Guilin

I have outspent my budget, some of this due to my increased desire to take planes. Even though fares were somewhat cheap, they added up, and this leg was no different, as we could not take a direct flight to Guilin, but had to take a short flight to Kunming (about 45 minutes) and then transfer to another flight to Guilin (an hour and a half). Between the check ins and check outs, the travel still took us the better part of the day, and we didn’t land in Guilin until 6:30 pm.

On the way out of the airport, I stopped at an information desk to ask someone to write the name of our hotel in Chinese. I had forgotten to ask the clerks at Panba house to do this for me and had been worrying about it on the plane. A perky young girl greeted me and cheerfully wrote down the information I requested.

“Do you want a tour?” she asked.

Because she had been so kind to write the address for me, I stayed to listen to her spiel. She showed me a brochure that highlighted some of Guilin and Yangshuo’s best tourist features. I spotted the Li River cruise among the karst mountains and told her that one was probably the only one we were interested in. I had heard that this particular tour was fairly pricey, so I listened. She gave me a quote of 380 yuan per ticket, which was about 100 yuan less than normal and told me the tour would be in English. This information caught my attention, but I was reluctant to book before getting to the hotel to see what they offered. I asked if I could call later, and she wrote down her name and phone number.

We grabbed a taxi and gave the driver the Chinese directions to our hotel. None of the hostels online had looked particularly appealing, so I had decided to try a cheaper hotel. Apparently, the hotel was not well known, as the driver had to make a lot of phone calls. We drove into Guilin, and I was again surprised…this time by the size of the city. I had pictured Guilin to be a country town, but this was a decent sized city with neon-lights and action packed streets.

The driver dropped us off on a corner and pointed slightly down the street. We grabbed our bags and headed toward the building. In the lobby, I showed the desk clerk the name of the hotel and asked if this was the hotel. The clerk spoke limited English and she puzzled over the writing. Finally, with another clerk by her side, she told me that the address was correct, but that this was not the hotel listed.

Now I was a little worried. Here we were in a new city, it was dark, and I had no idea if I had written the address down incorrectly or if the website had been wrong. We walked out to investigate the nearby streets. I faintly remembered what the hotel was supposed to look like, so we went out to look. At the major cross-street, I looked around in defeat. Nothing looked familiar. I decided we should go back to the original hotel and see if they could call the phone number I had so we could figure this out. Barring that, maybe I could re-look the information up on the internet.

We walked back into the hotel, and the same clerks greeted us. I was about to ask them to call, when one started to look through her little receipts to see if our names came up. I watched as she flipped through and saw our name. Hallelujah! We were at the right hotel after all. Eventually the clerk managed to explain that the hotel’s name had changed sometime in the past, so the name on the website was the old hotel name.

I checked in for two nights, got a key, and we went up to the ninth floor. This hotel seemed to be one that catered more to the Chinese, as none of the clerks had very proficient English, and the signs around the concierge desk only showed tours in Chinese. The room was nice--a basic room with a decent western bathroom, complete with tub and shower. The interior wasn’t new, but kept up well enough. Our windows fronted onto the crossroads of two major streets in Guilin. After unpacking and a quick rest, we went out for dinner and ended our day.