Guilin 桂林 – A green pearl in the South

Studies had already lasted for a while so I was definitely in a need for a holiday so I decided to start my China discovery trip from South city called Guilin. I was of course taking a train as it’s the “correct” way to travel in China, Beijing – Guilin travel time was approximately 18hrs but of course the train happened to be late for some reason (explained on Chinese…) five hours so total travel time was nearly 24hrs, but luckily this time I had a sleeper bed so it was okay – actually quite comfortable. 

Finally after I arrived Guilin and stepped out the train I felt the heat… Much warmer than in Beijing so first thing I needed to do, was find a place to buy shorts to make my life somehow comfortable.

Guilin is a quite small city (in China scale), only a bit less than 5 million inhabitants, but still everything what I wanted to see there was within walkable distance. The atmosphere in the city was more like in Southern Europe, many restaurants had tables outside on streets where people gathered especially on evening times to have a dinner. One thing that I noticed, is that there was quite much different kinds of seafood available… And it certainly was fresh because in front of the restaurants they often had some kind of buckets, boxes etc. where fishes (or other “sea creatures”) were still swimming. And this guarantee of fresh food, wasn’t only limited on seafood as there were also chickens, rabbits, and ducks etc. animals in cages waiting to “get ordered.”

Days were rather warm in Guilin so it was first time when I was wearing only a t-shirt and shorts but still it felt hot. Despite the small detail that I felt for a moment that I was sweating like a pig, especially after climbing on the top of the Elephant Trunk Hill. It obviously got its name because the hills shape reminds an elephant trunk. After that I could luckily cool down to sit on the river bank and put my feet in to the water and then I obviously needed to try to ride “an elephant.” Chinese people were staring at me as I climbed on the back of the “elephant” because I would say it was about 160-170cm high – but I managed to pull myself up there.

Second challenge was Seven Star Park which is considered one of the most beautiful scenic spots in Guilin. It is huge park (over 40 hectares) with many things to see or do. The Challenge was there to walk some hills up and down to see the camel hill which is a hill shaped like a camel – I guess you probably would never guess that one? After doing that I needed to find again way to cool down a little bit, but at this time I went into a naturally formed cave – nearly 1km long tunnel which has been used more than thousand years on different purposes. Besides all that there were wild monkeys in park looking for a moment to steel food from people, a beautiful area with ponds and waterfalls, small ancient temples etc… So a really good place to enjoy a warm summer day. 

In both of the places there were not much (western) tourists around, I saw less than ten during whole day… and at the same time I was in around five different pictures (that I was aware of..) with Chinese people.

After walking whole day I started to felt slightly tired and needed to rest a bit. There was few kilometres walk to the hostel but I didn’t feel like walking so I hopped at the back of the motorcycle and the guy drove me at the doorstep of my hostel (like a taxi service but faster and cheaper). Some hours of rest and then to check how the city looked like at night. The centre was beautiful! They had used lights to highlight and decorate walking paths and “top-sight” buildings, like the two pagodas. Water is an important element of the city infrastructure so there is many kind of cruises on offer for tourists – evening or daytime. One of the main things is to take a river cruise along Li-river to a city called Yanghsuo, but that is another story to tell.