Limestone and Rice

Ladies and gentlemen, I’d like to welcome you to the scenic portion of your trip. 

Guilin is an area surrounded by rock formations. Bizarre “knobs” of limestone stick up in the air all over the place here. From the city, you get a decent eyeful, but we took a boat down the Li River. Now THAT was a view!

The water is incredibly clean - perhaps the cleanest in China - and reflective which makes for some really nice eye candy. The 4.5 hour photofest down the river was broken up with lunch and some lovely Canadians who were also traveling. Maisie took a shining to one grandmother and stalked the poor woman all over the boat. On top of the buffet, we ordered one of the braised fish they offered so before we headed up river, the boat stopped and bought our fish from the local fisherman off of her little boat. Now that’s fresh!

Off the boat, we shopped on West Street, a tourist street that had stuff we hadn’t seen anywhere else. Refreshing, but we were out of money so we didn’t buy much. It’s incredibly frustrating to shop here because nobody takes credit cards and banks that take our card are far and few between. That’s probably a good thing or we’d be divorced. Tom and I always differ about what we want to take home. He gets mad when we buy something for $10 that he could have gotten for $6. He hates feeling ripped off. I feel like it’s from our trip and at home it’d cost $20 so it’s still a bargain. Tom is incredibly generous - always. He’s also a shopper, but not like I am when it comes to trip trinkets and gifts.

Anyway, after our window shopping, we got on an open-air bus of sorts and toured the countryside, getting a close up view of the rice paddies and farming industry. The backdrop of the rocks made it all the more special. We were mostly on paved roads just driving along the farms.

We did stop at one “old” house (400 years?) and got a chance to see how people used to live - and still do. Maisie got a kick out of the chickens she kept in the house.

The tour operator with whom we booked the trip treated us for dinner. I’ve never, ever heard of that before and apparently it’s rare, but he wanted to meet the people touring with small kids! Ha! I think he also wanted to get some ideas for promoting family travel in China with his company. He’s a nice egg and even brought presents for the kids! Again, out of the 20+ travel operators I contacted, he is the ONLY one who came up with ideas of things to do with the kids like dumpling making and kite flying.

I think my dad would have really liked Guilin. Who knows? He may have even come here. I wish I knew exactly where they went on their China trip. Of course, they traveled here 25 years ago so things would have been much different then. I think things would have been better then. Today, everything is so westernized.

The weather couldn’t have been more perfect, something I’ve been craving since going to Singapore. And unlike the rest of China, we had blue skies our whole visit here.