Put A Hurting On My Wallet

That's exactly what Guilin has done to me. Being the May holiday, I couldn't get anything but a private room, and at the holiday-inflated rate of roughly $30 a night, this place has been the most expensive accommodation I've stayed in in my whole trip. Guilin is all around expensive, and I'm sure these three days here are going to account for about %25 of my entire monthly budget for China. The river boat tour I did yesterday cost me about $50 alone, second only to the Gibbon Experience in terms of price I paid for a tour.

The boat tour was pretty decent. All you really do is stand on the top deck of the boat and take pictures, but there is a buffet lunch. The scenery is amazing. Huge limestone karsts tower above the river, which winds around the various mountains. One scenic point in the river is even featured on the back of a twenty Yuan note. Last night I ventured out and took some amazing night shots around the city, hopefully I should have them up on my Flickr account within a few days (Chinese internet is painfully slow thus makes uploading difficult). Today I strolled out to a viewpoint on top of a karst in Guilin city for some birds eye views of the urban area. Now despite this amazing scenery, I was actually disappointed with Guilin. It's a huge tourist trap, making everything overpriced and full of Chinese tourists. I'm undecided whether or not I want to come back to this area to visit Yangshuo, which looked nice but possibly the same sort of deal as Guilin. I'm sure you can detect that in the enthusiasm I put into this post.

Tonight I head out on an overnight bus to Shenzhen, where I'll spend a day before I cross into Hong Kong. I'm stoked on HK, especially after that night photography session here. Getting a picture of the Hong Kong skyline at night has been a life goal of mine, and I intend to fulfill that goal.