I've found the memory card containing the photos we took on our first day in Guilin and thought you might want to be bored by more food photos. Bear with me, this is a travel journal I keep for posterity.
So let's see, after the boring tour of the palace recommended by the cab driver (cab drivers get a commission for taking tourists to any place where entrance fees are charged), we went shopping for winter jackets in 'Little Hong Kong', a big mall beneath the main shopping street. We emerged 2 hours later to the street level and snacked on some street food.
I find that grilled meat is best when made by Xinjiang people, not the Han Chinese. You know what they say about all Chinese looking alike? I think all Xinjiangnese are clones; I just can't tell one from the other.
Pan-fried tofu with Guilin chili sauce, tasty but greasy.
Guilin has 'three treasures': Guilin chili sauce, Guilin wine and Guilin fermented bean curd.
This 'grandparents' pancake' was delicious. Slightly chewy yet soft, buttery with the wonderful aroma of fresh bread, this pancake (2 Yuan/RM1/US$0.28) was cooked on a cart by the road in front of the Wang Cheng Departmental Store.
For dinner, we went back to Northern Nation Village, a restaurant that serves northeastern food, where we had eaten on our previous trip to Guilin. This time I was disappointed with the food: oily and bland. But again, it was cheap, about 120Yuan/RM60/US$17 I think.
All restaurants in China seal their cutlery and bowls in plastic.
This was a soup recommended by the waitress. It was too salty for us.
Sweet & sour fish.
I kept quiet when Hub ordered the sweet and sour fish; didn't want to be accused of over-ruling him regarding food. Sure enough, it was a disappointing dish (sweet and sour dishes are usually ordered by westerners ignorant of Chinese cuisine). The river fish (it's hard to find ocean fish in China) was full of tiny forked bones and the sauce was sugar and coloring.
The pancake was oily so we ate the filling only.
Village chicken was okay.
Another soupy item. Ming loves soup.
Again, the scallion pancakes were too oily. Maybe it was because this was our first meal in China and we weren't used to greasy northern Chinese food.
After a walk along the main street which is closed to traffic every night for street vendors, we returned to our hotel to drop off our shopping bags and then went across the road for more food, even though we weren't hungry. We were too excited to go to bed anyway.
Oil tea (you cha), a Guilin specialty made of ginger, tea leaves, onions, peanuts, spring onions and served with rice crispies/bubbles.
Whelks are a common snack in Guilin. There was hardly any meat but the sauce was good.
Right after that, we crossed the road back to Education Hotel next to a row of seafood restaurants. Hub couldn't take the food and the fatigue anymore and went back to the hotel. The kids and I wondered what to do with the old man for the rest of the trip.
We asked for Guilin mifen and this came. I told my kids that this was not REAL Guilin mifen the way I remembered it but it was delicious.
Fried Guilin mifen. Very good too although we were so full by then we struggled to keep the food down.
So let's see, after the boring tour of the palace recommended by the cab driver (cab drivers get a commission for taking tourists to any place where entrance fees are charged), we went shopping for winter jackets in 'Little Hong Kong', a big mall beneath the main shopping street. We emerged 2 hours later to the street level and snacked on some street food.
I find that grilled meat is best when made by Xinjiang people, not the Han Chinese. You know what they say about all Chinese looking alike? I think all Xinjiangnese are clones; I just can't tell one from the other.
Pan-fried tofu with Guilin chili sauce, tasty but greasy.
Guilin has 'three treasures': Guilin chili sauce, Guilin wine and Guilin fermented bean curd.
This 'grandparents' pancake' was delicious. Slightly chewy yet soft, buttery with the wonderful aroma of fresh bread, this pancake (2 Yuan/RM1/US$0.28) was cooked on a cart by the road in front of the Wang Cheng Departmental Store.
For dinner, we went back to Northern Nation Village, a restaurant that serves northeastern food, where we had eaten on our previous trip to Guilin. This time I was disappointed with the food: oily and bland. But again, it was cheap, about 120Yuan/RM60/US$17 I think.
All restaurants in China seal their cutlery and bowls in plastic.
This was a soup recommended by the waitress. It was too salty for us.
Sweet & sour fish.
I kept quiet when Hub ordered the sweet and sour fish; didn't want to be accused of over-ruling him regarding food. Sure enough, it was a disappointing dish (sweet and sour dishes are usually ordered by westerners ignorant of Chinese cuisine). The river fish (it's hard to find ocean fish in China) was full of tiny forked bones and the sauce was sugar and coloring.
The pancake was oily so we ate the filling only.
Village chicken was okay.
Another soupy item. Ming loves soup.
Again, the scallion pancakes were too oily. Maybe it was because this was our first meal in China and we weren't used to greasy northern Chinese food.
After a walk along the main street which is closed to traffic every night for street vendors, we returned to our hotel to drop off our shopping bags and then went across the road for more food, even though we weren't hungry. We were too excited to go to bed anyway.
Oil tea (you cha), a Guilin specialty made of ginger, tea leaves, onions, peanuts, spring onions and served with rice crispies/bubbles.
Whelks are a common snack in Guilin. There was hardly any meat but the sauce was good.
Right after that, we crossed the road back to Education Hotel next to a row of seafood restaurants. Hub couldn't take the food and the fatigue anymore and went back to the hotel. The kids and I wondered what to do with the old man for the rest of the trip.
We asked for Guilin mifen and this came. I told my kids that this was not REAL Guilin mifen the way I remembered it but it was delicious.
Fried Guilin mifen. Very good too although we were so full by then we struggled to keep the food down.
7 comments:
Hi Terri, enjoyed your Guilin trip journals. :)
glad u found more pix of your trip, enjoyed reading about your trips.
johnathan: tq :) i look at the photos n i wish i was on holidays again. i love family holidays. any potential gf/bf of my kids will hav to come holiday with us.
javapot: tq!
johnathan: i mean when they get married, no no if they are just bf/gf! i'm old-fashioned & conservative when it comes to boy-girl relationships.
the cutlery plastic wrap is destroying our mother nature! just imagine millions of china people throw it away for just because of wrapping the cutlery everyday. and i wonder the cutlery is clean.
HAHA! Terri, then it shd be spelled as spouse, not bf/gf hehehe. Good that you are conservative. That is one virtue that is so missing these days. Glad that your home ministry is in good hands ;)
gill: i agree with you 1000%! i abhor the wide usage of plastics too. i wish ppl would take their rubbish seriously too, n compost as much as possible. i just learnt frm a friend tt used dry cells should never be thrown away into the bins. never knew tt. i do separate my paper waste for my maid to make some $ from but she told me they pay her 10sen per 3 kg. how will tt encourage ppl to recycle? the middlemen again make the most $.
johnathan: it's hard to be an unpopular mom but i always think when i make certain decisions regarding my kids tt it's not for their comfort now but for their long-term welfare. tt's my guiding rule n it helps me not spoil them.
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