Getting to Guilin

We don’t seem to have much luck with trains and despite leaving the apartment early we waited for more than 20 minutes for a bus to the station and so were cutting it fine. When we arrived at the station we went to the normal entrance only to discover the we had to go to waiting room 2 which was one building down and predictably had a massive queue outside. With 15 minutes to our scheduled departure we became Chinese and ignored the line pushing, and I mean pushing, to the front of the line and into the building. We found our boarding gate with a mass of people all standing and waiting but as the time ticked by they didn’t open they gate. Not being able to read Chinese characters we could only guess our train was delayed and while we stood waiting for some 30 minutes we had a chance to breath and take in just how many people were in the station whose air conditioning wasn’t coping at all in the 35°C heat. All you could see was people’s heads from wall to wall.

Wall to wall people in Waiting Room 2 at Hangzhou South Train Station

The train itself wasn’t so bad, not quite as spacious as I remembered the Soft Sleeper to Beijing being but it was decent and we seemed to get quite lucky as the father and son we shared our compartment were nice and most importantly didn’t snore or eat stinky food.

Corridor of the Soft Sleeper car of the T77 train from Shanghai to Guilin

Our side of the slightly cramped Soft Sleeper compartment

Eighteen hours later [including an hour of accumulated delays] we pulled into Guilin after the scenery had noticeably changed with limestone peaks in the distance and clean rivers, which you just don’t see in the big cities of China anymore.

Crossing a clean river on the way into Guilin

We followed the directions and caught a bus easily enough to our Ming Palace Youth Hostel. It was a fairly new hostel having only been open for 5 months but it was adequate and in a fairly nice situation, away from the city centre but close to some major attractions. As the name would suggest, turning left they are 100m from the Ming Palace (which we didn’t visit) and turning right 100m from the Li River. After checking in and dumping our bags we set off to see the river and explore the city while we tried to plan our next few days.

Panorama of the Li River in Guilin

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It’s time to be a tourist

Today I collected my passport from the Hangzhou Police Bureau after my application for a tourist visa as my Residency Permit has expired. The tourist visa is valid for 30 days from the date of application but they take a week to process so despite applying for it on the 24th June, it was only issued today, the 1st July and expires on the 23rd July. Add to that the fact that whenever you stay in a hotel in China you must have your passport it makes life a little difficult.

My 30 day tourist visa only really usable for 22 days.

With that out of the way it is time to be a tourist and see some of the sites of China. The only place in China that I really want to see and still haven’t is Guilin and especially Yangshuo just to the south of it. For those of you who don’t know anything about it here’s a little teaser. It is said to be one of the most beautiful areas of China because of its characteristic karst peaks that rise up on either side of the Li River. You may well have seen some of these images in picture books about China and it is so beautiful it is also the illustration found on the back of the 20 Yuan bank-note.

So tomorrow, Margaurita and I catch an overnight train for the 20+ hour journey to Guilin where we will spend 3 days and hopefully get to view some of the must see sites including the Elephant Trunk Hill.

Elephant Trunk Hill, Guilin (Wikimedia Commons)

After that we will head a little further south, probably on a river cruise, to Yangshuo for 4-5 days which is a smaller village and backpacker haven with lots of activities like biking, bamboo rafting, fishing with cormorants, rice terrace tours and more amazing views of the karst peaks rising up all around.

Karst peaks along the river (Wikimedia Commons)

Bamboo rafting on river (Wikimedia Commons)

Hopefully it lives up to these pictures and expectations. I probably won’t be posting much while travelling, I’ll be too busy trying to take as many pictures as possible of the landscape but rest assured there will be full reports on the trip with lots of pictures when I get back. Maybe even some more HDR images so stay logged on.

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And another one’s gone…

It has been almost 3 weeks since my last post and even then I was behind in real-time but I am planning to rectify this. Following is a rundown of all the things that have happened over the last month or so. In the aftermath of our Spring Festival night out in Hangzhou we all camped out indoors trying to stay warm as the snow falling outside turned to rain and the temperature stayed near freezing. On the Monday a few of us met up and headed back to Hangzhou, not just to visit but to stay a couple of nights enabling us to explore the city more without having to spend 2 hours commuting on the bus every day. Once we had checked in at the very homely West Lake Youth Hostel it was off to Maya bar again for some delicious Strawberry Daiquiris by the jug and a night of laughter recounting the shenanigans from New Year’s night.

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Around and about Xiaoshan

In the wake of all the birthday parties it has been work, work, work here in China. With the Spring Festival/ Chinese New Year drawing near and the start of the winter intensive course here at EF we had only one day off last week on Wednesday and then it was straight into a 7 day working week ahead of our 8 days off. A prospect that none of us were looking forward to but we are almost through and it is going to be a welcome and much-needed holiday.

What I’m trying to say is that there isn’t much news to share so I thought I’d take the opportunity to share some sights of everyday life here in China which I’m sure you’ve all been wanting to see.

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