Guilin: Day 1

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.

Guilin : Day 6 Longji

We left Yangshuo in a private van driven by Xiao Jiang ("Little Say", remember him?). Our agreed fare was 600 Yuan/RM300/US$83 from Yangshuo to Longji (4 hours, because Little Say drove at 50 kmph) and back to Guilin and we were to provide meals and accommodation. If we took the bus, it would have cost us less than half that amount but that would have meant that when we got to Longji, which we knew nothing about, we would not have any transport.

Longji (meaning the dragon's backbone) is only 2 hours from Guilin, hidden in the mist and slopes of hills. It is an area famous for terraced rice fields, like those in Bali. I love Longji for the scenery (although it was not at its best that time of the year, the terraces being brown and heavy mist covered the hills most of the time) and the fact that the Zhuang people of that area still keep their traditional way of life. Because it was cold, the famous long haired girls of Longji were not out to show off their floor-length tresses.


We got to the gate of Ping An Village in Longji at 2:30 pm and confusion awaited us. We were told that we needed to pay an entrance fee to get pass the gate into the village. To buy the entrance fee, we'd need to show our accommodation booking but we didn't make prior booking so we couldn't buy the entrance fare. Tour guides and hotel agents then surrounded us, all claiming to have the best inns up in the mountains. Hub settled on Countryside Inn, the cost being the highest. He figured that that would be the safest bet. Besides, 'highest' was only 120 Yuan/RM60/US$17 per room. Once we paid for the rooms, we were allowed through the gate. Porters grabbed our bags, hoisting them over the baskets on their backs, charging 20-30 Yuan depending on the size.

We followed the porters up the hill, admiring the terraced rice fields around us. It was misty, but we could still see the surrounding scenery. Up and up we climbed and I had to stop and buy a boiled sweet potato because I hadn't eaten anything since my bowl of instant noodles the night before. The sweet potato was amazingly smooth, sweet and full of aroma, almost like perfume.
We turned a corner and there stood multi-storeyed wooden houses, ancient and beautiful with the mist thickening around them. I felt like I was back in time by 700 years (the rice fields of Longji were first cultivated around 1300 AD). Yi and Hub wondered at the scenery while my sons walked on like they'd seen it before. Another example of why (most) men are from Mars.




Our inn was good and clean. Because we took two rooms and it was low season, Little Say was given a free room. We spent the afternoon exploring the village, going up and down the narrow steps of the paths that connect the houses. Imagine a whole village of 800 people perched on hills, connected by steep stone paths. The lower and scenic-facing slopes were taken up by inns while the houses of the villagers were in the background. Some areas were off-limits by their smells: pigs kept underneath some houses gave off a stench that stopped me from walking further. Chickens and ducks searched for food and a rat rotted on the path; I nearly stepped on it. That was Longji--breathtakingly beautiful but shocking when you look close, especially between and under the houses.

The mist thickened and it got very cold (4 C at night) so we returned to the inn to rest. I was awakened by the chill in my body (despite the heater in the room) and went downstairs to the lounge where my boys were playing computer games (the internet service up in Longji was fast but Blogger, Facebook and most sites were blocked by the government. The only service available was the email) and my Hub, Yi and Little Say were watching Liu sanjie, the movie. An Israeli couple with two toddlers checked in, speaking beautiful perfect Mandarin that put us all to shame. A backpacker walked in. Vic was from Poland and he and I spent the next hour exchanging travel tales, warming our hands (and my frozen toes which were numb) over glowing charcoals placed in an old wok. He told me about a village wedding that he was invited to in Yunnan, up north, and how he was told to run for the forest when his stomach acted up after the feast. As he ran, a pig followed him. The rest is up to your imagination but Vic's timing was quite bad because right after he told me how he realized with horror that the pig probably habitually ran after anyone who ran into the forest, we were called to dinner. If you remember, I didn't have a proper meal in two days because of all the spitting I saw in Yangshuo (and Guilin) and I totally lost my appetite. I watched as my family hungrily ate all the food; I nibbled on some to keep warm/alive. In China, veggies and pigs are human-manure organic, I concluded. I just couldn't tell them at that point about the pig because they were going "Wah, seriously tasty meal!" Wey was a little upset about our Guilin trip by then because meat was always served sliced thinly (not in chunks) and in small portions. He obsessed about the food he wanted to eat when we get home.

Vic was in another Longji village, a couple of hours away, a few days before. He said the trekking was great and that we must trek to a totally remote village about 2 hours away once the weather got better. But the next morning, our last day in Longji, we woke up to mist so thick we couldn't see beyond 10 meters. We packed to leave Longji because the mist was not going to clear. It was so unfortunate because Longji was so amazingly beautiful and off the beaten tourist path at that time of the year.


