GUILIN: BAMBOO BOAT RIDE

DONKEY BURGER?



This hamburger tasted like a Donkey Burger, seasoned and mixed with something like Yak Meat. Actually it was Water Buffalo. It was certainly interesting to taste and to get down. The meat was kind of nasty. Looks Good though eh? We brought our own bottle of Heinz ketchup, so with a generous amount on each bite, it went down just fine. Dana had spagehtti.



Let's take a ride up river.

It was Sunday, and we just went for a quiet boat ride up the river to a farm, got out and went for a walk across the island to take a photo of the other side of Elephant mountain and the river there.

Nice boat ride, on Dana this time.

Famers fields were growing wonderfully in the middle of the winter here...

Got a bamboo pole for this photo. We had a great time together here. This is a continuing "Gypsie Journal" now...

Bamboo Fishing boat, on dry dock.

This was a mistake... But sometime, you gotto go. We had to go potty when on land, and had to go in the farmer's outhouse... Not for the squeemish or for children viewing... move along quickly. Not exactly like our two seater out house in Alberta, where I grew up eh?

People live here. This was a step back in time, and a wonderful cultural experience for us. We replaxed and sailed up river.

We gotta make one of these for the Homestead in Island Park... They are cool people movers and work in shallow water...

We found a great American food place to eat in Guilin. It had a great sirloin steak, which I later learned was water buffalo. Good Water Buffalo though lean, and juicy and well cooked to medium rare. It was great.

ELEPHANT ROCK, GUILIN, CHINA

Guilin, China:



These young ladies at Elephant Head Mountain, were recruiting tourists to take their photo with them for a heafty fee. They were very nice until you said "No thanks".



At Elephant, we saw lots of boating opportunities for a fee. We took one the next day. We walked around the mountain and viewed the Elephant head from the opposite side. We stayed until dark and enjoyed the sunset here.

We had some fun taking photos here at the Elephant Head Park.

The other side of the Elephant Head Mountain.

Guilin: An artist's rendition, Jay shot a photo of... It really looks like this!

Jay peeking out of the Bamboo Forest.

At Night at the Elephant Head Mountain.

This PUMA business seems to be doing great in China. They sometimes spell their name wrong on shirts I have noticed...but my English students rationalize that this allows the business to even make more money. I THINK NOT.

We came upon this leaky building at night in "Guilin" as we were walking around down town. It was in the large plaza and we watched it for a while to some catchy tunes. It certainly surprised us to see a Hotel Waterfall.

Watch the short video clip below...to believe it.

SANYA, HAINAN ISLAND, CHINA

TROPICAL VACATION -- IN SOUTHERN CHINA.


When I was younger and living in Hawaii my sister, Laree, and I would go to Honolulu and sit in the big totel lobbies and sea view verandas and look at the old tourists and we would sometimes laugh about how much they looked like funny looking tourists. Now, I have become one of them, and the Chinese love to look at me and I see them smile and sometimes a even a laugh appears on their face. I have come full circle. I remember, long ago, doing exactly the same.





This is the hall of the 5th floor of the Relac Inn Hotel we stayed in. It was really bright and had this wonderfull ocean decore but far from the beach. Jay in in our room by the window. Dana is getting ready to head to our new place. We are moving today.




This is the Relax Inn Hotel lobby...and below is the front entrance.

When we left Jinan, we had two rolling bags and a small carry on. 3 weeks later we have managed to add another whole bage worth of stuff, most of which I think we could throw away, but probably won't. We waited outside or our hotel for a taxi. None came along and then we saw this mode of transportation and knew we needed to ride in it. He said he would take us for one yuan each. but it was worth much more to us as we laughed about it all the way. We really plalyed the gypsie role today.

Half way to our testination would not go any farther. He stopped and motioned for us to get out and we thought we would have to walk the rest of the way, and pull our bags for about 5 long blocks. Then just like that, another guy came along and stopped for us, we loaded everything in, and we were off to our ultimate destination.

Jay wrote on the back seat of the motorcycle. And before we knew it we were at the beach, looking like old tourists, again, much like the one's I used to see in Hawaii.

Now it off to another place to live for week, an studio apartment this time. We are went to this American food place to eat yesterday called, "Fat Daddys" and met this wonderful owner of the place. He is from Ft. Collins, Colorado and we mentioned that we were hunting for a new hotel that was a little cheeper. He said that it spring festival and spring vacation and there weren't very many empty spaces anywhere, especially one for a good price. After a while, he made us an American breakfast that was wonderful and then he said that he had a friend who would let us rent his studion apartment for 300 RMB per day if we stayed the week. We spent the day exploring the city and came back for dinner. At 7:00 pm he took us to see the apartment. It was new and very nice with a kitchen and a washing machine and a soft bed, and so now we are waiting to go there. His taking us in his car.

MODERN TOILET RESTAURANT

MODERN TOILET RESTAURANT

China has some crappy places to eat, butt, ironically, this is not one of them....

