Guilin

I decided to post about Guilin a little differently than Shanghai. Instead of including all of the pictures in one entry, I'm splitting this one up into a few. Guilin might have been my favorite city (well, actually it's a toss up between there and Yangzhuo). Guilin is absolutely gorgeous with it's camel-hump like mountains, beautiful Li river, friendly people and amazing town square & street markets. As soon as the plane was descending and I could see the landscape unfold beneath me, I knew I'd love it..and I was right.

We arrived, were greeted by our local guide Owen and were forced to use the "Chinese" standard toilet at the airport, aka: a hole in the ground. Literally. (I have a picture of one on my mom's camera, which unfortunately is in New Mexico. Have I mentioned that I hateeee not having all the pictures enough times?!? Ugh.) We immediately got lunch and then headed to town to check into our hotel. Since we had such an early flight, we got to enjoy the afternoon to rest or explore on our own. This worked nicely for Stephen since he got really sick around this time of the trip. So while him, my mom and my dad relaxed, me & Rachel went out wandering around downtown Guilin.
We walked along the river and watched some local fishermen attempt to catch fish, we enjoyed the sights and smells (ha!) of the food vendors in the market square, we found our way inside a massive shoe store that undoubtedly did not have our sizes #bigfootprobz, we thought about getting pizza at a pizza place we saw but voted against it cause who knows what kind of sketchy meat they use and we crossed the street bracing Chinese traffic, which is insane and no small task I might add all by ourselves.

Fun fact, the tallest building in Guilin is limited to only 8 floors. This way, it doesn't distract from the gorgeous mountains that surround the city.

After dinner, we gathered on a boat to watch cormorant fishing take place. It was fascinating, but I'll admit I did feel bad for the poor birds who were forbidden to swallow the fish they caught. I guess that's the inner animal activist shining through. But really, cormorant fishing is actually pretty smart and dates back to ancient times. The fishermen tie a snare around the bird's throat and then throws it in the water to catch fish. The snare prevents the bird from swallowing any large fish and they're trained to come back to the boat where the fisherman has the bird spit up the fish and then he throws it in a bucket.

The next morning, we went down to the river again and boarded a boat for a 4 hour river cruise that took us to the small village of Yangzhuo, where we spent the night..