Guilin to Xingping
Coming out of the train station we were stormed by hawkers. We tried to go the bus station but ended up in a bus in front of the train station. Price still 20 RMB. It took us to Yuangshou.
Tip
To change the bus station in Yuangshou take bus no.5, 1RMB. The bus station to Xingping is definitely not in walking distance!
Xingping
The ancient town is not even comparable with Lijiang or Pinyao! The draw here is the landscape.
Hostel This Old Place Xingping
4-bed-dorm was a little bit tiny because of the bathroom. After two nights we changed to a standard double in the “new” building. That was a real upgrade.
The hostel offers good pizza & a nice rooftop with a view.
The 20 RMB note has on it’s back the scenery that is only 300 meters away from the port. We went there as well, it is nice in the early morning or the late afternoon, when the tour groups head back to Guilin.
One of the nicest things we did was grab a beer at sunset, go to the port and after explaining 10 people that we really didn’t want to take a “bamboo” (small rafts that nowadays are made of plastic), sat there and enjoyed the evening.
Unfortunately we got both a little sick, so we had to stay 5 days close to a restroom. We do think however that we fetched it from a street stall in Kunming selling dumplings with a sweet stuffing, but we can’t say that for sure. We expected it to be meat, like in the morning, but in the afternoon they changed the stuffing to sweet.
The good thing was that we could use the time in Guilin to book an accommodation in Singapore, looked for a nice beach in Malaysia, booked train tickets to Guangzhou, contacted someone via Couchsurfing, wrote emails to our families, read in our books, …
Let’s be honest, a forced stop for one or two days is ok, but longer … it sucked!!!
In between we had to go back to Yuangshou to draw some money. At the time of writing no ATM in Xingping excepted foreign cards like MasterCard and Visa.
Tip
Just right out of the bus station in Yuangshou, to the right, over the crossroad, on the right hand you find 3 ATMs of The Bank of China. They worked for us.
On the 5th day we felt a little better and went for a walk early in the morning – without having breakfast, just to play it safe 😉 Suddenly – after 30 minutes of walking – I felt a stinging pain at my left ankle. My first reaction was to slap whatever it was. As I looked … I saw … a little frog!?!? Claudia took a photo of the frog for identifying the species later and I put some anti allergic on my foot. So we returned to the hostel. Great trip 😉
At the hostel they were pretty sure that the frog was harmless. My ankle didn’t swell in the first moment but it hurt for quiet some while. 
What it was? No idea!
Xingping to Guilin
An unspectacular bus ride back with twice changing to another bus in Yuangshou.
Guilin
Seemed to be a nice city with the karst mountains and all the canals … unfortunately we didn’t see much. Mainly because Toms ankle hurt and was still swollen.
Hostel: This Old Place Guilin
4-bed-dorm, with good lockers and aircon. Big rooftop with a great view, especially in the dark!
We had praised the porcelain god for 5 days, ate only boring things – time to go to a real local place – a rice noodle street stall just over the bridge.
Motto: Recover or die with honor 😉
Next day it was again toast and bananas
Guilin to Guangzhou
We took the express train. 2nd class, seat, 3 hrs.
Thank you for reading!
Safe travels
Zà i jià n!
Claudia & Tom
We left Guangxi province.
What happened next in Guandong province? How was our next Couchsurfing experience? Read it here.
Find tips and general remarks to China 2015 and the links to the previous provinces – from our start in Beijing in June, down to the south west, until our last stay Hong Kong in July here.
