A Long-overdue Holiday Journal...part 2

thursday (8/12)
early morning we set out for kunming airport. it was a looong car drive n i was green in the face most of the trip cuz there was no toilet along the road :P but anyway we reached the airport n boarded the plane without much incident, n sed goodbye to our kind yunnan hosts. we then flew to guilin for the 2nd 'part' of our trip. oh, n i managed to get my wooden taichi sword thru the customs this time! it had to be packaged up (rather awkwardly i mite add) at the airport packing counter tho...anyway at guilin we were greeted by our appointed tour guide, one xiao yuan (xiao = small, not crazy) who took us to the waiting tour bus n off we went for lunch at a restaurant in the town of guilin. a sad note: i forgot to bring along the bead circlet presented to me by one of the company ppl in yunnan..left in in the hotel room back there :( anyway, at the restaurant in guilin we got to eat more familiar food...more like wat we had back in penang, that is. that afternoon xiao yuan took us to see 3 places...a lake wif a glass bridge spanning it at one point, a small rocky mountain wif a cave forming an arch dat looked like an elephant trunk n sum historical mountain wif caves (its all mountains n caves in guilin :P) not to say i din enjoy the sights but u noe how bad i m wif names :P dat evening we checked into our 4th hotel so far (every nite we hv been changing hotels) then went out to visit the bazaar in the neighbouring street. bought a bunch of trinkets there. n man was it cold dat nite! apparently it wasnt usually that cold in guilin tho...

friday (9/12)
woke up early to catch a ship sailing on lijiang. not li4 jiang1 tho, its li2 jiang1, a river in guilin. the mountains along the river were in all sorts of weird shapes n almost all of them hv sum special name (cant remember any tho :P) spent the morning on the ship snapping pics till my mom's digicam ran out of battery. there was a ship photographer who offered to take 15 'professional' pics for 150rmb...the sucker....dunno y so many ppl took that up...after disembarking we had lunch n then wandered the streets. later in the evening we visited the 'silver caves'...the most colorful cave i've seen so far, n the rocks inside had all sorts of weird shapes (one was like a phallus....serious!) now i relly regret depleting the digicam's battery cuz i cudve taken a lot of great pics inside. at nite after dinner there was a 'cultural performance' at the hotel we were staying...n me, my bro n my sis all participated in their 'mariage ceremony' n got 'married'...the catch? we had to pay 50 rmb each for a 'present for the bride/bridegroom' during the gift-exchanging ceremony -_-"

saturday (10/12)
there's been a lot of long car rides in china but this one takes the prize. we sat in the bus from 9am to 7.30pm! well, not entirely lah, there was still lunchtime n toilettime...hehe....anyway, on the bus my whole family got hooked on a cantonese drama about a couple who got married on a luxury cruiser but broke up cuz the woman had a streak of 3-years' bad luck :P its a romantic comedy actually. anyway we arrived at a town sumwhere near guangzhou dat nite (its near guangzhou becuz the ppl were now speaking cantonese). we spent the whole nite browsing around the streets n i checked out a cc there but it super-sucked...none of the games we noe over here (all chinese games) n cant access many international websites...so i left it after half n hr. luckily dat only cost me 1 rmb :P