We moved on to Guilin last night and had our first experience with a "hard sleeper". The train was quite nice actually. It was quite clean, full of starched white sheets. The berths are stacked 3 high, just like the train we were on in India from Bubaneswar to New Delhi lo those many months ago. We had one side all the way up and the bottom teir of the other side of a set of 6.
I was very proud of myself today when I managed to get tickets for Chengdu in three days with hard sleeper berths when the ticket person didn't speak a word of English. I managed to point to Chengdu in chinese characters in the guide book, circle the characters for the sleeper bunks on our old tickets and write out the date. I pointed to each of my props in turn and was rewarded with the correct (at least this is what I sincerely hope and will let you know in a few days) tickets in 2 seconds flat. Who said you need to speak the language to communicate?
We went to a lovely cave today. Now we have been to caves in 4 different countries... This one had the most stalagmites and stalegtites yet and a chamber as big as a hockey rink inside. Apparently 1000 people can fit in that chamber at once. Judging by the size of the bus parking lot, I am sure that in peak season, they test this. I am REALLY glad I wasn't there to see that much humanity. Unlike the Australians, the people here have no qualms about "cave fantasy" (naming structures). We saw such things as "bumper crop of melons and vegetables" and "mountain city in the distance" amongst others.
Heather is back on display here big time. There were two ladies that were hugging her and holding her hand through the cave. I asked her a couple of times if she was OK with it and she said it was fine. I said to Alan that as long as we got her back at the end... It is like it was in Thailand when they realized she was a girl. They love her. It is a good thing she is so social, Jacob would be freaked out completely if they tried half of the stuff on him.
We later walked over to the Solitary Beauty Peak near our hotel. Climbing up it was my exercise for the day and we had a lovely view of the city from up there. The landscape around here is totally flat and then there are these bumps rising out of nowhere. This is one of the ones right in the city. From the top you can see many others all around the area. The one with the reed flute cave must be almost hollow to fit the cave we were in inside it.
At the top of the peak there were a bunch of inept security guards trying to get someone ready to rappel down and we think collect garbage from the face of the peak (he had a wastepaper basket attached to his back). They tried several times in vain to get the rope to work for rappelling but to no avail. At first I thought it would be really interesting to see someone rappel off the peak, but after a while I was scared of how interesting it might actually be. The guy in the harness actually lost interest and went back down after a while. I am not sure if they ever got things figured out.
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