Guilin, China

We have returned from our weekend trip to Guilin mainland China. I've never seen a third world country until this trip so it was definitely a bit of a culture shock. It is a scenic place and has some natural beauty to it, but I don't think we'll be returning anytime soon!

We got to go on a tour through an old cave, ride up to the top of a mountain in the cable car, take photos with a monkey, go on a riverboat tour and have a tour guide show us around the area. The best thing was the hour long massage we got for about $12 bucks each!

Here are some of our photos.

The entire album from this trip can be viewed by clicking here: Guilin Photos

On the riverboat

There were all these people following alongside the boat the whole time begging for money.

I never knew a place dirtier than Tijuana could exist, but it does. Nobody uses toilet paper in mainland and good luck even finding a regular toilet anywhere. Most of the things we saw that were called toilets were disgusting holes in the ground and completely unsanitary. I don't even want to be descriptive in explaining it. It was truly the nastiest thing I've ever seen in my life. The cleanest public bathroom was in the airport and I even cringed at it. Who came up with this retarded idea of a toilet on the floor???

Finding food there that wasn't snake eyes, turtle soup, fried frog or an organ from some animal was as bad as finding a normal toilet. The stuff people eat there looks SO GROSS!! We pretty much ate M&M's, fruit, rice and french fries at the restaurant in our hotel since that was literally all we could find that was "normal" to us. Oh, and people drive crazy in China! There are no traffic laws there, all people do is honk at each other and pass eachother on the wrong side of the street! It was an experience but we were happy to get back to civilization and normal food in Hong Kong on Monday night!

Friday we leave for Singapore and Bintan for 6 days. Looking forward to that!

Funny

I forgot to post this a few weeks ago when it happened. I thought it was funny that our cab driver's name was Shit!

Shopping for shoes in Hong Kong SUCKS

Apparently, an 8 or 8.5 shoe size = giant ogre over here. Nearly every place I go looking for shoes doesn't carry anything larger than 6 or 7. LAME!!! A lady working at the Nine West store looked at me like I was crazy and yelled, "NO SIZE, THAT WAY TOO BIG!"when I told her my size. At least I finally found a pair of hiking shoes today. I was starting to get pissed off.

Dave and I booked a few trips for the next couple weeks!

We are going to Guilin in mainland China this weekend and will be going hiking and doing some outdoors stuff there. It's about an hour flight from HK. Guilin is supposed to be really beautiful and scenic w/rivers, lakes and hiking trails so we're excited to check it out.

Next Wednesday we are flying to Singapore for a few days and then taking a boat to Bintan island in Indonesia for the weekend. It's peak travel season here because it's Chinese New Year, but we were able to get lucky and get a room at this Bintan Lagoon Resort. http://www.bintanlagoon.com It looks pretty amazing. I want to rent boats and jetski's there and do it all!

World's Tallest Buddha

Dave and I went with Amanda and Lou to see the big buddha last weekend. We took the cable car over the water to get all the way up there. It was awesome.

We are really high up! Scary?!

This thing is HUGE.

Click here to see more of the Buddha pics: Buddha Photos