After another free breakfast at the hotel we headed over to Giordono for some free Internet access. After rifling off some quick E-mails on their power Macs, we took the ferry over to Central and the express bus to Stanley Market for a frenzied shopping experience. The weather was a mix of sun and rain, in no particular order. Fortunately, I brought my umbrella this time. We got some beautiful views from the back side of Hong Kong Island.
In only a few short hours we hit almost every stall in the place. We were not really planning to buy anything, since we would be back here in two weeks. There did not seem to be much of a point in buying things now when we might find them cheaper in China. Plus, if we waited until we got back to Hong Kong, we would not have to carry stuff all over China. We ate lunch (late) at a french bakery, hit the last couple of stalls and headed back. We arrived back at the hotel just in time to get our bags and head off to the bus for the airport.
We had a nice coach that took us to the airport and I wrote some more postcards on the way. I finished the last of my postcards in the airport and mailed them, sorry, I posted them from the airport. I stopped by an Internet place in the airport but it apparently closes at 8:00 p.m. and it was 7:45 p.m., so they were closed.
Our flight to Guilin was a little late and the landing was a little . . . rOuGh. I slept through most of the flight, including the snack. Apparently this was a good thing. They handed out a bag that looked similar to a bag of peanuts. In fact, previous flights had included peanuts that were quite good. Instead, they were filled with some nasty form of dried fruit. The tour guide for the other Imaginative Traveler tour, which was going as far as Yangshuo with us, ate a bunch of them, much to her dismay and everyone else's amusement.
We had landed in China. We had to fill out a form confirming that we were not bringing any contagious diseases into China. Fortunately we weren't. The tour guides suggested lying if we were. We also saw our first amusing English translations and some odd propaganda. We were met by our local guide and she took us out to our bus. The trip into Guilin was uneventful. There was no traffic until we hit the outskirts of the city, and even then it was pretty light. It was strange to be somewhere in which you did not see any Roman characters at all. All of the signs and billboards were completely in Chinese characters. I can only imagine what it must have been like traveling here 20 years ago before China really started catering to tourists.
The trip to our hotel was made more interesting by the fact that they have torn up all of the roads in Guilin. At the same time. They don't do things in steps here. There were quite a large number of people out even though it was almost 11:00 p.m.
We arrived at the hotel and got a welcome drink, I got some water. The room was fairly nice, similar to a hotel room in any western country. The bed was fairly hard and the pillows were like rocks. Not the fluffy rocks you see in movies, but the hard rocks. It was fairly late, so we just went to bed. Ian said that he was going to get a massage for ¥40 ($5).