In October, we had a week off for the Chinese Holiday.  We didn’t know when we would get our work visas back, so we couldn’t plan a trip outside of China.  Our colleagues recommended a few places for us to visit and the first one we chose to visit was Guilin.  We flew in and rode into town in a taxi. During the taxi ride, we soaked up the the beauty of the abnormal landscape surrounding us.  It seemed as if someone put their hands under the Earth and pushed their fingers up making enormous vertical mountains protrude randomly around the land. After checking into the Lijiang Waterfall Hotel (which turns into a waterfall at night!), we hit the streets and started doing what we do best, exploring.

The town is nestled between all the mountain and hills.  Rivers and lakes are scattered throughout the city.

 

Here are the Sun and Moon Pagodas.  They sit in a lake and at night they have a type of light show/play.

 

My favorite thing about Guilin was Elephant Trunk Hill.  Maybe it is because my favorite animal is the elephant or because of the hole in the middle of the hill.  To get to the Elephant Trunk Hill you have to walk through this weird elephant amusement park thing.

Once you get through the amusement park, you arrive at the Li river and the hill.

David and I love to climb things.  So naturally, we climbed to the top of Elephant Trunk Hill.  We passed sunflower fields and walked around the ancient tower that is built on the top of the hill.

In Guilin, they make rice wine and store it in the inside of Elephant Trunk Hill.  It is sold in beautiful bottles and unfortunately we think that it tastes horrible.  😦

The markets are what we hit up next.  David found a shop keeper taking a nap in what looked like a homemade contraption.  David also sweat through his shirt multiple times.  It was still hot and humid in Guilin when we went.

Here we tried to take the test that students took a long time ago to graduate from school.  Unfortunately we can’t read Chinese characters so it’s safe to say we failed.

 

After we roamed around Guilin, we got ready for our next destination…Yangshuo!