Fun travels: Guilin and Yangshuo Summer 2009

Guilin and Yangshuo Summer 2009

Heard so much about Guilin and it was one of the places in China that I really wanted to go.
So after Huangshan, we took a long distance train to Guilin.
20 hours of... hard seat train. That was not something I would recommend. :)

Guilin town has quite a few lakes and we stayed at a hotel nearby.
Walking along the lake was fantastic.
Lots of locals do that as their morning exercise.

Famous Guilin rice noodles
Rice noodles with toppings of egg, peanuts and some veggies.
They are served everywhere and the locals like to have the noodles for breakfast.
Apologies for the pic quality!

Claypot rice, Guilin style.
Quite similar to HK style.

Night market

The next day, we took a boat ride from Guilin down the Li River to Yangshuo.
The river scenery is straight out of Chinese paintings!

There would be little boats that ride along the bigger boats and these smaller boats would have people delivering food items or selling souvenirs.

On board each big boat, there would also be a kitchen selling overpriced local food.
We shared a cabin with a family from Sichuan province.

Along the way, we saw locals and foreigners swimming in the river as well.

Arrival at Yangshuo.
Yangshuo has plenty of tourists and is also a popular spot for rock climbing.
No shortage of cliff rocks to climb up. :)

We took in a night show "Impressions of Yangshuo Liu Sanjie"
It was directed by the famous Chinese director Zhang Yimou who made the movies "Raising the Red Lantern" and "Hero".
The whole production was staged on water, on the river itself and was really spectacular!
Focused on the various local minority tribes and performed by them as well.
Highly recommended
Just be sure to get genuine tickets and bring the mozzie repellent! :)

Dinner was Yangshuo specialties Braised Snail and Beer fish.
Both came in huge portions!
The snails were quite earthy and much bigger than escargots.
Beer fish was local fish cooked in beer somehow.
Not too bad.
Forgot to take pics. :(

Next day, we took a rafting trip down a small river.
Ya, take off shoes as they will get wet. :)
Along the way, there are floating rafts set up to capture pictures and u can buy the photos right away.
They have a whole generator thing going with computer and printer... in the middle of the river. :)