The flight was strenuous, but I still managed to take a few pictures of clouds and other things. Like I usually do. I hope you enjoy them. The interesting thing about this flight was that it never became dark, as we flew very far north and above the polar circle.
I guess it does not make sense to write all this at some later point. There are just too many impressions.
At the moment I didn't get a good view of China or even Beijing thus far. The place we are stuck at, the Jiuhua Resort and Convention Center, its like a Disneyland for convention-goers. Chinese kitsch mingled with compliance to westerners everywhere. I don't really know what to think of it, but one thing is for certain, this is not what I imagined when I decided to go to China. I'm not complaining. My hotel room is fine, luxurious even, compared to what I'm usually used to (aka. staying at friend's places, youth hostels, cheap motels, or plain sleeping in tents or under the stars), it's four stars after all. The people and staff are nice - just what you expect from Chinese, friendly and fourth coming to a fault. Always ready to please, flustered/confused/ashamed when they don't manage to do so and still trying. I guess I just didn't expect things to be so' clean!
It's almost scary how polished the floors are, how well tended the carpets etc. Well, at least some things hold true: there is smog and lots of it (I still pretend it to be a thick mist, but I don't know much longer I can keep this charade up), and we're not even remotely central Beijing (the drive from the city center takes about one and half hours). And people smoke in buildings - even though I've been told that the amount of smoking has decreased and I even saw some non-smoking signs in some places (even though I don't know what good that will do if you have a bin/ash tray about 10 meters beside it around the corner).
Also the food is probably fatty. Most of it is covered either in a thick, slimy or oily sauce, or fried or dumped or dipped in oil in one way or another. Sometimes even both. And also Chinese eat warm three times a day. I love this food already. But then again, I've never been fussy about food (I love British food as well, so that probably says enough). Contrary to some persistent rumors, Chinese kitchen isn't that spicy at all most of the time.
After a direct taxi ride from the airport to the convention center together with my boss, I spent the day walking around and taking in the facilities. Apparent this place lives up to its name of resort. You have a swimming pool, massages, mud baths, hot springs and all that jazz. Damn, I knew I should have thought of bringing a bathing suit. There is also a monorail, which is useless since you're faster walking about, and a half built rollercoaster without carts. I'm not sure why.
Also there are these Shenmue-like déjà vus I keep getting. Some things, like those signs you get above some rooms just look exactly like in the game. It's interesting.
I spent most of my time sitting in my room and working on my talk, which was in a way rather depressing, since even if you want to go out, the convention center area is the only place you can go - kind of like a softly padded prison really and in itself even more depressing, since it's for some reason rather vacated. Also you don't want to go out because of the smog - so you can either choose between air conditioned, sometimes stuffy rooms, or the humid, hot, smog filled air outside.
Today we had our little workshop about wild cat species in China, I won't bore you with the details. But I think, personally I think we did reasonably well, and it went more or less as I expected.
Finally I also want to lose a few words on Chinese and work. What you have to know about this resort is, there are some areas that are pretty, but when you go to the back places you can get some rather dirty areas, rusted piping or pillars, and streets in dire need of repair. Disneyland's grimy backside, so to speak. Some of the buildings are actually still being built, so remind me to check how old or new this place actually is (scaffolding is often made of timber or bamboo, something I find fascinating coming from a country where bamboo isn't growing naturally)! So, about work - where we are trying to reduce staff, the Chinese seem to make an art out of over-employing certain posts. Maybe that only counts for this place here, but often when for example only one person is needed, there are mostly two or three people (as in: people showing you into a restaurant at the door - no not showing to you to your table, just gesturing you in). That invariably leads to people just standing around in some areas with nothing to do. When I had room service the other day I had no less than a battalion of four people coming into my room, and all they did was one person changing the toilet paper and another one making the bed, while the other two were just standing around. Cleaning staff in the public toilets were three people standing around, waiting for people to use the toilet, so they could clean it again. And in stores around here, small stores, there are mostly five or six employees walking around, mostly just talking or jesting, while I was sometimes the only costumer. I have read and heard about the Chinese being a people of workers, but I guess I never really grasped the full meaning of it up until now. I don't even want to think about what the minimum wage is or how much people will have to work to make a living. Also, the employed people here are young, generally. Not much older than I am at least, though I wonder if that will change when I'm going to the less surreal parts of Beijing and actually into town.
