Guangxi Province

Guangxi Province

Wed 21/3 - Kunming to Nanning

This marks the start of Week 12 of our adventure, and we hum our theme song "On the road again...".  We're up and out early from our Camellia Hotel room and at 6.50am we catch some brekkie from the dining room (since we've paid for it!) before our taxi to the airport and 8.30am departure.  In the hotel foyer this morning were three young guys who'd looked like they'd slept there - perhaps they came in during the night - also two French women who've travelled the nine hours overnight on a bus from Lijiang, and they looked very tired - we're glad we flew!

Land in Nanning 9.40am, collect luggage and onto airport bus to the city, 15yuan, and Mark ends up talking with a young Chinese guy with good English, De Bao Tang, works for a big multinational concrete manufacturing company and in the course of the conversation he declares he's been seeking God, prompted by a work colleague and friend in Germany.  Mark encourages his spiritual searching and De Bao kindly helps us find our hotel as chosen from the Lonely Planet.

After settling in we're out for a wander down the main strip where we have our encounter with a 22 year old guy - a music dance student with no sense of inhibition - gives us an impromptu rap performance at the checkout in Wal-Mart!  A little later we take refuge at the "golden arches" for drinks and a pit stop and watch some Chinese highlights from Melbourne - World Swimming Championships.  Later after dinner we make the call and purchase train tickets for Guilin - Nanning just another big Chinese city we can do without.

Thurs 22/3

We're at the train station soon after 8am and find our way upstairs in a double-decker carriage and with smiles and nods all round we settle in, initially seated across the aisle from each other, until a kind man swaps with Jan so we can sit together.  Easy trip, mainly through agricultural land, sugar cane, rice, foggy outlook all the way.  And later we realise this weather is a foretaste of the next five days.  A progression of "magicians" come through the carriage to amuse the passengers and then sell their magic tricks - we're surprised how most people get caught up in the fun and buy one or more of these tools of trade.

1pm arrival in Guilin and we "saddle up" with our backpacks to find a hotel, then pausing outside the bus station we decide to travel onto the smaller Yangshuo.  15yuan bus ticket ($2.50) departing in 20 minutes, bus less than half full, so a comfy easy ride with more reading and sleeping en route.  3.20pm arrival and we're met by a bevy of touts, each keen to thrust their hotel's look-and-see photo albums under our noses.  We decline and walk away only to be followed by a persistent young man called Steven who persuades us to come and look at his West Lily Hotel.  Lily is Steven's wife, a lovely young couple, who offer us a warm welcome and a choice of room, so we agree at 50yuan/night with free internet in a fairly quiet street.  Warm personalities and good grasp of English again wins the day for us. 

Our orientation walk takes us riverside to the beautiful River Li, stunning scenery with karsts on the horizon and lots of simple bamboo rafts for hire.  We make our way to the marketplace for the local delicacy, fresh fish cooked in beer, where sadly we experience "The Camera Incident" - our Canon compact digital camera is pickpocketed from Jan's shoulder bag.  Very upsetting - we'd used it two minutes before to photograph the fish before it was prepared for the pan - the biggest loss is really photos from the last two weeks of our holiday including some stunning shots from the trek through Tiger Leaping Gorge.  Handling the upset, we do the obvious practical things - visit the police and make a 2 page report - and fortunately we're dealt with by a sympathetic English-speaking officer who listens well and then takes us back to the scene of the incident for subsequent investigation.  We "lick our wounds", upset, angry, sad, disappointed and cross - but we try to be philosophical - grateful that we have most of our holiday pics downloaded onto CDs along the way, and we are not injured physically, just emotionally, and we'll get over it!  Jan writes a long cathartic entry in her diary (!) and Mark emails Doncaster to share the news with the girls.

Fri 23/3

Not the best sleep with all the "what if" scenarios playing in our minds, but we welcome Steven's knock on the door, good to his words, his complimentary rice noodle brekkie arrives at 8am.  We enjoy the food, write diary and read, then head out to take last night's police report to the main tourist police station and begin exploring a replacement camera, the cost of which will fortunately be covered by travel insurance.  We again walk down to the river - very foggy, cloudy, hardly inviting to do much exploring - where we meet up with Bob from Essendon, a repeat visitor to these parts.  He's on a good samaritan mission -having bought a beautiful male pheasant at the market he's on his way to release it into the nearby parkland rather than it becoming an expensive dish in a local restaurant tonight!  We walk with him and enjoy a yak - he's 56, done 30 years' service as a fireman and will retire soon.  Alright for some, Mark thinks!  When he turns 56 he will have served 30 years an ordained Rev but an early retirement plan is not an option which God or the church offers! 

