It was a two hour drive from Yangshou back to Guilin. We
stopped twice on the way. The first to see the rice fields, but it was too
early in the season so it was basically just a bunch of green rectangles. Farms
are different over there. Instead of one family having a house and their big
farmland surrounding the house, all the farmers in China live in villages
grouped together then they go out to the fields where each family has their own
plot of land they farm. A lady came by
with a water buffalo. It’s a standard tourist thing, she charges 10yuan for a
photo with the buffalo.
The second stop was at another tiny town along the river.
They were giving boat rides to tourists. We walked over the bridge on the river
and watched as the little two person boats went under the bridge, over the
little dyke under the bridge and then down the little fall into the water! It
looked like tons of fun, I wished we had had enough time to try it but it was
crowded and we had other things to do.
After lunch we made a brief visit to the pearl museum. They
told us all about pearls, how long it takes them to grow, how to tell real from
fake. I enjoyed the little fashion show they put on but I didn’t like feeling
like an exploited tourist. That was okay though because the place we went to
after the museum was one of the biggest highlights of the entire trip for me.
We visited the Reed Flute Cave! You need to go to google
right now and look up pictures of this cave because it is the most spectacular
display of lights you will ever see. This cave was massive and they used
colored lights all around to accentuate the rock formations. They even put on a
light show in the big cavern in the middle. It’s unbelievable how something as
simple as a blue light can make a simple rock wall turn into something
gorgeous.
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| Reed Flute Cave, Guilin |
If you want a story about haggling in China you can’t beat
this one. Of course before you entered the cave you had to walk through a gift
shop. One of the guys in our group stopped and looked at some very nice scrolls
hanging on the wall. A sales girl noticed him and casually mentioned the price of
a scroll was $880yuan. He wasn’t actually interested in buying one, he was just
admiring them, so he ignored her and walked away. As he turned she instantly
started lowering the price. 600! 550! 300! By now our group was making our way
to the entrance of the cave, she actually followed us out the store and down
the stairs 200! 150! He was laughing quite hard at that point and explained
what she was talking about to those of us around him. 100! She yelled out her
last price. No joke, this lady came down from 880 to 100 and Dave never said
one word to her. He didn’t take it, he didn’t want one to begin with, but it
was amazing. We saw similar things happen several more times throughout the
trip. It’s amazing how much they mark up their items for tourists.
Dinner that night was special. We had a Chinese “Western”
style dinner. We sat at rectangle 4 person tables instead of the big round
ones. There were no chop sticks, we had forks and knives (side note, we usually
were provided with forks at our meals but hardly anyone used them and most of
the time the forks were actually intended for serving the food, not for eating).
Our appetizer was a spring roll which made me giggle because our western dinner
was not starting out very western. But then they brought out minestrone soup
and bread rolls, and for the main course we had a choice of chicken, beef and
pork. I had the beef and Ryan tried the pork. Both were wonderfully done,
absolutely delicious.
After dinner we wandered around the shops. Ryan bought some
new jeans. I saw a terra cotta replica at one of the kiosks. I mentioned how I
was planning to get one when we went and saw the real things in Xian. Ryan then
prompted me to buy it now because it was likely to be more expensive at the
actual attraction. It was a nice sized maybe 10 inch statue of a sitting
archer. Just so I could get a price comparison I asked the lady how much for
it. She said 120yuan. That was a bit more than I had anticipated so I shook my
head and made to move on. She grabbed me (not literally but some people there
will, you need to watch out for that) and we moved back and forth on the price.
Finally after much uncomfortable debate (you all know how good I am with
situations like that) I walked away with a terra cotta statue for 40 yuan.
Roughly $6.5. Yes, that lady came down from 120 to 40 for that little statue.
And I’m sure I’ll mention this again when I get to the part with the real
things, but later at the official factory the exact same statue was selling for
400yuan. Yeah.
On the way back to the hotel we stopped to admire the Sun
and Moo pagodas in the lake. One was lit up in all silver and the other in gold
and they reflected on the lake. It was a gorgeous sight.
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