Ok, now I can't deny it anymore. This is definitely smog. It's thick, it's yellowish, and it stinks slightly of sulfur. You can't see the sky and the sad thing is, one of the central areas of our building we're in is actually so big, that you can even slightly see it in the air looking from one end of the hall to the other or from the bottom of the lobby all the way to the 15 or so stories upwards to the ceiling. It's incredible and fascinating. And I'm breathing this stuff right now. Some people even breathe it in and out all their lives!
On some other news: we spent an evening out with Shujin, her husband Aster and all their friends this night. They took us to a charming restaurant within the 4th ring road of Beijing. Pictures are below.
I went sightseeing today. I didn't like the tour much, as I don't like tours in general, but I learned some interesting things about the Chinese especially from one western person, who participated in the tour and who works and lives in China.
For example, the Chinese understand something completely different under the word renovating than the Europeans - if they renovate a building, even a complex as old as the Forbidden City, they always demolish it and rebuild it from scratch (and they actually did that with the Forbidden City and the Palace of Heaven). That is also the case for normal buildings. Usually they don't have a lifespan which is longer than 10 years, and then they get demolished and rebuilt. I wonder how that reflects on people's real estate strategies.
Another funny thing about house ownership is: as a counteraction to the people migrating from the country to the city, the Chinese government has issued a sort of passport that allows people to only live within their home city. If they go to University, they own a pass for the city they go to university to and if they graduate they are returned their hometown pass. They can only live in the city, if they own property there. Now, cites have a tendency to expand and new quarters are stomped out of the ground every then and again - and naturally they make good new territories for land people. But these new parts of the city mostly don't include shopping malls and all the other infrastructure of a city, but only housing - and that means, people buy property there, but don't inhabit it, because the location is just so bad. They live somewhere else instead, even though they own property - they just own it to ensure them a city pass. So most of these new city sectors actually remain vacated, very much like a ghost town or a town after a nuclear dropdown.
Also, Chinese seem to have a different perspective on what's clean and what's dirty. For the Chinese it is for example important that you wash your feet as often as you can, especially before you go to bed or enter a house. But not washing your hair is not considered to be filthy, as most Chinese believe that a bit of oil in your hair is good for it (and easier for styling). Mold is not considered to be a problem or isn't disturbing, while it's absolutely unthinkable to wash your clothes with anything less warm than boiling hot water.
The information is from a person working in Yunnan Province.
Anyway, our first stop was the Temple of Heaven and it's surrounding, lively, bustling park. Then we went to a Silk Factory.
After lunch we went to the Tiananmen (the People's Square) the biggest square in the world and then to the Forbidden City.
I took my second tour today, going to the Summer Palace first and then to a Pearl Factory and a Tea Drinking Session.
After lunch the Hutong (Beijing's old town), and the Bell Tower were next.
After the tour, I tried to go directly to the hotel - and it took me a whole lot of time to find it: three tries with the Subway and a lot of assistance from very helpful Chinese people (including my tour guide, Elena). I had no telephone number or the Chinese character name of the hotel, and no means of communication with Luke, since my mobile phone was not working. So I was lucky that I found it after all! After the whole ordeal was over, I finally met up with Luke, my love.
Today we took a stroll to the silk market in the morning and walked
through some shopping centers. The silk market, I heard is a chance
to get tourist things for a relatively cheap prince - but for what
we wanted that argument was pretty much not valid. If you suck at
haggling, the silk market is certainly no good choice at all and if
you want to buy tea sets, chopsticks and fans, you should rather go
either to the local malls or the convenience stores. You'll pay at
least a tenth of the price you pay anywhere else.
There are so
many impressions, I could write down. For example: on the street,
while other people walk when there's a red light and no cars are
coming, Chinese people just walk all the time, if there are cars or
not. Sometimes even when there's a rather large road with heavy
traffic. That mostly leads to a kind of benevolent chaos at street
crossings - with a lot of running and slow walking from the people
and honking from the cars.
Chinese can be very racist towards people of other colors - especially towards black people. We saw a scene in the subway where two black people came in and stood next to some Chinese women and they actually started pinching their noses, as if these black people were reeking to high heavens (at some point I also saw a lady do that when we sat down in a McDonalds, and I was sure I didn't smell worse than her).
Something we somehow decided to do spontaneously, before the train
left, was to go and see Harry Potter. We were lucky to see it at
the cinema in the main shopping street. We got to the showing about
10 minutes late. But it was ok. Somehow I was even hoping that the
movie would be in Mandarin, but it was in English, with Chinese
subtitles.
