Guilin - China

GUILIN
Last Thursday was a holiday here in HK and my friend Charly decided to take a long weekend trip to GUILIN in China. He was nice enought to take me along. On thursday evening we took a plane from Shenzhen to Guiling which was an hour flight. In my mind I thought Guilin to be a small town, and the local Chinese actually do think it is a samll town, but for me a town with 5 mill people is not Small at all.

桂林 Guilin is famous for its Osmanthos trees, the trees flowers are added to the famous local tee. This is also where the name comes from. Its name means "forest of Sweet Osmanthus" - as you can see in Chinese, right!

A brand new Shangri-La Hotel just opened there and they had really good rates, so we decided to go for some luxury, which was well worth it. The Shangri La was the first 5star hotel to open in Guilin after 25 years. So you can imagine how the other 5star places might look like.

We had fab room with the most amazing beds, I slept like a princess, swam in the outdoor pool and enjoyed my stay.

DAY ONE:
On Friday we got up early and joined the LI RIVER cruise down the river along side the fab mountains this region is famous for. After a couple of hours we ended up in Yangshuo. Yangshuo is very cute but very touristy, because that town does get 15 mill tourists a year. Well, China is a big country with lots of people.

We decided to take another small bamboo raft cruise in the afternoon. Which was very relaxing!

We got to see some Comoran fishing - this is an old local way of fishing. The fisherman use Comoran birds to catch the fish, but the birds can't swallow the fish because the fishermen bound their necks before. So the bird catch ed the fish and the fisherman is getting in out of the mouths again. Hmmm ... I am not sure how that goes with animal cruelty, but apparently this place is famous for it.

After sliding down some small rapids on our bamboo float we also stopped to pet some water buffalo's, which was lots of fun. The rest of the cruise was very relaxing and scenic. This place is famous for its landscape!

This is how day one ended and we went back to the hotel after a long day rested a bit and went into town to check out WALKING STREET, it is a pedestrian street in the middle of the city with lots of shopping and restaurant. We enjoyed some local fish in beer and some chow fan. Loved how they wrapped the dishes in plastic.

DAY TWO:
And again we had an early start on Saturday because we wanted to see the minority tribes and the famous rice terraces the Longsheng Terraced Fields.

This part is quiet high up in the mountains and very pictoresque. After a short walk up the hill you get to enjoy the great view of the rice terraces.

The Longji Terraces are located in Longsheng County about 2 hours from Guilin . The rice terraces are built into the hillsides. The terraces look like great chains or ribbons as they wind from the foot to the top of the hill. This ingenious construction makes best use of the scare arable land and water resources in the mountainous area. There are about 66 square kilometers terraced fields in southeast of Longsheng,

The Terraces were first built in the Yuan dynasty (1271–1368) and completed in the Qing dynasty by the Zhuang people.

Overall I had a great weekend!