Xi’an! I was very excited for this trip, even if I was dead tired. At first it seemed like my excitement was unwarranted, as the trip had an uninspiring start. At the airport, the terminal we were at was in some dingy basement (it looked more like Hong Qiao airport than Pudong airport) and the heat must have been set on max because it was excruciatingly hot. It was also really crowded. The plane ride wasn’t much better. I stayed awake for the breakfast, which I shouldn’t have done because it was terrible. By far the worst airplane meal I’ve ever had the pleasure of tasting.
Fortunately, it was a pretty short flight. We were on the bus for about an hour before we arrived at the buffet lunch. The restaurant was really fancy and the food was pretty good. The fanciest part of the restaurant had to be the restroom. I wish I took a picture of it because it was absurd. Liquid soap from a teapot!
Fancy!
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The day of the tour and I will say, it was… interesting. We waited outside for the bus to pick us up. It felt strange having the bus come to us instead of us going to the bus, but I’m not complaining. The first thing the tour lady noticed when we boarded was that were foreigners. After the rest of the tour group was picked up, she began to talk. Actually, talk isn’t a good word to describe it. More like she was reciting a speech or something. She kept talking and talking and talking nonstop. I couldn’t understand a word of it, so I thought she was talking about stuff relevant to the places we were going to see. It was later brought to my attention that she was talking about herself and her son! Really now? I didn’t get to sleep because she was so self-centered?
Luckily, she stopped at the rest stop, but then started again when we got back on the bus. Ugh. Not only did she not stop talking, she kept bugging Jessie (the only Mandarin speaker in our group) when we refused to pay extra for stuff we didn’t want to see. She insisted and we resisted. She got pretty annoyed at us and continued to make our lives a living hell for the rest of the day.
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Our flight to Chengdu wasn’t until late at night, so we sat around for awhile at the Guilin airport. When we finally boarded, I was immediately knocked out. I didn’t even notice we landed when we did! We arrived pretty late at around 1:00 AM and Chengdu airport made it more painful by taking forever to bring out our luggage. On our way to the hotel, our taxi driver had an empty road, so at times he drove 140 km/h. I’m pretty sure he averaged 100 km/h…
Our hotel wasn’t the best, but what can we expect from a 2.5 star hotel? It was really cheap, so it didn’t really matter. It also helped that the staff was incredibly helpful. When we were trying to figure out what were going to do during our time in Chengdu, the receptionist was very accommodating. She helped us book a van to drive us to the Panda park and even helped us arrange a tour of Leshan and Emeishan. She even let us keep our luggage at the hotel while we went on the tour!
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Final day of an amazing trip. I was so sad to leave Yangshuo and Guilin. When we were leaving the hotel, the Speed Queen Laundry guy came out and helped us with our luggage. He even waved goodbye to me! The bus ride to the rice paddies was kind of long, but it was really comfortable because almost everyone had their own pair of seats since some people left earlier. As I should have seen coming, we were met by another climb at the paddies. We climbed halfway to get to the restaurant for lunch and another halfway brought us to the top.
The rice paddies were amazing, to say the least. It was one of the most impressive things I saw in Guilin, along with the Li River. Unfortunately, we were told they didn’t have a good rice season, so it wasn’t as beautiful as it could have been. We ended up seeing a lot of the rice paddies because we trekked from one section to another. We hiked for over an hour and ended up very far from where we started. The trek down took about half an hour itself.
I felt so tiny among these rice paddies
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After spending the last three days doing what tourists would do, it was time to do something many tourists usually wouldn’t do: visit a rural village. The last time I stepped foot in a village was twelve years ago when I was last in China and visited my dad’s home village, Taishan. This time, I got to see our tour guide’s village. To get there, we took a relaxing two hour boat ride there (cue “I’m on a Boat”).
The village was what I expected. Lots of farmland, farm animals and dogs running around, etc. Of course, this village had a ton of water buffalo. We got to meet Jessie’s family, which was nice. The family runs a convenience shop (possibly the only one in the village) and it seemed strange seeing cup noodles in the village.
Water buffalo!
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