So we saw a lot of shopping malls today: the Silk
Market, a tourist trap, a really posh market, where things cost at
least twice as much a Swiss person would pay for them (but things
still looked like they were poor quality). Also a chaotic market
kind of mall, kind of like the Silk Market, but for local people,
and a very European-looking convenience store, that actually had
bread and even cheese!
I'm writing this entry on the train down to Shanghai. I feel really comfy and tired here, that's why my sentences don't make much sense anymore. This train is amazing. It has beds, cover and even a small digital TV screen with four channels over each bed. It's crazy!
Oh yeah - by the way.
There were a lot of people in Beijing train station. They are
sitting and standing around everywhere. Some travel only with huge
plastic bags or with these rice bags made from these sort of
strange plastic fibers. The plaza in front of the train station was
packed, as were the waiting rooms for the people. Outside people
were sitting on newspapers and inside they were sitting on chairs
and just standing around, where sitting was not allowed. I never
saw such a mass of people before and it was never so lively and
hectic as within this train station.
Of course I'm sticky with
a mixture of sweat and pollution and I must smell absolutely
disgusting, but I don't care. I feel rather comfortable.
Shanghai greeted us with a very un-cozy 37 degrees Celcius and
nearly 90% of humidity.
After checking into the hotel in the
morning we walked around in the city, down Nanjing road to the
Bund, where we fell into a tourist trap called the 'Bund Tunnel' or
something like that. It looked like an abandoned subway that had
been transformed into a pseudo tourist attraction and ferried us
through under the Huang Pu River to Pudong. Once there we soon
found ourselves within reach of the Shanghai TV tower. For a mere
150 Y per person you could go all the way to the top and there was
even a place where you could walk around on the outside of the
tower over a glass floor - it was rather scary, since at times I
still suffer from vertigo.
After a short break at the hotel, we set out again to find to find the place from where our ship for the Huang Pu river tour would leave. Since there were almost three hours left we decided to walk. We soon found out that because of the impending Shanghai Expo in 2010 most of Shanghai along the west side of the Huang Pu River was covered under huge construction sites. We did find the old town on our way with all its shops and part of the more down trod areas of the old town. After that, however, we had trouble finding the docking area and once we found it we had no idea at what peer we were supposed to leave off. So we walked forth and back to no avail. When we finally started asking people, they too seemed not to know where our boat was. We were pointed to pier one, but those on pier one were adamant that this pier was not the right one and pointed us to pier six. Finally, we found a nice ticket lady, who tried to help us by accompanying us and ask around for us in Chinese - luckily she understood us. After talking to a few staff there, someone who looked like he was at least the eldest if not the superior of the lot came to talk to our translator. He begged us to show our tickets to him and then took them and disappeared with them after telling us to wait. We already expected that we were scammed over and that we would never see our tickets again - but then he came back and said that our tickets were for a different boat, wrong or whatever and that the tickets here were more expensive (not 70 but 100 Y per person). Personally, the thought that we got scammed over crossed my mind again, but finally we were so happy, that we paid the additional Yuan gladly. Luke gave them 100 as we didn't have anything smaller at that time. The trouble was that the guy didn't have any change and even though we said it didn't matter, he insisted that he'd give us change and strolled over to all the other staff that was there and asked them. Soon we were surrounded by five or six Chinese all fumbling in their pockets for what money they had to give to us - and we even caught our boat on time!
You can't really see it on the photos, but the skyline from the Huang Pu River is rather amazing! All of the buildings along the river seem to break out into some sort of light show contest, and some even use their windows as brightly lit screens. It's really quite amazing.
After that we took a taxi home as our feet were sore from all the walking.
We were just leaving the hotel to go and visit some of the temples,
when we were talked to by a few youths, who said they were from
Nanjing. They were interested in us, and their English was rather
good. We thought we talk to them for a while, after all, what harm
could it do? They claimed to be on a visit to Shanghai because one
of their friends was getting married here and now they didn't have
anything to do. They also said they were going to a tea festival
ceremony and asked us if we wanted to go along. It sounded
interesting. We left with them and they took us to a small backdoor
store that looked more like an apartment than anything else and
Luke guessed immediately that we were getting scammed over, but was
too afraid to say something, because of all the rumors we had heard
about such scams. We had indeed a nice kind of tea drinking
ceremony with explanations on how to make the tea - they also
didn't poison us as far as we know up until now and they didn't
drug us and steal all we owned either. They were just interested in
getting our money. In the end we lost about 100 bucks on tea
drinking, as the testing of one kind of tea was horrendously
expensive for Chinese standards. Well, we got scammed over today,
that's for sure. The scam was rather good, even a bit more
elaborate than I wrote here - otherwise we may not have fallen for
it. It's a lesson well learned and luckily we came out of it with
no harm done except a slightly bruised and battered ego. It was a
lesson well learned and now we try to be a little more careful. So
to all you others out there: never follow Chinese, no matter how
young or old or whatever they are, that call out to you on the
streets. Talk to them, be nice and then say you have other things
to do. I know that this may be rather obvious to most of you, who
are not as na've than we were, but that's just for the records.
