Guilin

Hello Everyone,
It has been a while, but it is time to get the ole rice chronicles going again.  Talking about rice I finally saw a real, live rice paddy, but I'm getting a way head of myself.  I had three days off, Wednesday to Friday, which including the weekend makes 5 sweet days off.  No one knows why we got those three days off, but I don't really care.

I flew to Guilin, China on Tuesday night after school.  Guilin is about an hour and twenty minutes plane ride straight west from Hong Kong.  It is a region in China famous for its magnificent scenery.  It has several smallish mountains covered by trees that are all quite beautiful.  Before I left I squeezed in a coat, just in case.  I did not believe I would need it considering Guilin is sub tropical like Hong Kong but I am glad I did.  It was plus 10 when I got there, which back home is nothing, actually ok, but after experincing 8 weeks of plus 25-35 weather in Hong Kong I went into a bit of shock.  It felt really cold. Thankfully, the coat saved the day.

The actual city of Guilin, about 500,000 people, is considered, when compared to other cities in China, like a small village.  I found the traffic incredible.  Two lanes were for cars and vehicles of every description, while a third lane was for bikes and mopeds.  There were thousands of them.  Most people did not wear helmets, some wore goofy looking hardhats, and many riders had little kids squeezed on the back or front.  Street crossings were shared by pedestrians, mopeds, and bikes.  I got involved in one of those crossings and it was crazy as bikes and mopeds of all shapes and sizes swirled by me.

Guilin, like all Chinese cities, is a mish-mash of first world excellence mixed in with some middle class buildings and third world slums.  On one corner you can have this rustic vender selling soup in a ragged looking hole in the wall for next to nothing and across the street is a KFC selling food for 10 times the amount.  This kind of thing was everywhere in Guilin, and really it is like that in Hong Kong, but it just seemed more extreme in Guilin.  Nevertheless the people seemed happy, and even though most hardly knew English they were quite friendly and most seemed to be awed by my height.

On my first day in Guilin I hired a taxi driver to be my tour guide for the day.  It cost me about $35 Canadian which I thought was ok.   My new buddy called himself Lee as in Bruce Lee, did not know a word of English, but we had an English/Chinese travel brochure with pictures and I just pointed to where I wanted to go.  My first stop was the Reed Flute Cave.  Myself and this English backpacker were the only non natives taking the tour, but the guide after talking to the 20 or so Chinese would then talk to us in English.  The cave itself was impressive, but the Chinese have a way of overdoing things.  Think tacky.  There were colored lights everywhere and it somehow took away from the sheer natural wonder of the cave.  The middle of the cave was really impressive, but when they did this cosmic light show to Chinese opera music and then had a bubble machine cascading hundreds of soap bubbles throughout  the cave I nearly gagged at the sheer tackiness of it all.  The tour guide kept saying its beautiful, its beautiful,  I lied by nodding my head yes, but inside I was cringing.  Nevertheless the cave was impressive and we will put the garish light show down as a cultural experience.

From there I had lunch with Lee.  Duck, pork and rice.  Was tasty and very good.  From there I went to visit two mini mountains in the middle of the city.  They were impressive and kind of dangerous.  The lack of safety standards on those hills in terms of no railings and how steep the steps were is just another shred of evidence that China is indeed a developing nation albeit a very rich one.

After Lee dropped me off at the hotel I watched some NBA basketball,LA Lakers vrs. the Houston Rockets.  The Rockets have a Chinese hero on their team Yau Ming and of course the announcers voices, even though I could not understand a word,  would go higher every time Mr. Ming touched the ball.  Basketball is a huge sport here in China, right up there with Ping Pong and soccer.

The next morning I grudgingly got on a tour bus and was assigned with several other bemused tourists from der Vaterland (Germany) Switzerland, Austria, and the good ole US of A, to a group led by a Chinese girl named Cherry.  We became known as the Panda group and Cherry even gave us a sticker so we could remember who we were.  My stupid sticker fell off within five minutes so I nearly forgot I was a Panda, but Cherry had a big flag with a Panda on it so, like my coat,  that saved the day for me.

