Saturday, September 20, 2008

Holiday in Guilin (2)

Well, here goes the part two of my trip in Guilin.

Okay, after we visited the Reed Flute cave, we departed for the famous river in Guilin, Li Jiang 漓江. We were foretold about a kind of special bird which the fishermen at Li Jiang River, or the whole Guilin normally used to catch their fishes. This special kind of bird costed more than the ordinary chicken or duck we see at the market. For around RM20, we can get a fat chicken as dinner from the market, but for this bird, the price is 50 times than any other ordinary edible birds. I also don't why.

Here goes some of the pictures.

Here are the birdies, sleeping sweetly...
...but till Tiffiny awaken them with a splash of water. Naughty ^^
The river tide was a bit strong that day.
Another view of the river shore.
There's our tour guide, looking at the bamboo-made raft while sighing "Hai...my XXX-th times coming here, again..."
There's our SiFu preparing our tea and peanuts.
We hopped in the raft and we were accompanied by two SiFu and one young lady, our singer-of-the-day.
The tide was giving me a little bit of goosebumps. Just a little bit of phobia if we would drop into the river and.... nah.
Guilin is really magnificent with it's hills and rivers.
Everyone in the raft laughed a lot because our young singer kept on appointing my father to stay in Guilin.

Oh ya, before I forget, in Guilin, there are tribes who love to sing. Singing is a means for them to look for their soul mates. They called the guys Ah Niu 阿牛, while the ladies 阿妹. When one of them saw someone whom they delighted, they would sing a song dedicated to he or her, and when both of them had a crush on each other, they would throw a ball-like gift to each other. So, singing is a way to mate. They even have a special festival for their sing-and-mate purpose. Interesting.

There's my uncle trying to "push" the boat. He's good. "Maybe a change of career?" our lady singer said.
At the further right, can you see the mountains which resembles a lady lying upwards on a camel?
Here's our tea and nuts (nut shells actually).
There's a floating stall in the middle of the river and they provided BBQ fish, the 桂花鱼. Some Japanese tourists bought them, but we didn't. The price is a highway robbery.
And we saw a fisherman with his precious birdies.These birdies were quite show-off and proud. Look at their faces.
I tried to have a hold of the bird, but it hated me so much that it wanted to escape...
...but not until I wore the fisherman's straw hat and looked like one of the birdies' owner. So picky.
And my uncle tried too.
We were on the river for around 20 minutes and it's time to leave.The river tide was too strong and both our sifu had their head pumped till red.

We got on shore and since I'd hold on the birdie, my hand smells like one of those birdies poo-ed on it, yucks. But that's okay for me. When we were heading for toilet, those Ah-Ma's came again and "forced" us to buy their goods.

From the port...
...till the toilet(one of them even tried to enter the toilet, waliu!)...
...and after the toilet. Bugger.

We managed to escape from those bugger by buying a few little wooden birdies from them. Our next stop is one of the newly discovered and one of the most beautiful and largest natural caves, YinZi Yan 银子岩. My dad went to that cave before and the photos he took caught my attention for so long. And now, finally, I had a chance of my own to witness its beauty.

The looks of the hills in GuiLin are really spectacular and weird.
We had to walk up these stairs before we reached the cave's entrance. Pretty lanterns.
This is the Fortune Tree in front of the cave's entrance.
We had to queue up though there's no one in front of us.This is simple map of the whole cave route.
The secret passage to the Underworld!!
Lol, want some GIANT Taro (or Yam)?
Creepy...
The "Root of Life"! Haha, use your imagination.
This is the Giant Key, but I took the wrong angle...
Drilling deeper into the cave...

We saw this in the cave. What does it look like?
These are the "Thousand Buddha", but we didn't see a thousand of them.
Creepy...
This is the Musical Orchestra. When you hit any of them, it will create musical tone, but we were restricted from doing it anymore.
Look at the reflection in the small pond. They called this "The Mirror".
Another point of view of "The Mirror".
Cheese! Too dark for photo la...
Greeny Slime...
Another marvelous sculpture of nature.
Can you the green Goblin's head emerging from the water at the left?
Hmm...I don't know what to say about this one. Just astonishing.
I forgot how tall this is, maybe around 12m, but it's very tall. I guess it took a few thousand years to form it (or more).
Another thousand-year-old creation.
This is "The Umbrella".

When the tour guide explained to us about "The Umbrella", uou can notice that there was a small fragment lost on the umbrella. Our tour guide told us a story about it. Sun WoKung had bitten the umbrella and he was standing afar, watching at the sacred Umbrella because all the Gods were around protecting it. You can actually see the sculptures of Sun WoKung and the gods around the Umbrella, but I failed to take any pictures of it because it's hard to focus and it's too dark for my camera Phone. Sad.


You can see alot of this in the cave.
Colorful, but a bit artificial...
This is me and Tiffiny trying to form a butterfly.
"Ice Cream", anyone? Better have your teeth strengthen and sharpen first.
These stalls are near the exit. The price are a bit unreasonable because they are for foreigners from western countries, our tour guide said so.
Finally, here's the exit. Sunshine hurts my eyes abit at first.
We're leaving~~
We can take photos with those local natives, but you have to pay for it. Money-sucker...
Pretty peacocks. You also have to pay for a photo with them. RMB20+.
Wow, little Panda Jing Jing!
The whole view of the cave hill.
Hai Yah! Hehe, she's posin with the sword at one of the stalls.
We bought this sweet corn at the stall, but it tasted like rubber. Tasteless and gummy. Maybe we are just not used to it.
Here's the arch of the cave. Bye bye~

That's all for the cave and river tour. While I was looking in Tiffiny's handphone, I realised that I missed some of the events we went to on the 3rd of September. We went for tea at the local tea house and we even went to witness the magnificent acrobatic and stunt show at the city centre. I'll give you guys the details next time when I have the time. Hope you all enjoy my coverage of my holiday in GuiLin. Till next time, Bye Bye~


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