With so many silent and very efficient electric bicycles and scooters in use here in China we ponder the import possibilities (!), having priced a top range model at just over A$300.  Maybe Susan Yuan could be conscripted as our intrepreter (smile,smile!).  Later that night we treat ourselves to a nice meal - roast duck and dumplings - consoling ourselves again that many more worse things could happen than having a camera nicked.

Sat 24/3

Up late after reading til midnight - and we both finish our current books - Mark the Inspector Rebus detective novel "The Hanging Garden" by Ian Rankin and Jan "The Undomestic Goddess" by Sophie Kinsella.  We breakfast on DIY fruit and coffee and catch some news on the TV - one station out of forty is in English, an international Chinese news channel.  Heavy rain and cloud with high humidity so we stall off hiring the mountain bikes from the hotel foyer, knowing that they and the great local scenery we've heard about will have to wait.  Emails, web surfing and a dash to the minimart over the road fills in the morning and we DIY lunch, pot noodles which are nearly edible!  Jan happy to stay and read on the bed - Mark out for a long therapeutic walk well beyond the tourist precinct - interestingly the local hospital has a huge photo board outside with pics/bios of the medical/nursing staff - we wonder is all that info which people are keenly reading supposed to engender greater patient confidence??  Marks treks back through the main town market and watches with some horror as another local delicacy, dog meat, is prepared - from the living state, and certainly not in a humane manner.  Vegetarianism suddenly seems attractive.  Part of Mark's enquiry on his walk has been trying to seek out an option for a local Christian church for tomorrow, being Sunday.  At a tourism counter he meets a local worker/student Zoe (her English name), "Are you a Christian?  So am I."  And thus marks the beginning of an hour long conversation/sharing /counsellng.  We come back to the hotel, collect Jan and walk down town again, purchasing the sweetest and cheapest mandarins we're ever likely to acquire - 10 for 2yuan = 33 cents or 3 cents each!! 

On Zoe's recommendation we try the Cloud 9 Restaurant for dinner, after earlier watching a tourist-prompted performance of a traditional old fisherman on his bamboo boat, working his six well-trained cormorants, which fish for the cameras flashing from every angle.  A lovely dinner of chicken and cashews, dumplings and vegie noodle soup is much enjoyed, and our route home includes a diversion to the "underground" supermarket to buy juice to soothe Jan's throat/cough.

Sun 25/3

Mark's best enquiries yesterday revealed there is no church in Yangshuo, the closest being in Guilin.  Consequently no Sunday worship for us to join in today - more rain, humidity, fog and cloud - so we're becoming even more familiar with our hotel room.  Mark logs onto ABC 774 to hear a live interview with Jim Maxwell singing the praises of our Aussie cricketers after their stunning victory over South Africa in the Caribbean overnight.

With so few camera shops in this small town we decide to make do with disposable cameras for now - not confident that a Chinese Canon purchase would offer a guarantee which would be honoured in Australia.  It's still raining heavily so we have a pretty miserable day "confined to barracks" apart from the obigatory raid on the minimart for some comfort food - chips and biscuits!   Come dinner time it's stopped raining enough to venture out to the corner cafe - we ended up paying up and walking out without finishing the meal - the "grass/offal" soup we couldn't quite handle, so we walked to another cafe with more extensive "western" menu and a proprietor who can speak English.  Their all day breakfast omelette option is a welcome choice - it actually feels like Sunday night tea - and our conversation wanders again to Faraday and the prospect of going home a little early to enjoy our country retreat for a few days.  This prospect seems to loom ever more welcoming when we're at a low ebb at this end.

Mon 26/3

Up late after another marathon reading session last night - Mark completes book number eleven with Jan well in front of that on the scorecard.  More rain and fog although certainly a bit better than the last few days but sadly the local forecast seems to be for more of the same.  We commit to this blog update while we review our options and ponder a range of possibilities for the next three weeks. 

Update as at 30/3 follows :

Monday 26/3 continued - 3.30pm Mark visits one of the many English language schools in this town, Asia West Training College (www.awtc.org) where he meets Greg Qin the local manager.  This is the school where tour guide Zoe (mentioned earlier) is a student - an American organisation employing Christian teachers who bring a sense of purpose to their job.  Later that night we go out for dinner at a lovely central restaurant Cloud 9 with Zoe and with one of her young teachers, Simon - enjoyable conversation and delicious food - local knowledge helps a lot when selecting from a Chinese menu!  Zoe also helps us to stock up on some sweet mandarins and bananas, purchased for a song, about 7 cents each item.  Home with a full tummy for diary, reading and early to bed.

The meal was made all the more pleasant by the fact that Simon picked up the tab when he left at 7.30pm for his Chinese language lesson.

