Day 53 - Guilin

13.09.09

Pulling into Guilin Station at an early 8am and the town is silent. There are the usual drove of taxi drivers vying for your attention, but once i got past them, it was clear sailing all the way to the hostel. After checking in to my hostel, I decide to take a walk around town and over to the main park. As per usual there is an entry fee to get into the park and then some attractions have an additional fee on top of that. The geography around Guilin is the main attraction and the karst peaks that jut up out the ground from no where are what people mainly come to see. The park has a few of them and I decide it would be a good idea to try and climb up one, so about 30mins later, a few scratches, muddy hands and a feeling of 'was this a good idea', I am at the top of one of the parks main peaks and overlooking Guilin. It doesn't look like anything special and I am mythed at how the city is a number one destination for Chinese tourists, it doesn't look appealing at all. There is also a zoo at the park which is actually horrific. A crocodile sits in a small concrete room with a pool about the size of a bath with less than a foot of dirty green water in it, black bears pace around concrete cells or sit with their heads pushed against the bars moaning, monkeys in cages groom themselves as if they have OCD or sit motionless. All in all it's a horrible place, but still people look at the cages and throw peanuts or seeds at the animals and whistle or clap at them to try and get them to do something. Unpleasant.

At night Guilin becomes a bit more interesting, my first task, printing off pictures to use as post cards turns into a mission with a 10min dialogue between me and the printer trying to work out what size photos I want. I realise that I have over 1500 photos on two memory cards and no back ups, I really need to burn them to DVDs. Walking back to the hostel at, Guilin lights up around the lake, the pagodas and the river and it's a lot better than the day time. The down side to a tourist town however is the seedier side and as I walk along the main tourist street people try and get me to go into their bars or ask me if I want a "massage". I guess it's all good training for what I hear is an onslaught of some places in Thailand.