Not a whole lot new to report as the days are pretty similar here.  We spent most of the day in town today wandering around the old part of the city, sampling street food here and there (staying away from the more adventurous chicken hearts on a skewer, blood cake, and intestines).  We have mostly given up on finding the things we hoped to here and will try instead to find them in Hong Kong, although the prices will assuredly be higher there.  We did find a massage place (there seem to be far fewer here than in Guilin) and for the equivalent of $3.75 spent an hour watching Chinese television and getting rubbed down.

The part of town we ended up in for dinner was a street full of different kinds of restaurants, Chinese of course, but also Korean, Japanese and so on.  Before they open for business, they have big meeting out front with all the staff where they play music and do some exercises.  I have taken some pictures so that I can evaluate further such a policy for PDA Verticals.

Being in China, we figured it was still appropriate to go with a Chinese restaurant. Here, none of the menus are in English so you pretty much have to do the best you can choosing from pictures.  We picked the place that seemed the busiest and pointed to a bunch of things that looked safe (the whole carp head seemed to be the most popular dish, but not being in the mood for fish brains, we took a pass).  Of the dishes, we’re about 90% sure one was chicken, 50% sure one was pork, and 50% sure one was beef. It all tasted good and we convinced ourselves we knew what it was so all was well.  I think for my next trip though I am going to print up a laminated card with pictures of different animals on it so just to be sure, when we point at something on the menu we can also point at the animal we think it is made from and see if everyone agrees.

It is coming up on May Day here so the hotel seems to be getting a little busier. We actually have people in our wing now.

A better day today with the weather which was nice.  From the forecast, it looks like most of SE Asia is going through the same overcast kind of days we are so we’re giving some thought to maybe heading to Hong Kong a couple days early.  The hotel here is nice and we have a great room, but without the sun being at the beach just isn’t the same.

Still no people to speak of here which remains very puzzling to us.  With the sun out, we did see a few other guests, but even around the pool there were no more than 5 or 10 people.  With hundreds of chairs spread out around the 4 pools here and the beach, it is surreal to see them all empty.  Seeing the kids pool with the waterslide and waterfalls we couldn’t help but think of how much fun the boys would have.

We went for a walk on the beach in the afternoon, past the three or four other hotels that are set up next to this one.  There is a nice path that connects them all together so that if you were inclined you could move between them to try different restaurants or whatever.  Of course, like this hotel, all of those ones seem empty as well. It’s kind of like being Will Smith in I Am Legend.
All we need is a dog to complete the picture.

On the beach itself, the sad part is that no one seems to take care of it.  In front of our hotel it looks like they make some effort to remove the garbage that washes up during the night, but even the places next to us seem to have given up.  Walking along the tide line it is pretty common to see old toothbrushes, lighters, juice boxes, fruit rinds and other interesting pieces of trash.  There are also a fair amount of dead fish, which seemed odd until we realized that there weren’t any birds to speak off (our assumption being that anywhere else, the birds would eat the fish).  Finally coming across a dead bird, we wondered if maybe that was the only one dumb enough to eat the fish.

It is sad to see what they do have here as a natural resource (a sandy beach that is several miles long, warm weather) and what could be a very nice place to visit is in such poor condition.  Everything we read talks about how they want to position this island as a tourist destination, but there is so much work for them to do here to make it anywhere close to resorts that are only an hour or two away that it will be many, many years of effort if it is even possible to pull off.

As expected, a pretty quiet day here today.  The weather is overcast so not much appeal in spending the day at the beach. Instead we decided to go into town in search of some silk carpets, figuring that in a town of a million people there must be a store somewhere that sells them their rugs.  Whether there is no good Chinese word for rug or that they call them something different entirely we don’t really know, but the disconnect is something that would plague us all day, starting with the concierge, who we asked to write on a card we could give to the taxi driver, the address of a place that sold carpets.  After talking this over with his colleague and looking up online a translation, he wrote something down and sent us on our way.

