating from the tour made the day feel like a ‘Choose your own Adventure’ story, but never mind. In retrospect it may have been quite interesting to see the show – Yao women never cut their hair, and so have what is alleged to be the longest hair in the world – but we had a pleasant time chatting to our new friends (who’d had a similar vision for the day as us) and picking up tips on other destinations! We all went for a very uninspiring walk around the show grounds, where the majesty of the rice terraces felt a distant memory, and although we were feeling a little cheated, we did feel sorry for our tour guide – he spoke very poor English, and seemed bemused as to how he could help us; not really his fault though as he wasn’t the one who had promised us all an English speaking guide. 

The rice terraces are well worth a visit, and Ping’An is a fascinating town to walk through, but if you ever visit, try to find your own way there as our trip essentially consisted of walking from one photo hotspot to another, and the atmosphere would have been lost among the crowds if we hadn’t slipped away from our tour group at just the right time.

That night we treated ourselves to yummy dumplings for dinner to cheer ourselves up, before one last day of exploring Guilin without a phone-buying mission or an inadequate tour! The central streets of Guilin could be any tourist haven in the world – there are shops selling t-shirts and souvenirs, fast food (including McDonalds and KFC) and market stalls in any gap without a shop. Bearing in mind that this environment had been conducive to the earlier theft, we limited our time here and headed out of town, across the main bridge, which gave us the chance to admire the Li river fully. We then took a walk to the north of town, where we could view the limestone karst formations rising up around the town centre, before having an amazing lunch at a local street restaurant where you get to pick all the ingredients you want from a huge array of meat and vegetables, and watch them stir fry it for you. Even though we picked out a lot of vegetables to bulk out a substantial stir fry, it was still only 50p each for this fine dining (which was also very popular – every time a table became free someone would grab it from the street!) Much better than going to McDonalds (which we have done in emergencies!). 

That last day in Guilin restored our spirits considerably, and turned around a mixed few days. The scenery as we wandered back along the Li river was incredible, and it was nice to leave behind the negative experiences we’d had and appreciate our last day fully. 

We finally understood why Guilin was so popular and Guangxi was regarded as such a beautiful province, and we couldn’t wait to get to Yangshuo the next day and explore the area further.

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