A simple dish of scrambled eggs with Chinese chives.

'Return to the wok' or twice-cooked pork was superb, I was told.




Another tasty dish was tofu in soya beans sauce.



Waxed bacon with dried bamboo shoots.



This brinjal dish was so good that I went into the kitchen to ask the chef for the recipe but he was non-responsive, saying only that a good douban jiang (soy bean chili paste) made the dish good.



Yi or Ming dropped this onto Wey's side plate and it made him sick. When we were small, my sister and I would dig the brains (that whitish pulp) out with our chopstick. It was yum but now it does look rather gross. For those who don't know, this is the head of a chicken, likely a cockerel.




Cobs of corn drying at the front of every house, stored to feed the pigs in winter.



Bamboo filled with rice and meat or shrimps and toasted over fire. And we thought lemang was only found in Malaysia.

The next morning, my boys ordered pizza for breakfast while Yi, Hub and I ate instant noodles. That pizza looked good and I was impressed that they had mozzarella up in the hills but my boys said it tasted of dried bamboo. In Guilin, if you smell pee, remember it is likely to be a kind of bamboo (very tasty) and not pee.

On the way down, we passed stalls selling souvenirs and other stuff. Hub stopped at a stall, taken in by some black seeds called 'Mandarin Duck Fruit' (yingyang guo), and asked me for 30 Yuan. Now, if you know me, you'll know it's hard to sell me anything, from direct sell products to insurance. I am by nature a very discerning person. I would've stopped Hub, because I've never believed in all those claims of certain plants curing hypertension or diabetes or cholesterol or whatever. But since it was 30 Yuan, I gave him the money and moved on to the next stall where I bought 20 Yuan worth of dried black ants that were supposed to turn white hairs into black. Did I just say I am a discerning person? I didn't really believe it, but I bought it to play a trick on my mom.

In China, the hand-held balance scale is the most common weighing instrument and it is useful for short-changing customers.

You must read on, for your sake, if you ever go to China. After coming home, Hub remembered the mandarin duck fruits that he bought and did a search on the net after which he came to me, tail between his legs. Instead of 30 Yuan, he had bought 300 Yuan/RM150/US$42 of mandarin duck fruits (one handful only) and he now suspects that he had been duped. You can read stories about how people were tricked into buying the seeds at a stall up in the slopes of Longji on the net but only if you google in Chinese. The story is the same as Hub's: He stopped to look at the dried lizards and strange produce at a stall where a well-dressed man with his wife were haggling the price of the seeds. The man asked for the real stuff, wild mandarin duck fruits, not the cultivated ones, and the lady seller pulled out a bag from under the table and and poured the 'wild' seeds out. The man, who claimed that he's a Chinese herbalist from Guangzhou, bargained for a lower price, telling Hub in a lowered voice that in China, the standard haggling rule is to slash prices by 70%. He then told Hub the wonders of the seeds (cure for hypertension, cholesterol, diabetes, insomnia, whatever--that would be a red flag for me, if I was there to hear it) and asked that Hub get some because he was buying as much as he could.


Hub wants this lady on a 'Wanted' list but then they probably work in a team, rotating their shifts in selling dried mountian lizards, mandarin fruits/seeds and other rubbish to gullible tourists.

Be very very careful when shopping in China. Expensive tea leaves can turn out to be inferior leaves, face creams can be full of mercury and jade can be glass injected with dye. Everybody is out to get the tourists, and the government can't or wouldn't control the situation.

Longji is most beautiful when the rice terraces are green in the spring and summer and when they are golden in the fall. I've seen photos of Longji in those two seasons and it looked like Shangri La.

Guilin: Day 5 Yangshuo

cOur last day in Yangshuo was not a very pleasant one for me. I was out-voted 4:1 against staying in a farmhouse inn 15 minutes outside the town so I wasn't happy.

We were once told that the best time to see a city is to get up early and get to the streets before everybody else. That's what my Hub does everywhere we go because he's a morning person. I made an effort to climb out of bed early on our last day in Yangshuo and we took a walk at about 7 a.m., just when Yangshuo was waking up. And it is true, the place is so different in the early morning. The Li River was only 10 minutes from our inn, and groups of people were doing tai chi excercise. Some stalls were being set up. Amidst all that, my pleasant morning walk turned more and more disgusting as people were revving up their throats and spitting as naturally as they were breathing. The spitters always made a drumroll ("Krarrrkkk!!") before shooting out their sputum. I felt sick even at the sound, learning to quickly avert my glance (and my steps) to dodge the sickening blobs.