Whatever was written on the card didn’t exactly work out (the street we ended up on was a very sketchy old neighborhood selling mostly plastic housewares and paper lanterns), so we ended up walking around downtown Haikou flashing the same card to anyone we though might be able to point us in the right direction.  Where in most cases we found ourselves sent off to a shop that sold silk shirts, the most entertaining (for me anyways) was standing in a department store with 9 of its employees standing around us trying to figure out what we were looking for and pointing us in different directions.  While it didn’t really generate any good result, it did highlight the friendliness of the people here. It is unfortunate that the number of times you get scammed puts you always on your guard so even when 9 people gather around to try and help you out, in the back of your mind you’re wondering how they are going to try and shake you down.

With no clear idea of where we were going, we acknowledged defeat and headed back to the hotel. Hopefully tomorrow will bring some sun.

With daylight we get a full sense for the resort here in Haikou and our initial assessment is that it is more than just a little weird.  The hotel itself is very impressive, encompassing about 400 rooms surrounding a series of well maintained grounds and pools right on the water.  The funny thing is that there doesn’t seem to be anyone here, to the extreme case that it feels almost like being in a Twilight Zone episode. We were mostly surprised because back in Guilin, we though about trying to come here a day earlier but when we checked the hotel website it reported that the hotel was full.  Given that, we expected to see people all over the place, but walking around in the morning there was nobody on the beach, nobody at the pool, not even towels laid out by people who get up early and reserve the best locations before going back to bed that we have come to expect in other places we have traveled.

In many of the things we read before coming here, Hainan Island (where Haikou is located) is referred to as the Hawaii of the East. From what we have seen so far, that may be a bit of a stretch.  Like everywhere else, the smog is heavy enough that visibility is probably no more than a few miles (the good news is that we have found air pollution to be an effective blocker of UV rays, so our sunscreen bill remains quite low). It seems that the idea of beach resorts isn’t exactly part of the culture either as there are miles of beach running in both directions from our hotel, but very little of it is developed.  Instead, away from the hotels where the beaches are maintained, it looks like no one ever uses what would be considered prime oceanfront property in most other places.  Go back 100 yards from the water though and there is a huge amount of construction, with new multi-story buildings going up everywhere.

All that said, it is very nice here, and had we not spent time is Thailand and Malaysia before coming here, we would likely have only great things to say.  South of here there is also a much bigger resort area called Sanya that probably is a bit more resort-esque, so we gave up on some of that voluntarily when we chose Haikou over Sanya, in large part because we  wanted to be closer to a real city to experience more of the local culture.  We are debating whether we might spend a few days yet in Sanya before heading for Hong Kong, but intertia being what it is, I’m not sure the odds of packing up to move 100 miles south are good.

We did make a quick trip into town this afternoon to stock up on a few groceries (most notably, the always important Diet Cokes).  The store we ended up in was more or less the Chinese version of Fred
Meyer, with the full compliment off  food, clothes, electronics and so on.  They also had a big hot food counter where we bought a few dishes to eat for lunch. It was probably the cheapest meal we have eaten so far (about 10 yuan for the two of us), and ironically, it stacked up very well with meals we have had costing far more.  Loaded down with few bags of groceries, we weren’t really able to walk around town and see much else, so that will have to wait for another day. 

The hotel staff says the weather is supposed to get even better over the coming days whereas the computer says it is supposed to get worse. I suppose we’ll find out who is right tomorrow.

Last day in Guilin today. Having gotten to the hotel fairly late last night, the first order of business was sleeping in.  We finally made it out of the room around 10am (which has some benefits, like a very short line at the breakfast buffet).  With nothing specific to see, after dropping our luggage off with the bellman, we headed off in the direction of a massage place we had found a few days earlier.  Of course the specialty here is Chinese massage, which is more like a typical massage than the stretching and pulling style Thai massage we availed ourselves of every day in Phuket.  Even better, they are even cheaper here.  For an hour of massage, the rate is 25 yuan (about $3), so sparing no expense, we went for 2 hours each.