After that episode we decided to go and see the Jade Buddha Temple
in the northwest of our hotel. See the pictures for some
impressions. We decided to walk back to our hotel from there and
wandered through some interesting areas with small stores. When we
arrived back at the shopping mall area we just collapsed at a
H''gen Dasz and treated us to some ice cream - mostly as a plaster
for our still bruised ego.
Finally, we returned to our room, we were too tired for any more escapades.
We decided to see if there is a Chinese opera we could go and see tonight, and so our first action was to find the Shanghai Theatre. We found it quickly enough, but found out that our plans would be thwarted by something rather western: every day and every evening until the one where we would leave Shanghai, knew only one performance: 'High School Musical the Stage Production'. And that was something we certainly did not want to see (even though I think that Dominik, a good friend of mine, would have gotten a kick out of this). What we only found out later was that the whole cast and crew of the production was actually housed in our hotel (which explained things like a lot of blokes with High School Musical T-Shirts being at our breakfast, and a lady in our elevator singing beautifully).
We decided to visit the 'ancient town' as opposed to the 'old town'. The place was called Qibao and was at the very edge of Shanghai, it took us about one and a half hours by taxi. After a bit of looking around, a bus ride and some friendly help from locals, we found ourselves in yet another tourist traps mainly with shops. Qibao is mainly a few streets on a river, where one could even take a tour on a boat. But somehow we were so shocked by all the kitschy stuff they sold, that we just took a quick stroll through it and then decided to go back into the city center by subway.
We finally found Yuyuan Gardens in the old town - which was only a short visit, as we were starting to get tired again from walking. It was almost 40 C' and the air was very humid after all.
Later we walked back to Nanjing road and took the subway back to our hotel.
We took another night train to Hong Kong. It wasn't as luxurious as the previous one, but I slept well. The train brought us from Shanghai to Shenzhen, a city at the border to the Hong Kong enclave, where we had to fill out all the forms that passing over a country border entailed. Once we successfully passed through all the formalities, we took a train from the Shenzhen station to Hong Kong Island and our hotel there in Wan Chai.
We couldn't check into our hotel immediately, so we took stroll to the nearest parts of the city, down Hennessey and Lockhart Rd to Causeway Bay.
When we could finally check in properly, we took the small tram to Victoria peak. Truth been told, the view from there is really spectacular, but they had also built a monstrosity of a tourist shopping mall at the top of that hill, with highly expensive restaurants (we still ate something in a restaurant with the funny name of 'Run Forest Run', even though it was highly overpriced). In a desperate attempt to flee a bit from the tourist areas we took a stroll further up the side of the hill and found a really nice little park with butterflies.Finally, we decided to walk down the hill. After all, it wasn't all that far, and the hill was steep, so we entered the houses quickly. We soon found out, that we had landed ourselves in the bar street of Hong Kong. A lot of white people seemed to like and frequent the place, but since Luke and I are not really the kind of guys who like to go out at night, we didn't linger.
Today we decided to take a look at the southern part of Hong Kong Island. Since most of the center of the island is a forest national reserve, the south looked rather different at first sight. There were a lot less skyscrapers, a lot less inhabited areas. Our bus, however, dropped us in the middle of a tourist resort. There were insanely huge hotels, lining a rather deserted beach. Either we just didn't come at the right time of the day or didn't pick the right season or this place too was suffering from the financial crisis - then again, the water didn't look all the welcoming either. Not that it was dirty, but somehow you didn't want to go in there.
We found Repulse Bay (called like that because pirates were successfully repulsed by the British fleet), our first goal on our day's list rather quickly. The place our guide referred us to was very surreal. A jumbled assembly of mosaic covered statues without any order or any understandable reason why they would stand there. There were Buddhas, all sorts of animals and most peculiar structure of all was the so called 'Longevity Bridge', a small red bridge that according to the legend added three more days to your lifespan should you cross it.
