Saturday, September 20, 2008
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.
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 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~Saturday, September 13, 2008
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...
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. 
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.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!
Yeah!!! After being isolated from internet for so long, finally I managed to get online, using the school internet service. Anyway, China changed quite a bit since I left, I mean GuangZhou, but the "culture" here haven't changed yet, if you get what I meant. Ya, the rudeness and insanitary habits. I gotta learn to get used to it, but it still takes some time.
Oh ya, before I forgot, I'll be posting my days in GuiLin in the coming posts soon when I'm free, so, Stay Tune! Lol!
I'm having my Mooncake Festival's holiday till Monday, so I'm kinda free at the moment. There's lots and lots of things that I want to share you guys, but I can't do it at once.
So, see ya! I gotta take my bath now. I smells like Shrek right now. Aidios!