We heard and smelt firecrackers in the peace of the morning and much later, a procession of mourners appeared, led by a guy throwing firecrackers into the air and tailed by a small band of gong players. Family members of the deceased wore the traditional white mourning robes, flanked by assistants on their left and right, and walked backwards facing the coffin. Every few steps, the relatives would stop and kneel. Judging by the pomp of the procession and a paper mache stork/crane (signifying long life) on the coffin, the deceased must've been quite well-off and aged.

Crispy skinned ducks, each only 18 Yuan/RM9/US$2.50.

The sign said 'dog meat boiled, stewed, charcoal roasted' but lucky for us the shop was closed. Another exotic meat that Guilin is famous for is horse meat.


The market was bustling with early morning shoppers. Persimmons were coming to the end of their season and the overripe persimmons were pressed and dried so they can keep longer. They were very tender and sweet, very different from the stale ones we get in Malaysia which usually have a dodgy white powder coating. The green apple-like fruits in front are green dates, very crisp and crunchy but quite bland.


These strawberries and kumquats were straight off the orchard and very sweet.


True to my resolve, we had been eating Guilin mifen every single day of our stay in Guilin. However, this was a hard bowl of noodles to eat as I got pretty nauseous by then, hearing and seeing all the spitting around me.

I don't know why but we seem to do caves wherever we go. I think it's the parent in me thinking that it can be educational for my kids. But after the Silver Cave in Yangshuo, I swear I'll never do caves again. Except Mulu Caves in Sarawak, which I enjoyed visiting because it is so interesting and natural. But of all the caves I've visited (many), Silver Cave is the most unnatural I've ever been too.


Typical of the Chinese love for colors, the caves were lighted brightly with multi-colored lights, turning them into mysterious discos. I was disappointed that there was no prohibition from touching the walls of the caves.



More horror awaited at the exit of the cave, where lighted ads were nailed to the walls. What a waste of 65 Yuan/RM33/US$9 per person.

We returned to Yangshuo for lunch. By now I was sick of Guilin food. It was always beer fish or yam and pork or veg with waxed bacon. I wondered how it could be that there's so much variety of dishes in Guangzhou and so little in Guilin. Hub said it is because Guilin is very poor. Ming, Wey and I out-voted Hub and Yi for a western lunch at Bar98, a cafe and bar operated by two Australians. The meat pie was reportedly (I read it somewhere on the net) the best in Yangshuo, which, when I think of it now, meant nothing because nobody else served meat pies in Yangshuo.


This didn't look convincing. The crust was just flour mixed with water.



It tasted like what it looked: fried beef mince with onions. Ah well, what did we expect anyway. My guess is the Australians were not in the kitchen or maybe not running the inn anymore. I've learnt that travel websites can be very misleading.



I think Wey had better luck with his breaded chicken.



Hub and Yi thought they were smarter than us by ordering fried rice instead of western food. The fried rice was disappointing, considering this was China.

We still didn't do what people do when they are in Yangshuo: enjoy outdoors activities. So Hub made us all get on the rented bikes. 10 Yuan for good bikes, free for old bikes from No Name Inn which we moved to on the last day there. No Name Inn is only 2 doors away from Lazy Men's Inn and it was not only cheaper but the rooms are better and much bigger. He thought he was being romantic when he appeared at the inn on a two-seater bike. I felt a little bit silly and spoilt sitting behind him so I pedalled very hard.





The above 2 photos remind me of Norman Rockwell's painting, The Outing : happy eager faces (well, okay, Wey had a not-so-happy face because he didn't want to cycle) at the beginning of the journey and glum faces on the way home (like a before and after of a courting couple?). Wey acted up like the baby he is and refused to cycle halfway. We were 1/2 hour from Yangshuo. It started to drizzle and turn dark and we nearly left him there. It was Ming who finally persuaded Wey to get on the bike again. Hub and Ming were pissed with Wey and couldn't smile at the camera but Yi was ready with a smile when a camera was pointed at her.

I wouldn't recommend cycling on the highway of Yangshuo. Although the road was wide with bicycle paths on both sides, there were too many vehicles and the air was polluted with their fumes and those of the manure from the veggie farms. But we did catch some beautiful scenery. There's a famous saying that Guilin's mountains and waters are the most beautiful in China but Yangshuo surpasses Guilin's beauty. I agree.



My appetite was totally gone by dinner time, and I opted to stay in instead of going for dinner and walking West Street again. I took a hot shower and watched TV while eating a bowl of instant noodles in bed. It tasted so good. It also felt good to be alone for once. I was still sulking about not spending the night at Outside Inn. Hmmphh!