Land 'O Lakes
Guilin, Guangxi Zhuang, China
May 14, 2009
We woke up late today. I had apple and peanut butter for breakfast. We walked down toward the pedestrian street. We had something to eat at a pastry shop. Bill had a bun with chocolate and vanilla. I had some slices of multi-grain bread with raisins.
We started our lake tour near our hotel at Shan Lake. This and all of the lakes are really nice to walk around. There are paths, benches, trees and shrubs that are very well maintained all the way along. This lake has the twin towers built in antique style. Although they look similar, I would not call them twins... There was a short rainfall, we were barely moist when it stopped, thank goodness!
We then walked around Rong Lake. Along the path there was a statue of Jing Song (not sure why he is important, there was no English information). We crossed the Gurong Bridge, also known as the twin bridges (they were twins for sure). Funny enough, we saw two ladies on the other side of the bridge with twin babies. I gave them each a "Hello Kitty" band-aid.
We stopped for a bit at the Ancient South Gate and took a couple of pictures. We were not allowed to cross the Rongxi bridge, it belongs to a five star hotel. So, we carried on to Lize Lake and then the largest lake, Baoxian Lake. At the end of this lake we turned up the street and walked by a Church.
There were lots of old people exercising in groups or on their own. We also saw a couple of bands playing traditional instruments, one had singers too.
On the other side of the Church is the old city wall that built during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). We walked around to the East side to find the entrance. Before going in we went to a restaurant and ordered 2 # 2's. It turned out to be some noodles with thin slices of pork, soy sauce, oil and peanuts. I added some green onion, cilantro, pickled cabbage and beans to mine (just onion and cilantro for Bill). We had a Coke and water too. Lunch came to 12 yuan ($2.10).
We entered Princes City/Solitary Beauty Park 50 yuan each ($8.80). The city was built during the 5th year of the Hongwu Reign of the Ming Dynasty (1372). It was used for princes to handle political and military affairs. It resembles a miniature Forbidden City. 14 successive princes lived here.
There are no dragon stone carvings here, only clouds. Dragons are only for representing Emperors, clouds indicated that it was an Imperial residence. The Chengyan Palace staircase and railing (and the outer wall) are the only original parts. Everything else was burned during the Qing Dynasty and Japanese invasion. The Palace was rebuilt during 1947. We looked at the display inside, but there was no English explanations. We saw what we thought was a drawing of each of the 14 princes.
We saw the reading cave where the writer, Yan Yanzhi often read and composed poems. There were many inscriptions on the cave opening. It is said to be the birthplace of culture and education in the South Ridge. Beside the cave there was a nice pond, the Crescent Pond, with frogs singing to us and a turtle sunning himself on a rock.
We then climbed over 300 stone stairs to the top of Solitary Beauty Peak. It has been a well-known spot since the times of the Qing Dynasty, there is a poem by Yuan Mei during that time. The view from the top was very nice, but it is overcast. There were some stories/legends about the peak. One said that they peak was two horses that would roam around the city and destroy things and upset the people of Guilin. The owner had to tether them by the water and they became the Solitary Beauty Peak.
After we descended the peak we headed out to find an internet cafe on the pedestrian. Again, we had zero luck. We did go into a department store that had 6 or 7 levels (3 were electronics). The basement level had a grocery store and I was able to buy a fork (so Bill can eat) and spoon (so I can have my peanut butter) for 7 yuan.
We had lunch beside our hotel at Mix Kitchen. Bill had Liquan Beer and a BLT with fries. I had mango juice and BBQ steamed pork with rice, steamed lettuce and a side of pickled vegetables. We used the one free computer there for a while.
We decided to rent a computer for an hour from our hotel. It was not able to read our card, so we can not load pictures. It was trying to guess the words (like texting) as I typed them and would give me Chinese and strange spacing at times. I started writing in the Travel Pod site instead of hotmail and it worked better. I think I wasted an hour and 10 yuan to type two paragraphs. I hope it is not like this for all of China or I am going to have to spend a week blogging when we get home.
We went to the hostel near our hotel and borrowed the Lonely Planet book for a few minutes. We found a few names of where there should be internet and we looked for a 5th time down the pedestrian street - still nothing!!!
A guy brought us into his aunt's shop to try Osman Thus tea unique to Guilin. It is taken from the top, like a cashew and looks like pellets. The tea was really good, but we did not buy any, it is $100/lb. We did learn that "campbay" means cheers and "pea-ow hyung" means beautiful.
We walked over to Hao Heng Shi Jia on Middle Zhong Shan Road (should have internet here) and the hostess said there was internet across the street. We could not find it. We gave up and walked back to the area near our hotel.
Bill took a picture of a restaurant that said "Chinese Food" (old joke), so we had dinner there. What a gong show this turned out to be. There was a table of 3 men and 3 women that were the only other people in the restaurant. They were having some sort of great discussion or argument and they kept banging the table. It was quite a scene. My favourite part was when one of the women leaned over and spit on the floor. That is one thing I will not get used to. People love to hork and spit here. UGH!
We were given a pot of tea and ordered Liquan beer from our sweaty waitress. We tried to order duck, meat pies, prawns, scallops and sesame balls. We were told that they did not have duck or meat pies. We were also told that they open at 10 and have to go home to sleep. It was after 9pm and she was trying to tell us that we had to leave the restaurant by 10pm. By the second time she reminded us to leave before 10, I was ready to pay up and leave, but we stayed and had our meal without duck or meat pies. We had an appetizer size prawn and scallop dish, we never received the sesame balls... It was 31 yuan for our "snack" and we left by 10pm as promised. Everyone at the restaurant next door looked like they were happily enjoying their meals!
We went down to the river and took some pictures of the twin towers at night and then went to a bakery on the pedestrian street. We bought 2 croissants and a flaky bun for breakfast tomorrow. I had some mini pizzas on a skewer for an additional snack. It was OK, but would have been better warm and on a bun that had less sugar. This gave Bill a craving for pizza, so we headed over a few street where we thought we had seen Pizza Hut the other day.
We found the Pizza Hut, but could not find the 2nd floor entrance. We took an elevator that would not go to the second floor and the third floor looked like an apartment. We finally found the right entrance and walked up the stairs, as we were walking up, they shut the lights off inside. We are not having the best luck with food right now.
We walked back to our hotel. There is a restaurant on the 7th floor, Left Bank Cafe, and it has a good view of the Elephant Peak. It is called Elephant Peak because it looks like an elephant taking a drink out of the lake. Bill ordered a sausage (turned out to be the not so tasty Asian hot dog instead of pepperoni), pepper and mushroom pizza.
We went to bed after midnight.
Interesting note - on the brochure for the massage place attached to our hotel one of the services is: Lady of the Night and we have condoms for sale in our room...