So far it has rained every day on our trip, but two days. It is raining today again. We have been to Hong Kong and Macau, which you have already seen on the blog. I have been doing a lot of barginning for Laura in Chinese and obviously been getting to practice.
We flew from Hong Kong to Guilin. Guilin is a town of about 1 million people. A small town for China. The Li River is carves its way around the city and karst formations. The large rounded rock formations that seem to grow out from the ground. They really are stunning. The weather is warm and humid and there has been a lot of rain. Many things are flooded. The river is very high as well. We took a boat down the river and enjoyed a Chinese tour. The food wasn't bad. We then headed into the town of Yangshoa for a night. A much smaller town than Guilin, but still busy and flashy like most Chinese cities. It is a major tourist haven and a lot of foreigners are found around there. It is also surrounded by the karst peaks. We were able to spend an afternoon renting and riding bikes around the countryside, which was by far my favorite thing to do so far. The villages are so different than what we are used to seeing. The pace of life a lot slower and calmer than the cities. Although life is changing. Most villages have electricity and those power lines were always getting in the way of my photos. What was fun was watching chickens and ducks freely roam the streets. People tending to water buffalo or other cattle would lead them down the road to an open grassy patch to feed. It wasn't uncommon to see the animals grazing near the road side. They were often only tied up near busy roads.
We road back into town with sore bums (not very comfortable bike seats), planning to ride the next day. This was not going to happen as the rain started pouring down that evening and didn't seem to stop. We took to the bus to back to Guilin. We tried to book a tour to the Dragon's Back Terraces (Long Ji). But found this difficult with the rain our hostel said it was too dangerous. We ended up taking the bus from the bus station, transfering busses to the terraces and spending the day hiking around. This part of the trip was rather beautiful and it did rain off and on. We met a fluent Chinese speaker from Vancover on the bus and he was able to negotiate a faster way back to Guilin. We decided to go have the local specialty of beer fish (pi jiou u). This was fantastic, fish cooked in beer and spices and when you are done with the fish they give you noodles and vegtables to mop up the sauce, for desert we had my favourite, pearl milk tea.
The next day we headed for Chong Quing. A city the Chinese government is investing a lot of money for development. It is working and many people are moving here for work. The city itself isn't great, but we did try the local specialty here as well and that was hot pot (how gwo). We were completely clueless how to eat it, but it worked out great. We had a Chinese person write down what we wanted, took it to the restaurant, and they showed us how to cook it. This was different than Taiwan. They had two pots, one on the outside and one on the inside. The inside was spicy with a lot of chilis and the outside had vegatables. The waiter then put the meat and vegatables we ordered into both pots. While they were cooking we prepared a bowl of seaseme oil, garlic and spices. We were told to take the things cooking in the spicy part out and place them in the oil mixture and then eat it. This was fantastic. We finished eating the things in the spicy side and then ate the vegatables and meat. This was fantastic as well. I do have to say I love many things about Chinese food.
On the whole, China is a fascinating place. The people have been great. Aside from all the hawkers in tourist places constantly asking if you want to buy things and we constantly hear hello from almost everyone. This was no different than Taiwan. It must be because we obviously stand out. So far we are enjoying the trip!
So today we head off for the boat and of course it is raining. I wonder how long it will do this for.
