Friday 21st October. I have discovered adding to the one post has become a little complex after a week, things don’t stay where I want them so this is for our last 5 days.
Yesterday was a very full day. Our guide had left us with instructions for taking the subway train to the people’s park. In this place people can be seen doing tai chi and writing notices to find marriage partners for their children. And we made it there, in fairly miserable weather. We met a group o
f ladies doing a 
dance, and decided to gate crash. I don’t think they minded.
Then we took a taxi to the Tibetan Neighbourhood where Judy had stayed on her way to Tibet 6 years ago. We found Holly’s Hostel where she stayed, and A Re Tibetan Restaurant where we had momo’s (dumplings) and Yak milk smoothies. We also went over to the Tibetan Temple but my photo doesn’t do it justice.
View from our hotel window. The place is known for its limestone peaks.
In the evening we flew to Gulin and our guide brought us here to Yangshuo, an hour and a half drive.
We found a lovely cool place to enjoy our mango smoothies, down a side street.
We are still recovering today. It would be a beautiful place to stay longer and really get to know. After asking for Mango drinks in every place we have been without luck we have found them here. Perhaps they ripen earlier here as we are further south.
Tomorrow we have a full day tour to the rice terraces, which have just been harvested so we don’t get to see the rice.
Monday 24th October in the Riverview Hotel Shanghai. This time tomorrow we will be headed for Hong Kong and on our way home. The days have slipped past. I have lots of photos to sort and post.
It was a 4 hour trip to the rice terraces so we stopped half way at a tea plantation to learn more about tea.
Then we had a tea ceremony. One of the teas was Osmantha, from the tree that Guilin gets its name, meaning Osmantha forest. The treas were flowering for us, tiny fragrant yellow flowers.
8.24pm Shanghai Airport, waiting for our plane that is delayed…….after the original one was cance
We arrived at the village for lunch and looked around while our bamboo rice was cooking. The rice farmer’s houses have 3 or 5 floors. The first is the barn where the animals live. The second is storage, you can see the newly harvested rice drying on the veranda of the second level. Then come the living and sleeping levels.
lled.
Today we went for a meal on the Bund (Shanghai Waterfront). There were restaurants underneath the walkway. We sat down
This is the traditional way a rice farmer cooks his lunch so he doesn’t have to trek down and up the mountain. The rice with some meat and veg is packed into bamboo and cooked over a fire.
at a table and a lady came and sat down at the same table. She was an elderly cleaner and I had a feeling she had commandeered that particular table as her own, and everyone else knew to s
The rice was delicious, and the other dishes.
teer clear of it. I said Ni Hao (hello) and must have said it reasonably well because she smiled and launched into Chinese. She certainly didn’t understand “Sorry that is the only word I know.” So I showed her photos on my phone and she enjoyed them. Thumbs up for the ones she particularly liked. When our meal came she wandered off. We bumped into her again later on with lots of smiles. Lots of fun.
Then we took the cable car up to the viewing platform. It took about 20 minutes and the views were magnificent. You can make out the other villages among the rice terraces. The smoke is from burning the stubble.
A tiny bit of the crop was not harvested and some tourists were having a photo shoot there. We were so lucky with the weather, sunshine but not too hot.
This shows the viewing platform. It was one of three viewing platforms in the area. It is very much set up for tourists.
The next morning we left early for Guilin to catch our plan to Shanghai. On the way we learned our plane had been cancelled and rather than flying out at 10.30am we would be flying out at 8pm. So we walked around the square and joined a group for Tai Chi.
Four Pagodas. (Caption given by our guide Daniel who took the photo.)
While we spent our unexpected day in Guilin we could use the foyer of the Waterfall Hotel. We went and had an iced coffee in the cafe there and they were getting ready for a wedding reception including light and sound show.