Tue 27/3

After our DIY fruit breakfast we choose The Silver Cave as a local tourist destination and Zoe helps us with tickets (18km from Yangshuo, A$10 each entry), the bus departing outside the tour office 9.30am just before her first class.  The on-board tour guide offers a full and comprehensive commentary, the only downside being that we don't understand a word of Chinese.  After the 30 minute trip as we alight a solo Chinese traveller, Paul, introduces himself and asks whether we "understood any of that"?  The last critical bit of info was that we all had to be back at the bus at 11.30am!  Generously Paul takes us under his wing for the day - he's 60-something, travelling solo, ethnic Chinese having been born in Indonesia, educated in Taiwan and made New York his home, as you do!  We enjoy 1 1/2 hours walking/climbing through quite impressive limestone caverns (located in the centre of one of the local mountain "karsts"), albeit the coloured lighting is a bit kitsch and it's a pity that so many of the ancient stalagmites and stalagtites have been vandalised by souvenir hunters.  Having visited Jenolan Caves NSW in recent years, Paul comments that Australia knows how to properly protect and preserve its tourism treasures.

After the bus trip returns us to Yangshuo Paul declares he's up for some more company and generously invites us to lunch which we enjoy very much - again, competence with the language can make the most of the wonderful array of dishes on the kerbside restaurant menu!  We discover Paul once owned and ran a brewery, a real estate outfit, did property development, acquired an MBA along the way and for the last ten years or so has worked part time doing business consulting, mostly on the internet.  He chooses to stay in youth hostel dorms for the fun and energy he gains from young travellers.

Home for a bit of a snooze in the late a'noon before we head out to the famous "Impression Sanjie Liu" show (few photos on this site : http://www.chinadaily .com.cn/english/doc/2005 -09/28/content_481594.htm)

For A$22 each it was a very impressive 90 minute show (a local must-do) with great use of the open air setting on the Li River, stunning backdrop of floodlit mountain karsts and a troupe of 600 performers in an amazing variety of costumes, lighting, boats, singing, dancing, props, cormorants and cattle, bells and whistles - you get the picture!  One of the directors was responsible for films such as Red Sorghum, Hero and House of Flying Daggers...  We were in the cheaper C-section seating and found this was quite adequate for the panoramic view it afforded us.  Afterwards the vast fleet of electric minibuses (British milk floats) and larger tourists coaches returns the appreciative crowd back to the town centre.  Home via Cloud 9 Restaurant for Jan's banana pancake, Mark's steam rice buns with sweet milk and washed down with a couple of yummy chocolate milkshakes.  Overall, a good day and we're enjoying the holiday once again - my how the weather makes a huge difference, with a fine day today followed by mild night for the outdoor event.

Wed 28/3 - start of Week 13

Our DIY fruit brekkie is a bit boring sometimes but we stay with it for the convenience and healthy eating choice - also fruit is sooo cheap and plentiful.  Rendezvous with tour guide Zoe at 9.15 and we decide for the 10.30 ticket to "The Forgotten Homeland" at ShangriLa Village, Yangshuo.  60Y ea = $10.  It is interesting and enjoyable but uneventful - a 30 min trip on a steel boat, our own guide with little English but she certainly is trying.  Also the boatman and a woman assistant, so we two are outnumbered by three staff.  We follow a river/canal with mini song and dance routines at every turn - supposed to represent different ethnic minority people and their traditional costume and a glimpse of their culture.  Around one bend we're confronted by the skeletal remains of dozens of water buffalo heads hung from every possible vantage point - then a bloke jumps up from his hidey-hole and feigns to throw a spear at us - then having gained our predictable "gasp" reaction he has a big laugh, and so do we.  It's all done quite well but also a bit tacky by Aussie standards.  After running the gamit of numerous trading stations, all flogging their "beads and mirrors" (!) we head upstairs to the restaurant, obviously very popular with heaps of Chinese tourists, but after 15 mins with no attention and no attempt to help us with any understandable menu choices, we pull the pin, snack on some more fruit and congratulate ourselves on our minor weight loss over the course of the trip (some involuntary, and certainly aided by all the exercise)!  The public bus home was quite an adventure, almost a white knuckle ride, at 4yuan/60 cents each what did we expect?  Standing room only but not quite loading people on the roof. 

Home for diary, emails, reading and a welcome call from Mark's parents Allan and June in Brisbane comes through on the mobile.  7pm and we're out for the evening routine - Mark gets a 20Y haircut and beard tidy-up after becoming bored with being mis-identified locally as "Father Christmas".  Yet another easy ATM withdrawal to cash up the wallet - we revisit the police station "just in case" there is any news of our stolen camera (ha, ha - no hope) then we dine on a tasty local lemon chicken dish shared with Lily and WaiLee from our hotel.  We both score a makeover for our well-worn shoes from one of the many shoeshine operators - the going rate is 1Y/16 cents but often foreign tourists are expected to pay from 2-5Y.  Earlier today Lily at our hotel helped us secure bargain basement Guilin to Beijing flights at 1030Y/$169 each for Friday night 30/3 = a change of plans about to be explained.