After this little adventure we walked along the south coast of Hong Kong Island for a while, but soon found it was probably better to take the bus (it was getting rather hot again, after all). Our next stop was Aberdeen - which didn't look like the Shenmue Aberdeen at all, but more like the other parts of Hong Kong on the northern parts of the island. We took a boat ride around Aberdeen bay and amongst other sights saw the floating restaurant, which didn't look as charming from the back as it did from the front.
Later we decided to go back to the northern part of the island and visit Man Mo Temple, another Shenmue location. Even though the temple doesn't look like much from the outside, it sure is impressive from the inside. Especially the incense coils. One thing that is quite like the game though, is the streets with one antique shop after the other, and there is a stair leading to the temple, even though it's not nearly as impressive as the one in the game. One thing lead to another and we also strolled down several market streets on our way home. We didn't actually buy anything, but it was still interesting, and I enjoy markets just for the window shopping aspect as well. You never know what you'll see...
Our trip to the main land. We mainly went to the Chi Lin Nunnery on Diamond Hill. And to a park that was not in our guide. I was rather surprised at how peaceful the district around the nunnery was. There was hardly any traffic and there were also a lot less skyscrapers around here. Everything seemed so serene. On our way to the park we passed something that looked like an old people's home and I couldn't imagine a better place for it.
In the evening we were rather surprised to find a vegetarian restaurant. Usually most people in China don't apparently don't understand if you mention to them that you're a vegetarian (you get further by telling them that you're a Buddhist), but here it seemed to be different. We soon found out that the restaurant specialized on copying anything that was made of meat with a tofu alternative. You could get vegetarian duck, pork etc. and it looked, and even tasted exactly like the original. It was rather mad. Also it seemed that Westerners were not often seen at this restaurant, and we had the chief waitress lady hovering over us all the time, making sure we were satisfied customers and scrutinizing every move of her staff. It was rather disconcerting, after a while, up to the point where I feared we would get the servants into trouble if we didn't show our utmost satisfaction with everything they did.
Finally we were released of these clutches and bumbled down to the night market.
Since we still had a full day's time, we decided to take a ferry to Lantau Island in the west of Hong Kong Island. Once at Mui Wo, one of the harbors on this side of the island, a bus took us at a constant 40km/h (ignoring the fact that the roads were winding and quite mountainous) to Ngong Ping.
To our astonishment we found out that the so called Tian Tan Buddha statue, our goal, was no more than 30 years old and that this place had also become a incredible modern stronghold of tourist entertainment. The village of Ngong Ping, was only a line of polished white housees with shops. Even though I had tasted my first ever sesame ice cream there, it still wasn't very inviting all in all. Especially because parts of it were under heavy construction, and were supposedly going to be a park to attract and hold even more tourists. So even though the Buddha statue was rather impressive, it's glorious air was somewhat dampened by all the merchandise. Po Lin temple was interesting, if it was only for it's arm thick incense sticks. Something I've never seen before.
What impressed me the most on this day however was the cable car you could take leading down the mountain. As a Swiss, I've been riding my share of fairly spectacular cable cars (unlike the two Chinese who were in the same car with us and who were rather scared because the rode a cable car for the first time), but what impressed me with this one, was that the ride was around half an hour long, and that it lead straight over a huge water inlet! I've never see anything like that before.
This marked our last day in Hong Kong, the next day we were already off to Guilin by plane.
What can be said about Guilin is: it's a small city - maybe about a third of the size of London, I'm not sure. There are your usual malls, maybe a bit less glorious than those in Shanghai, but they do the trick, there are your usual shops with half of their items spilling out onto the street as there are usually no front walls and there is one tourist street where it's a pain to walk through, if you don't want to eat something as 'tourist fishers' try to convince your that their restaurant is the best. Traffic is as chaotic yet fluid as everywhere else. What sets Guilin apart from other cities, is its famous landscapes. Jagged mountains surround it, and sometimes even rise out from amidst the houses like the teeth of some enormous animal that has bitten itself into the town and won't let go. Parks are everywhere, most of which are free, unless you plan to choose one of those parks surrounding one of said mountains.
