Silent Killers

  Guilin, Guangxi Zhuang, China
May 13, 2009

We arrived in Nanning at 6:30 am. We headed into the station and purchased train tickets for 130 yuan ($16) for Guilin (Quay lin). We will be departing at 8:18 am.

We had something to eat at the cafeteria. Bill bought some mini-buns with pork. He ate two and I ate the rest. Bill had the orange drink, I passed. While he was getting the meal a table of five guys were openly staring at me. I have not seen any other Caucasians since we left the train.

Bill wandered the streets of Nanning and found an ATM while I watched our bags.

We sat in the waiting room with couches. There is an electronic board announcing the train numbers, boarding times and departure times. Now we are traveling in style. We were called to board the train at 8:00. Thankfully the board had numbers in English because the words and announcements are only in Chinese. We boarded the train and everyone is staring at us because there are no other Caucasians on the train. The people across from us do not speak English and we do not speak Chinese, so it is a quiet ride. We left the station a minute early (shocking), so I guess we better not be late for the train in China.

We tried to get some sleep on the train, but the seats did not recline. There was lots of padding on the seats and they were clean, but they were not contoured for our height, so were not the most comfortable.

We arrived in Quilin a few minutes late and we made our way off the train. One lady spoke to us in English and directed us to the Foreign Information Center. I was trying to tell Bill something while we were walking and distracted him, so we went past the information center turn off. We landed outside and we do not have a map. We have the name of our hotel and the address in English, but do not have it in Chinese and do not have the phone number.

There were some tour information places nearby, so Bill went to go find a map while I watched the bags. A man came up to me and was able to speak English. He did not recognize the name of our hotel and wanted to know what Eva meant - I told him it is only an English name and does not mean anything. This perplexed him. I told him that I did not have the phone number or address of the hotel (I did have the address, but I knew he was a taxi driver) and said that we would have to wait for my husband. He was able to describe Bill and his whereabouts to me. I think I will need to get used to that. I was impressed that he knew that Detroit was "auto city" and knew GM. I mentioned Chrysler and he knew that Fiat was trying to buy them. I think that this is the first time that anyone has had any clue about the North American automotive industry (other than other foreigners) since we left Canada.

Bill returned with a map and has an idea of where our hotel is. The taxi driver said it would cost 15 yuan ($3) for a taxi or 1 yuan each for the bus. He pointed across the street and told us that it would be bus number 2. We were able to confirm by our map that bus number 2 would take us to our hotel.

We had a short wait for our bus and while we were there a guy who worked for a tour company was trying to sell us stuff. We hopped on our bus when it arrived and paid 2 yuan. We crossed the bridge and followed the Li River. We both started looking for the hotel and at our third stop Bill spotted it. We are right by the Sheraton, so it will be easy to find in the future.

It took a while for us to check in, there had been an accident somewhere and they hydro has been out.

Our room looks good, the shower has a glass door, no fridge though...

We headed out to find some lunch and of course went in a direction where there are no restaurants. At the corner of Zhongshan and Binjiang there was some small local restaurants. We had to do a lot of pointing and nodding to order lunch. We had some noodles with thin slices of pork, oil, soy sauce and soy beans. I added pickled beans and veggies to mine. We had Lijang Beer and iced tea. Lunch was 12 yuan ($2.50). Another customer, a guy from Northern China sat down and starting talking to us. He is traveling with his 78 year old father. I guess he just wanted to practice his English or he was just curious.

We wandered around for a while trying to find internet. We found a neat market with lots of live chickens and ducks. They even had chickens that look and feel like Ella. They had lots of seafood and live fish. We even saw a dead fish that looked like it had a long bill like a duck. The fruit and veggies looks very delicious - strawberries, nectarines, huge grapes, corn, bitter melon, bumpy cucumber, dried chillies,...

We went back to the hotel and had a two hour nap.

Later in the evening we walked through Zhengyang pedestrian street. This is the place to shop and eat. We are 2 minutes from our hotel, we totally went the wrong direction earlier. We had dinner at a place that may have been called Sabo. It was expensive, but the portions were huge. I had prawns in tomato sauce and fried cabbage. Bill had the beef and it was the best beef that we have had in a long time. Bill had Liquan Beer and coke. I tried to order water and was told "no". Dinner was 95 yuan (less than $20).

We again attempted to find internet, but were not successful. We looked in some shops and I found the carton character that we had seen a lot at the beginning of our trip, it is Doremon.

A girl saw Freddie's head sticking out of Bill's nap sack and she asked what it was. We told her Freddie and I took him out of the bag and said "snake". She shrieked, ran and giggled. I guess she does not like snakes!

We are starting to realize that we have to be more careful when walking in the street or on the sidewalks. 99% of the motorbikes here are electric and we can not hear them coming. It was a habit of ours to move to one side when we would hear one coming up behind us. The motorbikes could be Silent Killers.

I saw some stationary stores that have wrapping paper, note books, pens and cards. They have some neat stuff and I bought at Doremon pen and a note book that has some nice photographs of China in it that I can use for scrap booking.

We went back to the hotel and watched a bit of TV on the one English channel that we get. We went to bed after 11:00.