On Sunday we were going to stay home and get our blog all caught up. Well we went for a little stroll and before we knew it we had gotten on the subway and ended up at the market. We didn't buy anything but did find this interesting restaurant called the Modern Toilet. They had pictures of their western toilet on the wall and pictures of all of the foods they served and it looked yumm, butt... They were closed, only open in the evening hours, so we didn't get to go inside to check it out.

Hey, as you see, they even have their web address (www.m-toilet.com) on their ad, so you can get on line and order. Just ask for John Gong Wong. They may not deliver, but you can ask. They do have photos of their restaurant inside...Yes, you sit on toilets! And the tables are glass on top of elevated bathtubs.

Sunday, January 25, 2009

This was our hotel in Shenzhen. The people here were very helpful and went out of their way to make sure our stay was pleasant and very comfortable. We were on the 15th floor and could look out on the city every night. Though it was right in the main part of town it was not noisy in our room because we were so high up.


On Sunday we were going to stay home and get our blog all caught up. Well we went for a little stroll and before we knew it we had gotten on the subway and ended up at the market. We didn't buy anything but did find this interesting restaurant called the Modern Toilet. They had pictures of their western toilet on the wall and pictures of all of the foods they served and it looked yumm, butt... They were closed so we didn't get to go inside to check it out. Hey, they even have their web address (http://www.m-toilet.com/) on their ad, so you can get on line and order. Just ask for John. They may not deliver regularly, but you can ask.

After a brief walk through the market we got back on the subway and headed out to the China Culture Center.


On arriving their we bought tickets to the Chinese Rodeo, which was more of a production of Mongolian Warriors on horseback. It was really great to watch.


Then we walked around the Center for an hour before we attended an indoor show. Now this was once again a Spectacular. The best part was Jay was selected out of the audience and got to go on stage to perform with the cast. I got it all on the video. Jay did such a great job, But I will let him tell you about it.

After the performance we went home and packed to leave at 7:30 am the next morning for the famous tourist city of Guilin.

GUILIN: SAWTOOTH MOUNTAIN COUNTRY

Monday, January 26th, 2009
Arrival at Guilin.

We boarded this plane in Shenzhen for a 60 minute flight to Guilin. The weather was overcast with scattered showers, and when we arrived in Guilin it was cold. We went straight to our hotel and got settled in a cold room. We didn't feel like unpacking, which was strange because that is the first thing we usually do. We went for a walk and caught a number of buses around town, to see where to go in Guilin. We had this really good map that showed all the buses to take to the places we would want to see. When we finished exploring the city on the bus we went back to the hotel to unpack.

That night when we went down to eat Chinese, but the chef and staff were celebrating the New Year and so they didn't want to serve us. I think they were closed. It was really a good thing because we went for another walk and went just one block away to another hotel. It was quite nice and after we ate their buffet, we asked to look at their rooms. They showed us one and we said we would be back tomorrow to stay for the week.

Tuesday, January 27th, 2009

This is us pulling our bags over to the new hotel. They let us check in at 10:00 am. After checking in we talked to the Assistant Manager, who speaks great English, and he spent the time telling us all the things we should go and see and helping us arrange our tour plans. He also suggested that we would enjoy spending some time in Sanya, a place like Hawaii - only Chinese style. We decided we didn't want to go back to the freezing cold of Jinan quite yet, and we were having such a great time being Gypsies, that we made plane reservations to stay there from February 2nd through the February 11th.

The first thing that Fun, (the assistant manager) thought we should see was the Red Flute Caves. We could get their by taking bus #11 right in front of our hotel. So with his reassurance that we could find it easily and having gone all over the city the day before on buses we set off that afternoon... This is Mr. Fun.

......while on the bus I asked, "Does anyone here speak English, and where on this map do we need to get off." A young couple (they were just good friends who had met and worked in Yellowstone last summer) said that they were going to the same place and we could follow them.

This was Bryan and Natasha and we would spend the whole day and evening with them. We went into this wonderful cave. There seems to be caves in every mountain in Guilin. I didn't know this, but Jay really loves to go into caves and any adventure really. You can never do justice in pictures of caves. The Mountians of Guilin really do look like this. After our cave experience we were talking about what they were going to do on Wednesday and the next thing we knew we were buying tickets for a tour on to Yangshuo and the Li River. After that we all went to a Buddha temple. I think it was at the temple that we somehow lost our video camera out of our bag, the camera that had the video tape of Jay dancing at the China Cultural Center Show. OUR FIRST BIG LOSS. A SET BACK. We think that Gypsies have these all the time. At least it was not out passports or wallets...

We went through these red doors and into another cave with lots of Buddha gods. I found out that I was born in the year of the monkey and Jay in the year of chicken. Now we worship them.

Along the way we sat and wrote our name in Chinese characters.

Afterwards we went to this wonderful American Food Restaurant (also, where I might have dropped or lost the video camera) and Jay had his first steak (really great) in 4 months and I had a stuffed chicken breast. On the way home we discovered that we didn't have the video camera and we went back to see if we could find it, but we couldn't.

We went home tired and ready to go to sleep. The next day tour was one that I had been looking forward to since I first found out we were going to China.

It follows below. The Mountains of Guilin.