bought my ticket to Guilin
After about a week in Guangzhou, it's getting to be time to move on. I bought my ticket through a Chinese travel website, after deciding to fly to Guilin. The ticket was about 400RMB, which is about $50USD. A pretty good deal I think for a 45 minute flight that will save me about 12 hours on a sleeper bus. I'm excited to make it so easily to a totally different area of China which promises amazing scenery and a fresh perspective from the current province in which I've been traveling the last two weeks or so since I arrived in mainland China in the first place.
My stomach is feeling better. I have been eating bananas a whole lot. Somebody told me they bind, and apparently they do. I have also had great meals and been extremely careful to consume only vegetarian stuff, which isn't all that hard, but for one reason or another I had adopted a bit more reckless abandon than was perhaps warranted. I had a great middle eastern buffet with hummus, babaganoush, falafel, some kind of lebanese salad, some kind of sauteed vegetables, rice, fruit, real oranage juice, and more. It was glorious. Also went back to this Indonesian place and had disconcertingly real fake prawns.
Despite my intestinal woes the last few days, I walked around quite a bit and saw a few nice things. I went to the 6 Banyan Temple and climbed up the stairs of a 9 story pagoda. I was the only one in there, so it was kind of cool to have run of the place. I spent some time wandering around small streets in the neighborhood and ate at a vegetarian restaurant on the same street as the oldest Buddhist temple in Guangzhou, which is something like 1500 years old though none of the original buildings survive. I also visited a mosque here which has the oldest minaret in the world outside of Mecca. Only muslims are allowed in so I couldn't actually get very close to it, but it is kind of enormous and visible from the street below from behind the large walls separating the whole area from the street. Lots of restaurants in this area featuring food from Xinjiang, the northwesternmost province of China which is largely populated by ethnic minority groups most of whom are muslim and extremely different from the ethnic Han Chinese majority. This is the province through which runs the old Silk Road trading route which carried goods from China to India for thousands of years. Apparently it is quite an amazing place to travel, but quite difficult to get around given the general lack of infrastructure and of course language difficulties. In many areas, possibly most areas, Mandarin chinese is not spoken or understood, and I believe they even have different writing systems that are totally unrelated to Chinese. Pretty remarkable how vast the regional differences are in this country, even over small areas.
The hostel has been full most nights, primarily with people here for the trade fair, a gigantic conference that brings importers from all over the world to look for stuff they can buy in China cheap and resell elsewhere. My friend from NYC's company is looking for specific types of restaurant equipment. There's a Korean guy in the hostel who is looking for wind-up toys and other kind of traditional toys that are non-electronic. There's a guy from Colombia in the hostel who is buying toothpaste here. Apparently it's a hot market over in South America. Lots of people down there brush their teeth from what he tells me. Yesterday when I got home I met the first other person backpacking since Hong Kong, a girl from Sweden named Sofia who turned out to be vegetarian too. She was hungry last night so we went out to that middle eastern buffet, and she was really happy about it. It was nice to hang out with someone who actually appreciated the joy of finding a vegetarian feast and who had gone through similar experiences to me locating good food to eat while traveling. Today we walked around a bunch together and again had great meals, and I showed her a few of the things I'd found in Guangzhou worth seeing, as well as explored new areas I had yet to visit. She was only in town for one night and got on an overnight train to Guilin, the exact one I was avoiding, but she'd already bought her ticket before I told her you could fly for something like $10-20 more. In any case, it was nice to meet a fellow traveler who wasn't solely here on business and we may yet meet up again in Guilin or Yangshuo.
It is Friday night here and I'm planning to take it easy. It's already after midnight anyway and I'm sure I walked many miles in the last few days. Today was the first day my legs were actually sore, so I guess that's a good indicator that I'm making my way around and seeing a lot of the city. I've enjoyed getting to know Guangzhou almost as a temporary resident. It's a busy city that many travelers just pass through, but I feel as if I enjoyed a bit more of a local experience through hanging out with Carrie and her friends, and spending enough time here to relax and wander around at my own pace. I'll definitely be adjusting my pace going forward and spending more time in fewer places. I corresponded tonight on Couchsurfing with a guy who lives in Yangshuo who is a Chinese guy teaching English. Apparently he is happy to have people come stay with him in exchange for helping out his students with their English. This of course suits me more than fine. I'm excited to meet more locals and get to know something more than just the tourist side of Yangshuo. We'll see what I make of my remaining two days or so in Guangzhou.