The rest of the afternoon we spent just walking around Guilin, mostly along the river and through the pedestrian market.  Of the time we have been here, this has been the best day weather wise – very warm and perfectly clear, so it was a great day for doing nothing in particular.  Wandering through the big town square we saw a big screen (like they have in Times Square) playing Tom and Jerry cartoons that we took pictures of for the kids.  It is things like this that always surprise us a little bit as to how similar life here is to any big city like Seattle or Vancouver.

In the evening we headed off to the airport for our flight to Haikou. No signs in English again, but we are getting surprisingly adept and getting around without them.  The plane was completely full (as has been pretty much every flight here), but the trip was short so we were quickly back on the ground in Haikou and in a cab on the way to our hotel.  Our driver (who tried to scam us of course) apparently learned his skills watching NASCAR, weaving in and out of traffic at twice the posted speed limit, getting us to our destination in the same 40 minutes the hotel estimates the trip should take while taking a long enough route to turn a 30km trip into 70km (and earn more than double the regular fare).  Still at 150 yuan we were better off than with the 200 yuan flat rate he wanted to charge from the airport.

Tomorrow begins a new phase of our trip, with far more lounging on the beach or by the pool and far less looking for things to do. Whether there will be anything interesting to post here in the coming days remains to be seen.

Up early this morning to have time for breakfast and then our pick-up for the river cruise to Yangshuo.  The river cruise is one of the activities this area is known for and is something we have both read about and heard from others who have been here that we should do.  The idea is a four hour trip down the Li River, winding through the limestone peaks.  In general, I think this would be a great experience for someone traveling here, but coming after yesterday’s balloon ride, it seems a little anti-climatic.  Had I the opportunity to do things over, doing the river cruise first would have been the better call.  I think we would also have researched a little more to learn more about the different boats and how many people they held, as being on a fairly large boat full of tour groups (and our boat one of six that went down the river as a group) wouldn’t have been my first choice.

The morning was a little overcast with some showers from time to time, so as it worked out, being on the boat worked out fairly well as we could go back inside when it got too cold or started to rain.  There were also some unique opportunities to try a local wine made from flowers, tiny crabs and shrimp deep fried whole, and wine from a jug full of snakes.  As seems to be the custom here, all of these cost extra, so while the snake wine was tempting, we decided to pass.

Arriving back in Yangshuo around 1:30, we had originally planned to rent some mountain bikes (10 yuan each for the day) and ride around the countryside.  The rain made that somewhat less appealing, so instead we walked, often aimlessly, around the city.  In our travels we managed to find a couple of local markets, one food (where the locals get their fresh vegetables and VERY fresh meat), and another where they get clothing.  The latter in particular was quite entertaining as there was no shortage of t-shirts that were horribly translated into english like this one. Sadly, there were far more of these for women than men so I came away empty handed (and somewhat perplexed as to what "Get Yer Greak on Deacon" could possible mean.

Of course our wanderings also took us by Lou’s Bakery on more than one occasion and I felt obligated to once again support the local economy by taking pretty much one of everything (other than what we have come to refer to as the "hairy pancake", which is clearly an acquired taste).  I fear when we leave Yangshuo that Lou’s is going to have to lay off one or two people because of the lost revenue.

With the day coming to a close, we headed back to our travel agent for the bus the live show.  We were both very unsure what to expect from this type of show, having sat through a luau in Kauai and elephant show in Phuket, both of which were less than stellar. Nevertheless, having heard good things about this one, we went with an open mind.

