We Finally Caved In

Last night we headed out of the hotel in search of food. It turns out we both had the same idea about our meal…… anything but Chinese, we needed something we could sink our teeth into (the bull frog we had the night before may have has something to do with this decision). Not too far a way we found a burger joint whose name may have started with M. Anyway, we weren’t overly hungry but a burger an fries hit the spot. We walked along the river after dinner where some entertainers had set up and we listened to them for a while before retiring from the heat. We are currently at the same latitude as the Florida Everglades. This morning we set out at a reasonable hour, having consumed our FREE breakfast,after all we are either in wind down mode towards the end of the holiday, or conserve energy mode for a bustling Hong Kong, we’re not sure which yet!

Our first stop was the Guilin Tea Research Institute where we were shown the tea plantation and then taken through the process of making tea by hand.

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Tea Plantation

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Heating the Leaves to 250C

Rolling the Leaves by Hand

End Product
tea-plantation-11 Tea Ceremony

After sampling (and buying) some of the tea we headed out along the Li River Valley, here there were a lot of limestone needles, for which the area is famous.

“Half Moon hole in Rock Lunch at Half Moon Cafe

Next stop was our river cruise, I was expecting a larger boat than this, but this was far more interesting. A few pipes bent and held together with a canopy over the top powered by what looks like a weed whacker with a propeller on the end!

Like western boats, Chinese ones work far better when there is gas in the tank!!

Water Buffalo

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General Views

Next stop was our “Boutique Hotel”, an eco-friendly self sustaining hotel on the banks of the River. It was a neat place, but lacking many of the facilities of the hotels we had become used to!