Globetrotting Adventures: China: Guilin and Xingping

Guilin and Xingping 21.05-27.05

By the end of 3 days in Beijing, we were quite looking forward to escaping the smog. Unfortunately, escaping the smog meant taking a 28 hour (!!!!!) train to Guilin. We left at 09.30am and arrived around 1.30pm the following day! Thankfully we had booked in the hard sleeper class so at least we had a bed to stretch out on. Everyone in our cabin was extremely interested in us, and ever after we had established we spoke no Chinese, they all continued to speak at us and ask loads of questions. The elderly couple sitting opposite offered us various types of food including some seeds which you had to crack open with your teeth before eating them. We found this pretty difficult to the huge amusement of everyone around us. The next day about 15 people crowded around us to openly discuss our looks while pointing and laughing! In China it doesn’t seem to be rude to openly discuss these things. All the women were very impressed by Nina’s eyelids and eyelashes, while everybody seemed quite disgusted by my freckles!

We finally arrived in Guilin and spent around a day and a half exploring the city. Probably the most impressive thing that we saw was the Reed Flute Cave which had hundreds of stalactites which were lit up in various different colours. All of the rock formations had names which described what they looked like, but some didn’t make as much sense as others. For example, one described a formation as “A centipede frightened by a magical mirror”, which we really struggled to see. We had a walk around the rest of central Guilin and went to see the Sun and Moon pagodas which sat on the central lake. We had expected Guilin to be full of karst mountains but to be honest it became clear that to really enjoy the scenery you had to venture out of the city to the smaller towns. We decided that we would go to Yangshuo, a town around 70km south of Guilin, that was supposed to be a bit of a backpacker’s hub. However we realised that by mistake we had booked a hostel in the town of Xingping, an even smaller town that was 25km outside of Yangshuo. This turned out to be a blessing as we arrived at our hostel with a room overlooking the Karst Mountains and a lovely river.

Reed Flute Cave

Sun and Moon Pagodas

The view of the river and the Karst Mountains in Xingping is actually shown on the 20 Yuan Chinese banknote. The first thing we did was visit the 20 Yuan spot and take the exact picture. We then climbed up the nearby Laozhai mountain which the hostel staff said was an easy 30 minute walk. This was a complete LIE! It was more or less straight up and although we went up for sunset it was still about 35 degrees and 100% humidity. By the time we reached the top we were ridiculously hot and sweaty but were rewarded with an amazing view of the mountains at sunset.

The following day we woke up to heavy rain and were a bit worried as we had planned to go cycling. Luckily it cleared up and we were able to rent some mountain bikes and go and explore the local villages. Although we got lost a couple of times, it was amazing as there was nobody else around and we had the mountains entirely to ourselves. We were sad to say goodbye to Xingping as it was our last stop in China but made our way back to Guilin to catch a flight to Vietnam!