Our Walk Around the World: Guilin

Wada Hostel!! We got off the train, and walked to Wada Hostel. Everyone at Wada speaks english so call and get directions or leave a comment, and I will give them to you. We arrived late at night, g-chated with my folks, and crashed on THE and I mean THE softest bed in China. Thank you Wada!!!!! If you talk to people who visit or move to China you will hear that the beds are boards. Our new friend Ed, that we met on the train from Wuhan, told us when he came to China to work, for the first while he had bruises on his hips and knees from the hard bed. My sleeping bag has given me enough padding to always feel cozy, but Wada hostel felt like clouds!! Ed, I hope you visit Guilin!

If you are not at a hostel like Wada, it is a good idea to get a city map for 5Y at a store, but Wada gives them for free..as most hostels do. We decided that we would take a bike trip for the day. It was so cute..., on our way out of the Hostel an old man said, " You are riding bikes? You must be cRazy. I just crossed the street." A person walked by heading out the door to the same mart at the old man. The old man continued, " You are going to the mart? Be careful..I just crossed the street. It was CrAzy!!" lol He was not exaggerating!! No one follows any traffic rules, but we ventured out. It was SOOOOoo much fun. We were in the craziness of it all, and it felt so much safer being a part of it. We followed bikes, crossed streets using cars as shields, made good use of our bells...we loved it.

There were so many neat things to see in Guilin; rock structures, artistic pathways, pagodas, beautiful bridges, markets. Guilin society thrives mainly on tourism, and so the city is focused on being more clean than others, and that was sooo nice. We road around and found this park that was right next to the river. We wanted to walk along the river, but did not see a way down, and so Curtis decided to shimmy down the tree and help me down.

He locked up our bikes in this secret place...

passed on the shimmying and jumped

And then walked a few steps and told me not to follow because there were stairs right in front of him!! look through the trees :-)

We did not get a lot of photos, and mostly just biked around the city. It was clean. It was beautiful.

There were musicians playing on the sides of the street

We saw the fun sites in the main square and kept on going. Here we are in the middle of the street with a bunch of bikes, and other bikes are crossing in front of us. I did not catch it because I had to be ready, but soon all lanes in the intersection began converging, and we just weaseled our way through it along with everyone else. In America that would take forever to clean up, but that is just how its done here.

Good idea (I guess): Biking through Guilin, with destinations in mind, defensively driving, and meeting your friend at every chosen point.
Bad Idea: Biking through Guilin, without destinations in mind, and following someone elses lead, who is defensively driving for themselves only, and almost getting killed because of it all.

After choosing destinations and arriving there in close proximity but often via slightly divergent routes through traffic, we had a blast.

So many beautiful bridges

Tons of hills to make you sleep really well at night from wearing you out

Random Photo ops while not biking

goofy one of me too

Artsy walk ways

Photo opp

Guilin at night is so impressive. During the day it is a beautiful place to be with elephant trunk hill and central square, but their bridges and walk ways, and the Moon and Sun pagodas are all well lit at night. It's very very beautiful!