It’s kind of hard to explain the show without seeing it, but what they had done is essentially built seating around a part of the Li River where literally hundreds of people perform on small bamboo rafts and floating stages.  All the while, spotlights highlight various limestone mountains in the background making them part of the show.  We didn’t understand a single word of it so the storyy was difficult to follow, but we still walked away impressed.  I think only in a developing country could they pull something like this off as the staff costs alone would make it prohibitive anywhere else.  Even in Las Vegas it would be hard to imagine a chain of two hundred women walking across a series of floating bridges wearing suits covered with lights that they turned off and on in sync (while two hundred other performers waited in the wings for their turn).  We did record some video, but like too many things on this trip, I suspect it won’t do the real thing justice.

Another hour and a half on the chicken bus (this one arranged by the travel agent but a chicken bus nonetheless) and another day over.  Tomorrow is our last day in Guilin before we leave on a late flight for Haikou.  Having seen what we came to see here, it should be a fairly lazy day.

Our big plan today is to spend the day in Yangshuo, a smaller town (we have come to realize that "small town" in China means something different than it does in a country with only a fraction of the population) about an hour from Guilin.  That of course means a trip to the local bus station, where, to no real surprise, nobody speaks any English and signs are only in Chinese.  The only word we know that will help at all is "Yangshuo", so after saying this repeatedly, we are pointed to the proper ticket window and then off to the line for the bus.

Like Guilin, Yangshuo is right in the middle or hundreds of limestone karst formations, and in recent years has actually become more popular as a travel destination than Guilin, particularly for backpackers and rock climbers.  Arriving there, we soon realize the attraction, as (for me anyways) it is easily the best city we have been to so far.  Because it is smaller than Guilin, it is fairly easy to walk around and there are many streets lined with shops and restaurants that are closed to traffic, so very easy to just wander down in search of a good lunch or some interesting  souvenirs.

It what may be one of our best finds here, we stumble across a place called Lou’s Bakery, which makes some of the best buns I may have ever had. Not being much of a bread eater, I soon find myself coming up with reasons to walk back past this bakery to buy one or two more (at 1.5 yuan each they make for a pretty cheap meal).

For tourists, there are a lot of choices in this area so we head off to one of the travel agencies to ask about a few things.  Highly recommended in our book are the cruise from Guilin to Langshuo on the Li River and a hot air balloon ride over the countryside, so we reserve the former for the following morning and the latter for later in the afternoon.  We were also told about a live show they do on the river at night, so we book tickets for that the following night as well.

With a few hours to kill before the balloon ride, we use the time just hanging out in Langshuo.  If it weren’t for the smog (yes, even here) I could live here, it is that mellow.  Sitting on the sidewalk surrounded by limestone cliffs, enjoying some cheap food and the local beer (Li Quan, which is excellent, and they serve it very cold), it’s impossible not to slip into a state of relaxation.

When the time finally arrived for our balloon trip, we hopped in a minivan for a short drive into the countryside and our first real exposure to life outside the city.  As waqs to be expected, life moves at a much slower pace here.  There are very few cars (and even if there were the roads are so bad they couldn’t go more than a few miles per hour), farmers herd animals down the street, and there are small rice paddies and vegetable farms everywhere.  What was a bit surprising is that even in the absence of any real traffic, there are still little stands every so often on the road selling water and snacks, we’re just not sure to who.

At the balloon site, we had about a half hour wait while the wind died down and the balloons were unpacked and inflated.  Right next to us there was a group of farmers planting rice, so we watched them for a while and took a few pictures.  They offered to let us try, and the next thing I knew, I was calf deep in a rice paddy with a half dozen locals.  I was so good at it that in the pictures it might be hard to tell who is who, so for those who have trouble, I am the tall one.

The balloon ride itself was amazing.  As spectacular as the scenery is from the ground here, it doesn’t compare to how it looks from a thousand feet up.  Being the first balloon experience for both of us, we weren’t entirely sure what to expect, but hands down it was the highlight of this part of our trip.  There was so much to see that we were constantly snapping pictures with two cameras even though we knew that they wouldn’t come close to matching being there.  At our highest, we were about 3,000 feet high and could see for miles in every direction (if there ever are any now, on a day without smog the view would be absolutely fantastic).  At our lowest, the pilot skimmed the surface of the river with the bottom of the basket.  It was very, very cool and something we would highly recommend.