Our first day in Guilin was marked by the visit of Seven Star Park, a park consisting mostly of large areas that looked like park areas should look like. But it also boasted its so called camel hill, a cave that was as beautiful as it was kitschy lit by all too colourful neon lamps and pandas. The latter were found in a rather desolate stone and concrete fully closed cage with only occasional permission to go into a green open enclosure. I'm sounding a bit bitter here, but even though the park is ok, it can't really be counted as a real attraction, as it just looks like any other normal public park. Apart from your usual tourist shops maybe.
After a delicious dinner we chose to go to an internet caf' in the evening for the first time to share some of our adventures with people at home.
This time we decided to get one of the bamboo raft drivers to ferry us down Li River to what's called Elephant Hill. If you look at the pictures, it does actually look a bit like an elephant with a trunk.
And then we decided to go to Fubo Shan (one of the hill protruding out of the city scape) and its 1000 Buddha cave and then to Solitary Beauty Peak (you guessed right: another hill) and its park there. I climbed the first hill without problems, but passed up on the second one. The humidity was just too great.
We had booked a Li River Cruise on this day. I had to admit that the weather wasn't the best, but our tour guide did the best to keep us in a cheerful mood. He also told us however, that the food on the boat would be provided for, but that it would not be very good since much of the money provided for this journey was lost to by the local offices. Contrary to his statement though, the food was rather good. We ate together with an Chinese family, who had a boy about the age of Renato, one of my small brothers, and with about the same character too. It was scary how the two resembled each other in behavior (both amusingly impertinent and with that 'I want this right now' attitude you only get in 9 year olds). We had a nice chat with this family, as the mother could speak English very well and they offered us some of their food they had only bought for themselves. This included whole, small, river crabs, which were delicious.
In spite of the drizzle, the landscape was phenomenal - the photos will testify for that.
We arrived at Yangshuo in the early afternoon, and it was what we expected and worse. Another tourist trap. So we decided to rent a bike and try to escape from the beaten path. That was about the best decision we could make. We came through small villages, and could watch people working on the fields, all the while being surrounded by those magnificent mountains. We did find some tourist attractions on the way, but the further away we went, the less they became, until we left them behind us altogether. Our main route was an unfinished highway, and this together with the twilight of the sun shining through the clouds, provided us with some very surreal sceneries.
Just a quick note: we visited a tiger and bear park today. I didn't take a lot of pictures (it was forbidden, even though everyone still took pictures anyway). Especially not of the circus and the bears with the nose rings and all the other animals apart from the tigers and bears being in a deplorable condition. I felt too sorry for them.
We decided to stay in Ping'An at the Longji Rice Terraces for two days instead of one. Mostly because it was a 4 hour trip by bus to get there. The bus ride was chaotic in this very Chinese manner, we're already used to. We had to change busses midway, but didn't do it at a station, but in a rather hurried fashion in the middle of the street. Going into the mountains there came a point where the bus just couldn't move any further, because the road was too small and winding (and was stopped by a barrier). The rest of the way was a 20 minute walk to the village. If one was lazy one could let oneself be carried to the village by a two man palanquin, but I would rather eat my own backpack than ever lower myself to that kind of thing.
Ping'An village has also suffered from tourism, but not as bad as other places. There were the usual tourist shops and practually the entire place made of hotel, rather than dwellings. But the people were friendly and not as obtrusive as in other places. The host of our hotel, even though she didn't speak a single word of English had a wonderful humour and we had a great time not understanding each other verbally.
What Longji is known for are its minority people. Especially the woman who never cut their hair and wash them in the river in the mornings (the belief goes that, the longer your hair, the longer your life). They also had the peculiarity of cocking meals in bamboo 'pots' (see the pictures), even though how traditional that is, I don't know.
The rice terraces are rather spectacular - and the pictures, don't do them justice at all. We went for several hikes and all were rather beautiful. In the evening we ate well. We also met some very funny and curious Chinese tourists from Liaoning Province, with which we could only communicate with the help of pen and paper and sketches and a few raw words of Mandarin. They constantly insisted on trying to buy us beer and getting us to smoke cigarettes - and we had to constantly decline their offer, as we don't do either and despise both (finally we told them we were somewhat like Buddhists, which is not far from the truth, as I don't eat meat and we don't drink alcohol or smoke). It was an interesting experience.
The night was wonderful. Fireflies soared through the sky and the mood shone on the terraces. Too bad we had to leave the day after.
So this was our last day, after a day of resting up in Guilin. We had to go the airport early and not a soul was on the highway there. It was rather magical. The trip home took us near 24 hours all in all.
