Guilin through the eyes of the Golden Dragon

We got up this morning and enjoyed a breakfast of bacon and an egg. I'm not totally sure why they decided to decided to make this for us as there was an entire buffet of Chinese food available, but since the choices weren't particularly good, we were happy to accept their offering. We were full and happy when All Business Annie met us in the lobby. We had a packed morning ahead of us. I was pleased to see that our van (did I mention we have a whole van just for the two of us?) is called the Golden Dragon, as I felt like it would give us a little extra Chinese luck in making sure everything went smoothly.

The dragon took us to our first destination, Piled Silk Hill. Annie doesn't particularly like the translation as it makes it sound kind of ugly, but she explained that the hill looks like layers of silk all on top of each other, so it's actually a pretty literal translation. For the record though, hill still means 500 steps. We made it to the top which offered some beautiful panoramic views of the whole city. Guilin is a small city nestled between a bunch of mountains ("hills") and rivers, so it was neat to see it all atop a pile of silk. Annie took us down a different way than we came up and hurried us through all of the stands and shops set up along the base – "they're for tourists!" – and back onto the dragon we went.

Our next stop was Reed Flute Cave, about 20 minutes outside of the main city. On the way over, Annie was telling us the story of how it got discovered. Apparently there was an old man who lived in front of the cave, and he used it to house refugees during World War II, but didn't tell the government about it. (You know how governments can be.) I was a little unclear on the details, but at some point he changed his mind and told the government, but of course they didn't believe him. (Classic China, am I right?) They chalked it up to a legend as many people had talked about such a cave but no one had been able to locate it. At this point, Lauren, who was clearly engrossed in the story eagerly asks "Did they ever find it?" …Obviously, Lauren. That's why we're going to visit it now. According to Annie, the old guy's son told the government again in 1959 at which point they decided to believe him? As I mentioned, Annie is all business and not worried about the details so I'm a little fuzzy on the nuances of the story. Ultimately though, Richard Nixon visited it and so now it's famous.

While I'm as much of a fan of stalagmites and stalactites as the next guy, I wasn't exactly sure what to expect when we got there. The natural beauty ended up being incredible, but the fact that it was enhanced by accent lights of all different colors made the experience truly majestic. It was a feast for the imagination – each area had its own scene title and Annie tried to help us see the story in the shapes of the stones. There was for example, some stones that looked light a stage curtain which were lighted in red, and stones behind it were shaped like figures, who Annie told us were the actors. Unfortunately, the curtains were about to close, so we have just missed the show! They're beckoning us to come back in hopes that we might catch it next time – while I highly doubt that will be the case, it was really fun to listen to Annie (as I'm sure she was often ad-libbing) and the cave was truly fantastic.

As my imagination was already working hard, I was quick to jump back into the Golden Dragon for our third stop of the day – Seven Star Park. It's named for the seven peaks of the mountains ("hills") in the park that apparently are arranged in the shape of the big dipper if looked at from above. As I belong to the super fat, I was pretty excited to hear that we would not actually be climbing to any of the peaks, but rather just walking through the park and seeing some of the highlights before lunch. We skipped out on the cave, because Annie told us we already saw a cave and this one is not even natural ("it's for tourists") but otherwise did a pretty good sweep of the park. The most interesting part was probably a wall carved with the highlights of the 5000 years of history of China. A close second was Camel Hill, which is famous because Bill Clinton gave a speech there once? They have a rock commemorating the date and topic, behind which we obviously took a picture. There was a tour group in front of us being really aggressive about pictures, but there were so many of them that they were blocking the rock…we didn't really get why they were standing in front of it. Luckily, ABA stepped in and took care of business. They didn't seem too angry though, since a couple of them snagged pictures of us for themselves. I love being a celebrity in China.

After our time at the park (which apparently didn't take as long as anticipated because "we're young and walk quickly"), we went to the Left Bank Restaurant for lunch. The fact that I could tell you the name of restaurant should indicate one of two things: I've learned Chinese, or it was a touristy restaurant with its name in English as well as Chinese. It was the latter, however, the food was actually pretty good! (We didn't have a choice for where we went for lunch as it was part of the tour. I'm going to go ahead and assert that Cici won in the food department though as she took us to local places.) To add to our meal, we got to meet Lily, the woman who Lauren has been working with forever who set up our whole tour! It was so exciting to finally get to meet her, and made even more so by the fact that she brought us gifts. She got us both beautiful stamps made in Guilin with our English and Chinese names on them! (Her interpretation of my name was slightly different than Ma's but let's be honest – no one's going to be able to read it anyway so I'm cool with it.) She was really sweet and eager to help us in any way she can. Luckily, with ABA on the job, we were good to go. After lunch however, she rolled out as her day was done. Ours, on the other hand, had really just begun.

We spent the afternoon exploring the downtown area of Guilin. We stepped into many shops, talked to many random people who tried to sell us things rather aggressively, and made some excellent purchases. We even crossed an item off of our food list! We got egg tarts for dessert. Weirdly enough, we got them at KFC, which Lauren claims is one of the best places to get them. I think this is the first time I've been to KFC in maybe 10 years, but if egg tarts were on the menu in America, I would be a much more frequent customer.

Although we decided we were good until dinner, we obviously stopped and grabbed some street food while walking around. We got some sort of fried dough covered in a spicy sauce which was definitely worth the 50 cents we paid for it. Although the consequence of this was the fact that we're not particularly hungry for dinner, the benefit is that now we can go get another snack or two and cross something else off our list instead of having a sit down meal.

While wondering around, we found ourselves in a fresh, fresh, fresh open market. I want to emphasize fresh because there were literally live chickens that you could buy…to eat. There were also fish and ducks, and the much less depressing vegetables and fruits. We got out of there pretty quickly and decided we needed to take a break and regroup back at the hotel. On the way, however, we stumbled onto what might be our greatest find in China yet. For a mere 5 yuan (aka less than a dollar) you could take 9 pictures in a photobooth, choose individual frames or backgrounds for each pictures (there were literally 1000s of choices), and take as many shots as you want for each frame. IT WAS THE BEST. Needless to say, I'll be posting our end product as soon as possible. Also, we're definitely planning to go back. At least one more time.

On a high from our awesome purchase, we made our way back to the hotel only to be stopped by a man offering free samples. While we know free sample means "howmuchareyougoingtobuy?" we decided to go ahead and try some nuts. Ten yuan later, we were the proud owners of some delicious peanuts covered in something else delicious, and found ourselves in the salesman's teahouse. He gave us lots of free tea and then tried to pressure us into buying some. (Obviously.) We held fast to what we wanted and didn't buy his "greenteathat'sonlymadeinmyvillage-nocaffeinenochemicals," even though it was good. You just can't try to tell me that you could use one scoop 20 times and serve 6 people with it each time and then tell me I can't buy fewer than 50 grams of it.

We finally got ourselves out of there and made our way back to our hotel, after briefly pretending we were staying at the much nicer Sheraton next door. We've been pretty immobile since but have intentions to go out again soon. We're off to go see what is apparently a waterfall show put on by the famous Waterfall Hotel that's nearby and only happens for 15 minutes a night from 8:30-8:45. Not exactly sure what that means, but I doubt ABA would lead us astray. We don't really feel like moving though, so we're hoping the Golden Dragon magically appears to take us...dragons are magic, so you never know, right?