My stomach is feeling better. I have been eating bananas a whole lot. Somebody told me they bind, and apparently they do. I have also had great meals and been extremely careful to consume only vegetarian stuff, which isn't all that hard, but for one reason or another I had adopted a bit more reckless abandon than was perhaps warranted. I had a great middle eastern buffet with hummus, babaganoush, falafel, some kind of lebanese salad, some kind of sauteed vegetables, rice, fruit, real oranage juice, and more. It was glorious. Also went back to this Indonesian place and had disconcertingly real fake prawns.
Despite my intestinal woes the last few days, I walked around quite a bit and saw a few nice things. I went to the 6 Banyan Temple and climbed up the stairs of a 9 story pagoda. I was the only one in there, so it was kind of cool to have run of the place. I spent some time wandering around small streets in the neighborhood and ate at a vegetarian restaurant on the same street as the oldest Buddhist temple in Guangzhou, which is something like 1500 years old though none of the original buildings survive. I also visited a mosque here which has the oldest minaret in the world outside of Mecca. Only muslims are allowed in so I couldn't actually get very close to it, but it is kind of enormous and visible from the street below from behind the large walls separating the whole area from the street. Lots of restaurants in this area featuring food from Xinjiang, the northwesternmost province of China which is largely populated by ethnic minority groups most of whom are muslim and extremely different from the ethnic Han Chinese majority. This is the province through which runs the old Silk Road trading route which carried goods from China to India for thousands of years. Apparently it is quite an amazing place to travel, but quite difficult to get around given the general lack of infrastructure and of course language difficulties. In many areas, possibly most areas, Mandarin chinese is not spoken or understood, and I believe they even have different writing systems that are totally unrelated to Chinese. Pretty remarkable how vast the regional differences are in this country, even over small areas.
The hostel has been full most nights, primarily with people here for the trade fair, a gigantic conference that brings importers from all over the world to look for stuff they can buy in China cheap and resell elsewhere. My friend from NYC's company is looking for specific types of restaurant equipment. There's a Korean guy in the hostel who is looking for wind-up toys and other kind of traditional toys that are non-electronic. There's a guy from Colombia in the hostel who is buying toothpaste here. Apparently it's a hot market over in South America. Lots of people down there brush their teeth from what he tells me. Yesterday when I got home I met the first other person backpacking since Hong Kong, a girl from Sweden named Sofia who turned out to be vegetarian too. She was hungry last night so we went out to that middle eastern buffet, and she was really happy about it. It was nice to hang out with someone who actually appreciated the joy of finding a vegetarian feast and who had gone through similar experiences to me locating good food to eat while traveling. Today we walked around a bunch together and again had great meals, and I showed her a few of the things I'd found in Guangzhou worth seeing, as well as explored new areas I had yet to visit. She was only in town for one night and got on an overnight train to Guilin, the exact one I was avoiding, but she'd already bought her ticket before I told her you could fly for something like $10-20 more. In any case, it was nice to meet a fellow traveler who wasn't solely here on business and we may yet meet up again in Guilin or Yangshuo.
It is Friday night here and I'm planning to take it easy. It's already after midnight anyway and I'm sure I walked many miles in the last few days. Today was the first day my legs were actually sore, so I guess that's a good indicator that I'm making my way around and seeing a lot of the city. I've enjoyed getting to know Guangzhou almost as a temporary resident. It's a busy city that many travelers just pass through, but I feel as if I enjoyed a bit more of a local experience through hanging out with Carrie and her friends, and spending enough time here to relax and wander around at my own pace. I'll definitely be adjusting my pace going forward and spending more time in fewer places. I corresponded tonight on Couchsurfing with a guy who lives in Yangshuo who is a Chinese guy teaching English. Apparently he is happy to have people come stay with him in exchange for helping out his students with their English. This of course suits me more than fine. I'm excited to meet more locals and get to know something more than just the tourist side of Yangshuo. We'll see what I make of my remaining two days or so in Guangzhou.
posted by Dan at 9:10 AM
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