The bus rattled along for about a half an hour and so did Cherry filling our minds with inane facts about Guilin and the rules that we were to abide by.  A German snickered behind during Cherry's lecture and said in his native tongue, "I came to China for a tour, but instead I am in the Panda kindergarten mit my new teacher Cherry."  

Finally the bus stopped at a depot by the Li river.  We were herded into this depot and were instantly assaulted by vendors yelling, "Memory cards, memory cards, get your memory cards."  They were postcards actually.  The depot was filled with useless junk, the worst being these giant paintings of nude Chinese  women.  Who in their right mind would try to sell paintings like that to tourists about to embark on a four and a half hour boat cruise.  Like some idiot is going to buy one of those things and carry it on the boat, "hey look at this great souvenir I bought, I think its just perfect for the outhouse back home in Hicksville, Kansas.  Ok, ok, I know, don't judge the culture, be open, blah blah blah.

Anyways, me, Cherry and the rest of us Pandas got onto barge 27 and I got to sit with Amy and Lowell and their three red headed kids from California.  They were great.  Lowell had been assigned by his company in the US to Beijing for a year to learn Manderin.  Anyways, Cherry got busy putzing around with some other Pandas and for the next 4 and a half hours barge 27 in a convoy of other barges slowly meandered up the Li River past some very impressive scenery.  We all had buffet lunch later on the boat and it was good.  Most of the time was spent visiting, taking pictures and admiring God's handiwork. A small group of Chinese tourists on the boat insisted getting a picture with me.  It was obvious that my size was impressive to them and we had fun getting our pictures taken.  Pretty well every day I have some Chinese person stand beside me and look up with incredulity that a human can be so big.  I say they are just small.

At the end of the trip we ended up in a town called Yuang zhou  or something like that and got to tour some rice paddies where I promptly slipped and had my right shoe covered in mud.  Nice.  I also took a little ride on a bamboo raft, watched some lucky tourists feed some water buffalo, wow, the people handling the buffalo were way more interesting, and saw a cormorant bird catch a fish.  The old chinese used to train these birds called cormorants to fish.  By placing a ring at the base of the bird's neck it is impossible for them to swallow the fish.  So we watched how that was done.  Pretty good.

We were all driven back to our hotels later that night and I was pretty pooped.  All that standing around, eating and kibbitzing and oh yeah taking pictures of marvelous scenery tuckered me out.

The next morning my faithful driver delivered me to the airport and was back "home" to Hong Kong later that day.

Yeah this touring thing is alright.  Next trip is the Great Wall.  I'll try writing next week.

Adios,

Dirk
  

Body Boarding

Hello Everyone,
Rochelle is taking the week off so I'm taking a turn at providing some info for this blog.  The heat and humidity have eased off somewhat.  We're experiencing "fall". Temperatures are from 25-30 above rather than 30-35 with humidity so thick you walk 25 paces and you are drenched in sweat, now it takes 300-500 steps before this happens.
We're really enjoying the beach culture here and because it is such a novelty for us we will keep going till it cools down  to 20? (maybe in December).  We have found a beach called Big Wave Bay Beach and while it didn't really live up to its name last week it certainly did this week.  We rented a body board for about 2 dollars canadian and took turns riding the waves.  It was great fun.  Going down some waves felt like sledding down a hill back home.  Except a tad warmer.
We also did some mountain biking with friends on Friday October 1st, The People's Republic of China's 61st birthday, and it was quite challenging.  Yet wheeling through a bamboo grove was pretty amazing.  While it may sound we are on vacation please note most of these experiences occur only on weekends or holidays.  We do some work during the week.  Sure, sure… No really.
Anyways enjoy the pictures and I'm sure Rochelle will find something humerous and interesting to write for the chronicles next week.

Adios Dirk