I don't know if I've ever wanted to travel more than I do now. After months of being locked inside, I was beyond eager to get out of Shanghai. But exactly because of that lockdown, our options were limited. Many provinces required quarantine between 3 and 14 days on arrival. While 3 would be doable, it would be better to, you know, not. Fortunately the city of Guilin came to our rescue by being more chill, with nothing needed except a negative test.

Unless you're from China you've likely never heard of Guilin. It's got quite a reputation for being naturally beautiful, with lots of ancient writers saying things like "Guilin is heaven on Earth." Back when travel was more a thing, it was a backpacker destination not unlike Bangkok. Of course, different times now, and the streets I've heard that were filled with young foreigners now has only one, less young foreigner.

Me, I'm talking about me.

A Guilin specialty, Beer Fish

Which is a change compared to Shanghai for sure. I was much more of a Z-List celebrity in Guilin, even stopped and asked by people if they can take their photo with me. It's like when I first came to China over a decade ago, although thankfully I didn't have a baby shoved into my arms while walking down the street (which actually happened once in Xiaoshan). But anyway, how's Guilin?

It's nice. Actually Guilin city is not particularly renowned today, because it's a medium sized Chinese city of merely 5 million people. It was always more of a "jumping off point" for the surrounding region. Still, it has a bit of beauty left in it. You can see the nature showing through however, with large, nearly vertical hills that pop up between the buildings. Guilin city is more of a staging area to explore the region, which is what we plan on doing. But we decided to stay a day or two in the city, because it does have some things to do.

For example, Zhengyang Walking Street and East West Alley, which are connected pedestrian areas with lots of food and shops. But they're actually quite nice and don't feel like the tourist traps other pedestrian areas around China do. In fact, we mostly saw high schoolers, old folks, and families pushing around strollers. Honestly, with tourism in China being non-existent right now, I'd bet we were among the very few non-locals. We had a meal and went on to see Jingjiang Palace, which you know, is a palace. It's alright. It does have a hill in the middle with a cool view. But after climbing up that mountain, we needed to rest before checking out Sun Moon Lake, one of the sights you see on all the Guizhou stock photos. It's just a lake with a park, but has two large towers, one silver, one gold colored. Actually I thought they were really pretty, although Ella seemed less impressed. Then again, Ella was following the directions to our hotel, and it said "next to the clock tower". When she saw it, she quipped "You call that a tower?" I responded "Well, I don't know what else you would call it." I'll put a photo of that below, so you can judge for yourself if Ella has very "high" standards for towers.

There was one thing in Guilin I really wanted to do, called Reed Flute Cave. It's actually one of many caves in the area, some even being downtown. But we took a 15 minute car trip to this one, as it's supposedly the best. To be honest, it's fantastic and I'm very glad we went. Something they did though was really lean into the artificial lighting, which makes it look especially unique. Although simultaneously I was wondering if the rainbow lighting just "Disney-ified" the whole experience. Well, you know, aside from the movie projected on a cave wall and souvenir keychains. But lighting or not, it is a super impressive cave. Not that I'm a cave expert, I've seen maybe... 8? But this was one of the best. The rock formations seemed to be all named after animals and food, which, gotta tell you, it takes a LOT of creativity to look at this rock and think "Yup, that's a lion." Maybe their idea of a lion comes from Shanghai's Natural History Museum. Anyway, here's a bunch of photos:

 

After the cave, there was another "stock photo of Guilin" to see, Elephant Nose Mountain. Supposedly this rock formation looks like an elephant dipping its trunk into water. Fortunately it's free and right in the middle of town, so it's not at all difficult to get to. Which was good, because free and 0 minutes is how much I think it's worth. What I'm saying is, we were both very unimpressed. Look, I've been to hyped tourist sights before. I can look at something and think "It's not my thing, but I can get how others would appreciate it." But this thing had so much tourist infrastructure around it, not to mention the crazy crowds. Like, when we were coming back to the Guilin airport at the end of our trip (more on that next time), I saw street signs that were "50km to the Elephant! 40km!" I mean, all this just to see... that? I don't get it. At best, it's a pretty symmetrical arch, although I don't know how much was man made. It was so blah we didn't even want to take a photo, but since we were there we thought might as well. I'll let you be the judge - the spitting image of an elephant, or useless tourist trap?

Anyway, that was about it for Guilin city. It's quite a nice place that most want to get out of as quickly as possible to explore the region. Which is a shame, because I think it's definitely worth spending at least a full day there, probably two if you don't want to rush. But with Guilin now checked off, we were off to the Star Wars planet of Kashyyyk to see some mountains and wookies.