Saturday, September 13, 2008

Holiday in Guilin (1)

Well, today, I'm gonna be your guide to Guilin! Haha! Just kidding. Anyway, I went to Guilin on the 2nd of September while waiting for my school to reopen. I had never gone to Guilin before but many birds told me that Guilin is a very beautiful place to visit, with astonishing hills and unbelievably, natural caves. That really caught my attention as I'm a person who enjoys visiting mother nature's creative work of art.

First, we took the evening flight from Kuching to Kuala Lumpur. We took Air Asia and we landed at LCCT. Our flight to Guilin was actually at 6am the next morning so we killed our night at the airport. At first, everything seemed okay for us as we reached KL at around 10pm and we just had to wait for 7 hours. 7 HOURS! Tiffiny and I actually spent half of the 7 hours in McDonald, while watching movie via PPStream. Gosh, LCCT improved alot in their WiFi system because the internet speed was very fast. 1-2MB per sec. For the second half of the 7 hours, we did nothing but strolling around the whole airport. From the restaurants till the dark alleys. I didn't sleep for the whole 7 hours because I had some kind of experience when I was waiting for my early flight in Macau. I didn't sleep and I still have to energy to do lots of stuffs. I didn't even feel cold or uneasy when I stayed awake. But when I started to close my eyes for a 1 minute short rest, I could feel my body heat dropping and I started to shiver and became dozy.

Anyway, we waited patiently for our flight and we boarded our flight at 6am sharp. I heard rumours saying that our flight from KL o Guilin was the first flight line for AirAsia and we might be welcomed as honorable guests when we reached Guilin. The flight was full and after we settled our luggages, I got myself comfortable and took a nap. The flight was approximately 4 hours so it was quite boring in the flight.

We ordered one Nasi Lemak in the airplane. I saw what Kennysia commented about it so I decided to have a try myself. Kennysia, you are right. The thing you ordered looked completely different from the pictures. The Nasi Lemak tasted alright, but it just don't worth it. Seeing is unbelieving.

Yum Yum! This is what it looks like in the menu.
But this is what you got. Looks like highly-priced-roadside Nasi Lemak...

Next, we were in Guilin. Ya, we were welcomed by the authorities in Guilin but not so grand. We didn't have fir crackers or red carpets or whatever. They had flowers, but those were for our pilots. The airport was not big, but just enough. We went for the custom and there's nothing special happened, but we saw a man's bouquet of flower being forfeited by the customs. Besides that, you'll see those typical and aged China people who used to talk as if everyone is deaf. I just don't get it. Why must you shout when you open your mouth? Try to be a little bit civilize when you are in the public. That will really help decreasing hearing problems of others around you. Thank you.

Bird-view of Guilin.
You can hills everywhere in Guilin.
Welcome!
There's our flight!
See the banners? "Guilin welcomes you all, friends from Malaysia!" *flattered*
We received some gifts from the authorities. Nothing much, just a few guide books in pretty bags.
Here's the Guilin International Airport in LiJiang, Guilin.
Heading towards our tour van.
Here we are, our tour van, with my father's name tagged.
Some of the photos I took during our journey to Guilin's city centre.
My c702 camera did this fence-bending effect...
And we saw this bird-looking hill on the way.
This is the rich people's villa. The whole villa was actually built on a man-made isle in the middle of a lake.

We were going to have our lunch and it took us around half an hour to reach our designated restaurant, Rong Hu Restaurant 榕湖酒店. Our tour guide told us that we were going to have Guilin Bee Hoon Fest 桂林米粉宴 at the restaurant and my dad told us that there's nothing much special about it and the bee hoon didn't really taste nice. Maybe not our cup of "bee hoon". We were served with 2 local beers and one local Coca-Cola (a fake one). Our stomachs were grumbling so much because we had not eaten since we left the McDonald in LCCT and we thought we could eat a whole cow, but when they served the food, we were stunned by the amount of dishes of food that we were going to take.

Here's our designated restaurant.
Here's our table.
The restaurant's design looks like Iban's, one of the Sarawak's natives.This is what I'm trying to tell you about the food.
This is the fired dumplings. Weird, but okay. They got peanuts filling in them.
This is the TangYuan wrapped with pandan leaves. You can taste the red bean paste in it. One of my favourites.
This is the bee hoon I mentioned just. Looks kinda thick, huh?
This is the chicken fried with dried chillies. In China, when you order dishes like this, you can seldom eat any chicken that has any meat it. Poor chicken in China.
This is the steamed rice with chicken. The rice tasted quite raw.

Everyone of us were so full and we could hardly breathe with our fully-packed stomach, but we still have to leave as we are now heading towards one of Guilin's famous natural caves, the Reed Flute Cave 芦笛岩. As soon as we reached the location, our tour van was crowded by a group of mobs. Those mobs don't carry any AK54 as the angry mobs do in C&C Generals, but bunch of souvenirs and post cards. They kept bugging you to buy their stuff and the price were unequal. Some sold 1 mini bamboo flute for 50cents, and some sold 5 flutes for RMB1. They were just trying to earn a living but their attitude were too scary. You'll see what I meant when I post some of the pictures I took at the other place.

We had cto climb some stairs before we reached the cave, which is on top of a small hill.

There you see the old woman in orange shirt bugging my dad to buy some post cards. Annoying...
Free from mobs...
4 beautiful pageants! Haha, if you are not comfortable with walking, you can hire 2 guys to carry you around with the chair for RMB200+.
The hill I saw behind the cave. The one at the right looks like a dolphin emerging.
Our Tour guide told us that most of the hills in Guilin consisted of limestones. In millions of years ago, the whole Guilin region was actually deep beneath the ocean, but it emerged from the sea because of the earth's plate movement. Forget about geography, let's enter the cave. They got so many neon lamps in it, but it made the whole cave looked livelier and brighter.

I don't know how to describe these steles and stalagmites.
Another art of nature.
Again.
Another more.
What is this greeny stuff?
Moonstone from Guilin caves.
Many more to choose, but too expensive. Some even costs thousands. They offered one for RMB300 for my aunt, but after bargain, she got it for RMB50...
The view of the stones near some pond. Too dark to see.
The reflection of the steles looked so alike with the real ones.
For millions and millions of years of water-drop-work.
Who's the humungous lady sitting at the right?
The walls looked slimy but they were just wet and slippery.
Nice?
This is the weirdest sculpture I saw in the cave. Something kinky and dirty came into my mind.
Those Ah Ma-s bugged us all the way from the exit to our van. Bugger. One of them had her head knocked by the van's automatic door when she tried to enter our van.

Our tour guide told us that in these caves, for every steles and stalagmites you saw, it took them 1000 years to grow a length of 3-5cm. Some of the steles are 5-7 storeys high, so try guess their ages. The whole passage in the cave is U-shaped and in it, you can buy souvenirs and take some photos. To my surprise, caves are humid and slippery place, but in Guilin's travelling caves, their floors were clean with no mucus or rubbish for me, caves in Malaysia require 10 times hard work and maintenance to be equal with Guilin's.

Okay, that's all for today. I'm gonna continue posting someday when I'm free regarding my trip in Guilin. So, for you guys out there, thank you for visiting my blog. And for my family, I'm fine right here in school and no worries. It's 2.11am now, so I guess I gotta climb up to my bed now. Nite Nite!

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