Back in Langshuo, we found a nice place for dinner and then headed back to the bus station for the return trip to Guilin.  One tiny problem was that the travel person told us the express buses ran until 11pm (it was 9:30 at this point). In fact, they only run until 8:30, leaving the only option privately-run buses a.k.a. the chicken bus.  On no set schedule, these buses simply run whenever they manage to cram them full of people, include at least a half dozen sitting on upside-down pails in the aisle.  They are also not express, so they stop frequently to either cram more people on, or to let people off who are invariably right at the back so have to jostle past all the people on pails to get to the door.  That said, after an hour and forty minutes, we were thrilled to be back at the hotel an in comfortable bed (particularly since tomorrow will be an early day to make the river cruise).

A very early morning today as we had to leave our hotel at 6AM to catch an early flight from Xi’an to Guilin.  Things started off on a rather down note as we got ripped off by a tag team of the cab driver and our bellman. Official cabs here have meters and a posted rate per kilometer, which generally works out to be fairly reasonable even for long distances.  When we got in the cab, the bellman said a few words to the driver and then told us in English to just pay 150 yuan for the ride to the airport.  Being 6AM and assuming the hotel staff wouldn’t be in on the scam, we just nodded and drove off.  It was only halfway to the airport that we thought through the numbers and realized that 150 yuan worked out to about 100 kilometers, roughly 60 kilometers further than the airport.

Now as much as we have been taken advantage of here, it would be unfair to leave the impression that it isn’t a pleasant place to travel.  The people overall are very friendly, but they have also mastered the art of making a little extra.  Normally we just shrug and say it’s only five bucks so who cares. Only once we think about how many times we have said that do we realize just how quickly five bucks can become real money.  Nevertheless, it is definitely part of the experience and makes for some good stories.

The plane ride to Guilin was uneventful.  From the mix of passengers, it is clear that this is a popular stop on the tourist circuit, particularly the organized group tours from North America.  At least 60 percent of the completely full flight was foreigners, and all the polyester on board had to have been a fire hazard.

Guilin itself is much different than Beijing or Xi’an.  First off, there is less pollution in the air (although it is still smoggier than most US cities). It is also a much smaller city, so it seems less hectic and we were able to spend much of the day just walking through the neighborhood around our hotel and browsing through the shops.  The biggest difference though is the scenery. Where Beijing and Xi’an were fairly flat, Guilin is surrounded by limestone karst formations that rise up for hundreds of feet. In many ways it looks like Krabi in Thailand, although it is much further inland.  As is usually the case with panoramic vistas, the pictures will hardly do justice.

We took a small boat ride on the Li River in the evening.  The boat was made up of about 10 bamboo shoots strapped together with rope and some deck chairs set on top.  With 5 people (including the driver) it seemed to barely stay afloat, but we managed to putter around for about 40 minutes seeing some of the city from the water.  Tomorrow or the day after we will take the bigger boat on the more famous trip from Guilin to Langshou.

We ended the day wandering through the market area just behind our hotel, stopping every so often to try something from the different food stores and carts. Some stops were very successful (like the bakery rack at the department store) and others not so much (the pancake with breadsticks and some kind of pickled vegetable wrapped up in it).  Neither of us has been brave enough yet to try the corn juice stand, so that one remains an unknown.

Since our only real item on our agenda for Xi’an was to see the Terracotta Warriors, we pretty much just dropped out things off at the hotel and jumped in a car for the one hour drive to the site.  The history of the Terracotta Warriors and the first Emperor of China is quite fascinating but much to long to cover here so for anyone interested, there is a pretty good summary at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terracotta_Army.

