After I got back from Chengdu, I thought I was done with that trip. Unfortunately the bites (or allergic reactions?) that I got during the trip continued to get itchier and became really irritating. It’s almost a sure thing that I got them from the dirty, roach-infested hotel at Emeishan. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the only thing that bugged me while I was sleeping. I got attacked by a pair of mosquitoes that bit me seven times and kept buzzing past my ear. I had the last laugh though, since I ended up killing both of them.
I went back to sleep and woke up pretty late in the afternoon because I was so tired. All I did was HW and study for Chinese. Wei also visited and we shared pictures (my Guilin/Chengdu photos and his Hong Kong photos). Made me really wish I was in Hong Kong already…
After Guilin, I didn’t think I would miss Shanghai so much. Chengdu wasn’t a good experience, partly because of luck, partly because of our poor planning. We should have never went on a tour, since we knew it had a pretty good chance of being terrible. But alas, we did and at the very least, we have a great story to tell.
Anyways, we got to sleep in a little before we headed out to the airport. Luckily for us, we were able to hire a van for the same price that two cabs would have cost, which was nice. The whole group stayed together and it was convenient for all our luggage. We gave ourselves plenty of time to get to the airport because we knew how bad traffic could get in Chengdu. To our surprise, traffic didn’t slow us down one bit and we got there early. Actually, we got there so early, the guy at the check-in counter wouldn’t let us check-in!
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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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