Thu 29/3

We've talked long and hard in recent days and eventually we've made the hard call to cut short our planned itinerary by a week and return home for some "processing time" before we each return to work.  This holiday has been packed full with so much - six countries/languages /currencies, lots of adventure, a huge diversity of food, some amazing, wonderful and generous people, and goodness knows how many different hotel beds and modes of transport!  We've determined that all this deserves some downtime space - some of which we'll take at Faraday before we each return to work on Monday 16 April.

After a few calls to our travel agent Flight Centre Doncaster durng the morning, we get the help we need and confirm our change of flights to depart exactly one week early, ex Beijing Thursday 4 April.

By 10.30am we're at the bus station and again with Lily's help we head off to XingPing town for the famous boat ride on the most scenic stretch of the Li River - which in fact is featured on the local 20 yuan banknote, it's SO good!  We're guided from the public bus to the tourist minibus (= a glorified tractor and back wagon without the hay) for the 10 minute ride to the riverside.  On the boat we sit on tiny little foldaway "kinder" chairs as the boat makes its way through stunning scenery with a bit of atmospheric fog/mist thrown in for no extra charge.  We're working our disposable camera overtime (having chosen not to replace our quality Canon digital til we're home again) with some embarrassment as our boating companions, all of them Chinese tourists, look on with some puzzlement.  After an impromptu charade session from the two of us, they all understand we've had our good camera nicked - and so with considerable sympathy they initiate taking some extra photos for us including some with us and them (our silver-white hair apparently makes us a veritable tourist attraction in our own right!!) - and we swap email addresses with their promising to email us some of their digital shots, bless 'em!

We have the obligatory stop-off for the "traders' opportunity" on a riverbank in the middle of nowhere - for 2Y/33 cents pose a photo with fisherman's hat, shoulder pole with a cormorant meekly sitting at each end, or why not sit on a wet water buffalo being led by a classic looking weather-beaten Chinese man, or buy some rock carvings/sculptures, or stock up on a snack of battered/fried tiny skewered fish - yes we fell for most of them - assisting the local economy along the way!  After about 1 1/2 hours on the river we return via a prawn "pattie" seller - surprisingly tasty food considering we're devouring scores of 1cm prawns whole!  Back in town we enjoy some fried duck and mushrooms before we walk through the market where you can buy everything your heart desires and a whole lot more - we see a host of tobacco (chop chop) being sold in all sorts of quantities and through a misunderstanding Mark nearly ends up owning a very healthy looking young pullet - priced at A$1.20.

Home by 4pm after our return bus trip through very productive agricultural areas - acres of citrus still being harvested here in early spring and the new rice crop is busily being sown.  Another Bank of China visit and we transact the last of our US trav/cheques - Bank of China consistently offers the best exchange rate.  Mark calls in around the corner to bid farewell to Zoe - English student who has been a great help with local tour info - he also encourges her faith walk.

Out to dinner - our "last supper" in Yangshuo - and we choose the 7th Heaven restaurant where we meet the proprietor Linda Liang - a lovely woman of faith - very entrepreneurial with a keen business sense and a commitment to be a good employer for her 30+ staff members.  You can check her latest tourism initiative - the newly opened Snow Lion Resort - www.yangshuonews.com.cn

Home 9.45pm for diary/reading.  We reflect that it's now our eighth night in Yangshuo - it got better after the "camera incident" a week ago - as always it's the people we meet who make our time special (some recommendations to Lonely Planet coming up) and we are very grateful.

Fri 30/3 - Yangshuo to Guilin to Beijing

Slow pack-up this morning, 11.00am checkout of room, major blog update at the hotel PC in the foyer - the generous hospitality continues as Lily kindly prepares us a complimentary lunch and we gladly write a commendation to be added to West Lily Hotel promotions.

By 3.00pm today we'll be on the bus back to Guilin (1 1/2 hours?) - we will transfer to the airport and no doubt do some more reading while we await the 7.45pm flight to Beijing.  If our new hotel delivers as promised we hope to be met with a taxi-man holding a prominent "Mr Dunn" placard, for the one hour airport to hotel drive.  Four nights at prebooked Zhongdan Hotel then we look forward to two nights staying with a distant relative - the son of Mark's father's second cousin!  He works for the Aust government in the consulate office.  We may also manage just a tad of shopping which we've been promising ourselves for 13 weeks! 

Ciao, or should that be "Zaijian" for now - love to all.