I had initially planned a trip
heading elsewhere for the Malaysia Day weekend (as early as back in February)
but eventually decided not to utilise the ticket (the colleagues I invited for
the trip presumptuously invited two other people to join the trip despite my
misgivings. I can’t and won’t travel with people who can’t respect me like
that). At the MATTA Fair back in March, I booked and paid the deposit for a
package tour to Guilin in China. I then asked another colleague if she wanted
to come along (Abah changed his mind as usual) and she agreed. Why a package
tour? Well, I suppose I could perhaps travel on my own in China but I didn’t
feel like struggling with the language barrier and having to find halal food
when I don’t speak the local lingo. This turned out to be a wise decision as
unlike Beijing and Shanghai, hardly anyone speaks English in Guilin except for
our tour guide and some hotel staff.
Saturday, 14 September 2013
After spending a sleepless night at
KL Sentral and being chased away every time I was settling down by idiots in
uniforms (ever noticed how pompously one behaves when in a uniform?), I boarded
the 0245 bus to LCCT. Arrived at 0330, half an hour before the assembly time
outside McDonald’s. SM arrived just before 4 and we collected our boarding
passes and immediately went in to drop off our bags. We then went through the
usual process and waited for morning prayers in the prayer room. AirAsia’s
departure times to a lot of its destinations are at ridiculous hours.
I tried to sleep during the flight
but it was a futile attempt. We landed at 11 but were only out at 1115. I
quickly made my way for the immigration before the rest of the plane descended
upon the counters. The bags took a little while to emerge (I think it was
because some of our tour members brought in some fruits in their check-in
baggage). SM and I then went out to join the rest and meet Alex, our local tour
guide. I had actually met Alex a week earlier at the MATTA Fair in KL.
We finally left at close to 12 and
boarded the bus to Guilin city. Gui is the Chinese word for the Osmanthus flower and Lin means forest so
the name literally means ‘forest of sweet Osmanthus’ due to the abundance of
the flower tree in the city. The city was a 45-minute drive away from the
airport and we were immediately brought to a halal restaurant for lunch. If you
have been on any China package tour, you’d know meals in China are a lavish affair
indeed. After lunch, we drove to Yao Mountains and rode the cable car up to the
summit. I was a bit apprehensive especially as it was an ‘open’ ride (i.e.
there was no barrier) and to make things worse, it was such a scorching hot
sweltering afternoon with hardly a breeze. For some reason, I had thought that
I’d enjoy an early autumn weather in Guilin but no, it was just as hot as, if
not hotter than, Malaysia! We stayed for about 45 minutes before making our way
down. We then drove to Hotel Universal Guilin. There was no WiFi in the room
(only in the lobby and only if you were lucky) but there was a prayer mat and
the direction of Qiblat provided in our rooms.
We rested for a bit, then went down
again and boarded the bus to a massage centre where we enjoyed a complimentary
foot and back massage. After that we went for a rather hurried dinner before
making our way to the river to board our 1930 cruise around the four connecting
lakes of Guilin. The cruise lasted an hour and we were back at the hotel by 9
pm to rest. I wanted to watch the Arsenal match what with Ozil making his debut and all but there was no match shown at all
(there was a Bundesliga match shown though if I recall it correctly).
Sunday, 15 September 2013
This morning, we were given two
wake-up calls (and we would be given two wake-up calls every morning throughout
our trip): one at 5 for morning prayers and the next at 6 for us to get up and
get ready. We had been told to leave our bags outside the room by 7 am and come
down to the bus by 0710. It was as bad as going to work, I remarked, except it
was doubly worse as it was a Sunday. No such thing as an easy Sunday morning in
bed, no sir.
We left the hotel and went to Endian
Halal Restaurant for breakfast. The Muslim population in Guilin is quite small:
out of half a million of its population, only up to 30,000 are Muslims and
there are not many halal restaurants and of these, only two open sufficiently early
for breakfast.
After breakfast, we drove to the
Crown Cave Scenic Area where we boarded a ride (a bit like those at amusement
parks) and ‘drove’ it ourselves into the Crown Cave. We then walked in the cave,
marvelling at the lighted stalactites and stalagmites (some of the rock
formations like real). There is an underground river and we then boarded boats
to get to another cave. After exploring this other cave, we waited for the
underground train to the elevators to exit the cave. You could enter the cave
from this other entrance and I suppose the cave experience will be reversed. And
get this: the Crown Cave is apparently listed in the Guinness World Records as
a cave with the most ways of travelling. From the elevators, we walked out into
the mid-morning sunshine and walked down to the river before boarding one of
the boats for our cruise to Yangshuo.
Our bus and driver were waiting for
us and we continued on to Yangshuo. We had lunch at a restaurant in a big
building before checking into Yangshuo Sovereign Hotel. We only had 45 minutes
to freshen up as we were told to meet at the lobby at 1530 for a bamboo raft
ride and trip to the Silver Cave.
Now, a word about my fellow tour
mates: 18 of them are from Shah Alam and know each other. They are at least
above 50 years old with some pensioners amongst them but my, were they a jolly
lot. They even brought some karaoke DVDs which they asked Alex to put on and
which they later sang to. Who knew travelling with such a big group of senior
citizens could be so much fun? I was laughing so much and really, they really
had me and my mate in stitches throughout with their antics and dry humour. I
also loved that I learnt a lot of things from them through interaction during
meals and their sporting attitude (sharing tips and advices during the bus
rides). I think they made the trip so much more fun, really.
So, they put on a karaoke DVD (turned
out it contained a lot of songs by Engelbert Humperdinck - way before my time of
course) and a few of them sang and entertained us. It took us 30 minutes to
reach the river where we got down and boarded bamboo rafts for a brief river
cruise. We also sang (competed more like between the four rafts) and were
treated to some entertainment and a demonstration of fishing with cormorants. Cormorants are
black birds which dive underwater in search of fish. Fishermen there use the
cormorants to catch fish and return them to the boat. The fisherman we saw drove
the birds into the water where they dived below the surface in search of fish.
When the birds caught a fish, they returned to the boat and the fisherman
removed the fish from their throat and placed it in the basket. The fisherman had
a cord around the bird’s neck to keep the bird from swallowing the fish. It
seemed a complicated way of fishing to be honest and I doubt fishing this way
yield many fish. Why not just cast your nets?
Anyway. We returned after an hour and boarded the bus to
the Silver Cave, with its crystal clear and silver-sparkling stalactites which gave the cave its name. The cave is a
floor-type cave, with three layers and more than ten scenery spots and
different types of stalactites. The most three famous scenic areas include
snow-mountain with waterfall, music stone screen, and Jade Pool Wonderland. We
took about 45 minutes to explore the cave before joining our fellow tour mates
who opted not to enter and driving back to Yangshuo.
We headed to
the same restaurant where we had lunch for dinner and after dinner, we went to
the Liu Sanjie Light Show. There were two shows that night (we went for the
second show) and there were so many people there, we were advised to stick
closely to avoid getting lost. The show lasted an hour. We returned to the
hotel well after 11 pm. It had been a tiring day.
To be
continued
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