Gui Lin

Gui Lin

Gui Lin was a destination I had longed to visit for many years. I suppose my high expectations and romantic visions of it led to me being a bit disappointed with my time there. First off, the trip into town was not nearly as scenic as I would have liked, as we had to skip the popular train option in favor of the easily accessible overnight bus route. It wasn't quite the ride from hell we had had in Malaysia. No, it was more like being in the twilight zone. It was a "sleeper bus". Yeah, I did sleep a bit, but I can't quite understand how. They had strange movies playing, there was a lady in front of me heaving her guts out into one of the wastebaskets, it was bumpy as heck, I couldn't actually fit in the berth, as I was about a foot too tall for that, and there were headlights flashing through the cabin continuously. We stopped for dinner and a bathroom break after about six hours at a rest stop that was definitely a contender for the "filthiest rest stop in the world" designation. Once we finally got to the town in the morning, it was absolutely dumping rain, so of course we hiked around for hours looking for a place to stay. We did settle in and have a good time exploring the city, but it felt overly touristy, and the city sprawled throughout the hills and blocked the view of them in a lot of cases. I enjoyed a lot of things I did and saw there, such as exploring the reed flute cave and hiking up a bunch of hills in town. We took a tour of the most famous brewery in the region, but we passed on sampling their specialty wine. It was one of the most horrific things I have ever seen. Picture a giant tank filled with red liquid, some berries, and hundreds of dead animals which consisted of many snakes and several different types of mammalian fetuses (fetii?). I felt a bit ill for a while after that. We got shown around town by a nice guy who turned out to just want us to buy stuff from him, such as tea, art, and tickets to what turned out to be a very enjoyable youth acrobatics and dance performance. My fondest memory of the town was climbing around on some very cool rock formations, and then playing my recorder up on top of a huge hill with a great panoramic view of the landscape. The trip out of town along the river to Yang Shuo was also a definite highlight.