The Two Year Itch

Previously on The Year of Tom I talked about my Survivor style spring break trip to Guangzhou and Guilin. Having made it to Guilin with three surviving travelers we toured the most beautiful place on earth. I must preface this entry with an explanation about Guilin. I had been wanting to visit the city for two years, ever since I watched a documentary about how Chinese landscape paintings inspired by the city’s scenery. I had been complaining about going there since about day one of my program, so when it finally happened I was ecstatic.

The city began with me feeling like death from my horrid eggs on the train, and our hotel not having our reservation. After much haggling in Chinglish we got a room and passed out for a few hours. After the much-needed rest we ventured out into the city.

Your must realize that Guilin is filled with karsts, which are basically mountains that shoot up out of the ground and are spectacularly beautiful. One famous karst has a hole that looks like an elephant, so we started there. Obviously there were temples (cuz its Asia duh), and random pavilions to rest at.

We also saw two huge pagodas that were decent looking in the daytime, but spectacular at night as they were lit up and reflected in the lake they were in. Aside from that we saw a palace like the Forbidden City only smaller, which had more karsts and temples. This was all very impressive but I was unable to really enjoy it due to the stomach cramps that came and went every five minutes. Lets just say the low point of my day involved an Asian style toilet and some toilet paper that I had to provide for myself.

The next day we took a river cruise on the Li River. Words cannot describe how stunningly beautiful it was. Never before have I built up a place so much in my mind and then been blown away by seeing it in real life. The karsts there were enormous, and made for a canyon that is the most beautiful place I have ever been to.

While my stomach was still on the fritz, I found a miraculous cure. Snake whiskey. The pale green liquid came from a jar filled with dead snakes, and some impulsive part of me said it would be a good idea to taste. It tasted different from the whiskey you get at the bar (obviously), but when combined with little deep fried fish it made me feel great.

After the river tour we got onto little bamboo rafts and got pushed up and down the river by a local. On the tour we saw Cormorant fishing. Essentially the Cormorants dive for fish, but cannot swallow them because of the collar around their neck. After a catch is made the fisherman forces the fish back out. This was really cool to see, but not as funny as the buffalo we saw.

We got to feed some buffalo grazing next to the river. This was funny because everyone was still wearing their orange life vests (thank god I didn’t wear one), and my friend had an orange coat on. The buffalo head butted my friend. When I asked my tour guide why he simply said, ‘The buffalo no like orange. Shhhh.’ I burst out laughing, as I looked around at little kids and adults alike all trying to feed pissed off buffalos.

The tour ended with a bridge where one of Microsoft’s default backgrounds was shot from, and a tour of an impoverished town of relics from the Cultural Revolution.
Now at this point our trip should have been over. Instead our flight got moved back to midnight and we were forced to spend an extra night in Guangzhou on the way back to Hong Kong. My friend Nick was having none of it and bought a ticket on a flight at the ass crack of dawn. And with that two remained.

My friend James is Korean. Which essentially meant that everyone thought he spoke Chinese, and he could hail cabs more easily. We didn’t have much we wanted to do so we leisurely made our way to an epic cave system. It was enormous, and yet again, unfathomably beautiful. In a typical Chinese way it was lit with neon lights, and visitors can feed turtles that are supposedly hundreds of years old.

After the cave we went to an epic park. The main attractions included a pretty temple, a cave we clearly weren’t supposed to go in, monkeys (that almost attacked us), waterfalls and rock formations that look like a Bactrian Camel. It was looking like our day would end perfectly until James led me into the slums of Guilin.
While trying to find a rock formation I somehow let my friend convince me to walk through some farmer’s fields into an area with the kind of abject poverty that millions of Chinese peasants live in. It smelled like a sewer the whole time, and eventually turned into the ‘Lets All Stare At The White Boy’ freak show. Fortunately I found a way back to civilization and plumbing where we promptly ran into a man humming his way down the road while staring at a picture of a VERY naked woman.

The rest of the trip back to HK was very uneventful. The only issue worth mentioning was my fight with security at the Guilin Airport. Apparently some safety bullshit rule applied to the model aircraft I had bought. It seems that planes made of AK-47 bullets aren’t allowed in carry-on luggage OR checked luggage. That confiscation of my plane was upsetting to say the least, and it’s 5 USD that I’ll never get back.

P.S. To see some epic pictures from this trip check out my photo blog here- http://tomshodgepodgepictures.shutterfly.com/

P.S.S. Ever seen the movie The Painted Veil? It was shot in Guilin.