This morning the
alarm went off again 5.30 am and not long after, I was outside in the
dawn light heading up to number one lookout for the sunrise, passing
a decent number of Chinese tourists as I walked who also had the same
plan. Unfortunately, however, although it wasn't raining this morning
it was overcast, so the light just went from soft to a slightly
brighter version of soft.
When I got back, we
finished packing up, checked out and walked back down to Dazhai
village. At the entrance, there were some stalls selling trinkets and
some interesting foodstuffs – dried fish, mushrooms, fruit and so
on. One woman was selling chunks of orange sugar, which she explained
was honey made by underground bees. She offered us a few little
pieces, which she broke off a huge hunk of the stuff that she had on
the table, and which did indeed have bits of various dead plants
attached to it. It had an interesting, almost floral flavour that I
recognised but couldn't quite put my finger on. It was very nice and
I bought a little plastic bag of it – although I never did figure
out what that flavour was. She was also selling ants from a large
sack and when she went out the back of the stall, I surreptitiously
grabbed a pinch to try (they were pretty much as you would expect –
crunchy with a hint of formic acid).
We had an uneventful
ride back down to Guilin in a minivan and were dropped off at the
railway station. As we looked around for a cab, a slightly hysterical
woman ran over and ushered us towards her cab. We showed her the
address of the hostel and she looked a bit puzzled, but said it would
cost 30 yuan. We said 20 and she eventually agreed and we piled in
and drove off. She took us on a meandering drive around Guilin and
eventually stopped outside a hotel behind some big gates and
announced that we had arrived. Thankfully, we were booked into the
same hostel we had stayed in the last time we were in Guilin, so we
knew that this wasn't it. The driver looked most aggrieved when we
told her she had the wrong hotel, looked at our notebook and pointed
again at the hotel. This went on for a while until we showed her the
phone number and she called the hostel. Once she had her directions
sorted, we set off again, but whenever we stopped at traffic lights,
she would turn around and say that we had to pay 30 now, but we just
laughed and pointed out that she had made the mistake, not us (not
that she could understand a word of what we were saying). We later
discovered that the trip should have cost 10, but we got there in the
end and when we checked in, the hostel upgraded us to a really lovely
family room, so all was well.
After grabbing our
other bags from storage, we went out for lunch. The bamboo steamer
place didn't seem to open for lunch, so we got some of the basic rice
noodle dish I've been having for breakfast at a nearby place instead.
Back at the hostel later, we had some beers and played cards and
table football in the hostel and then headed out (earlier this time)
for dinner at the bamboo-steamer restaurant and then went back and
repacked our bags ready for our train trip to Nanning tomorrow.
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