The excavation site is quite built up with facilities now to accommodate the tourist traffic, with four very large buildings encompassing the areas being worked on and a museum showing some of the other artifacts they have recovered so far (work on the actual Emperor’s tomb has been stopped while they figure out how to preserve all of the things they believe they will find once they enter it (including man-made rivers of mercury if the legends are true).  The biggest of these is Pit 1, where about 1,000 warriors have been recovered and 5,000 more are believed to be still buried.

Seeing the warriors for the first time is truly breathtaking.  As amazed as we both were with the Great Wall, this experience may even have surpassed that.  For those following our travels through the picture gallery, you’ll quickly see that we couldn’t help but take picture after picture.  The detail involved in assembling this army of warriors is simply incredible.  It is very easy to forget looking at it that what exists here was created over 2,200 years ago.

I won’t go into detail here, but for anyone interested, there are all kinds of stories in the pictures we took about how the warriors were arranged, how they were differentiated by rank, what kinds of weapons they were built with, etc., and we’d be happy to tell them when we get home.

The second building houses a much smaller site with about 40 warriors. This is believed to be the headquarters for the army and contains only officers.  The third building is another large pit (about half as big as Pit 1), but is not being excavated at this time, in part because there is still so much work to do at Pit 1, and in part because the archaeologists are trying to figure out a way to keep the paint from oxidizing as soon as it is exposed to air and flaking off (while the ones that you can see now are all a terracotta color, originally, each one was painted to look real, all the way down to fingernails on the hands).  According to our guide, the current estimate is that it will take about another 100 years before the site is completely excavated and restored.

The final building houses mostly bronze artifacts elsewhere in the tomb complex.  The most important of these are two chariots made to one-half scale to carry the spirit of the Emperor and Empress to the next life.  Again with these, while the level of detail would make them impressive in pretty much any era, that they were crafted so long ago with only the technology of the time casts them in a whole different light.

The Terracotta Warriors checked off on our list, we headed back to the city and out to a restaurant not far from the hotel.  That it was full of locals we took as a good sign, and after stumbling through a menu that was as confusing in the broken english they translated it into as it would have been in native Mandarin, we ended up batting about .500 (maybe .600 if the ribs were actually pork).

Our flight to Guiling leaves early in the morning so with that in mind, we’re calling it a day.

Last day in Beijing today.  When we first got here we were worried that 5 days was going to be too long, here we are and it’s hard to believe it went by so fast.  It is another overcast day today but not that rainy, so other than having to wear coats, we’re in pretty good shape.

Our destination today was the Temple of Heaven, which as the name implies was where the Emperor made offerings to heaven each year in hopes of a good harvest.  Like all the other imperial sites we have seen, the scale of this collection of buildings is amazing.  It is far more like a large city park than a temple so you could easily spend the better par of a day just walking around the grounds and enjoying a break from the hustle of the city.

Despite their size, the main buildings were used very little, serving mostly as storage for religious items during the year and one big ceremony conducted by the Emperor.  The rest of the time the site was pretty quiet, which, given the time and effort it would have taken to build seems like a waste.

After the Temple of Heaven we spent the rest of our day wandering around Beijing, checking out some shops here and there and some of the older neighborhoods (most of these areas are being torn down and replaced with high rise apartments so that way of life is quickly disappearing).  We had lunch in a complete dive where all we could do was point at things we wanted that other people were eating.  The food was very good though and extremely cheap (about $4 for both of us).

Around 8:00 we headed for the railway station to catch the train from Beijing to Xi’an.  As the primary means of intercity travel, the train (and station) were packed, but we had the foresight to reserve a private cabin with two bunks and our own bathroom.  The tickets were more expensive of course, but reasonable compared to an airline ticket and certainly more comfortable.  The ride itself is 11 hours so we actually slept through most of it anyway, and for the few hours we were awake in the morning we got to see some of the Chinese countryside.

Today our main goal is to see the Terracotta Army just outside of Xi’an.