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Charlie's China Tour—Visit Reed Flute Cave & Leave for Xi'an

Charlie's China Tour—Visit Reed Flute Cave & Leave for Xi'an

2018-12-25China travel Guide

"Search for a beautiful heart. Not necessarily a beautiful face. Beautiful people are not always good. But good people are always beautiful."

Awoke at 7 AM. Jay now has a sore throat. We have a more leisurely morning today as we begin seeing more of the area at 9:30 AM. Another nice breakfast. I'm betting that you can tell that breakfast is pretty important to me.

As I previously mentioned, Facebook is blocked in China. In Hong Kong that was not the case. E-mail, usually I can send and receive e-mail but not always. We met Julie at 9:30 AM and are now en route to the Reed Flute Caves, a 30 minute drive from Guilin. Switching lanes without signaling and constant merging is once again the case as we continue on. We are heading west of the city.

The wonderful Reed Flute Cave

11:20 AM, as is the case with many of the things that we have seen and experienced in China, the caves far surpassed my expectations as I previously visited these same caves in 1996. The caves were stunningly beautiful. There were stalactites and stalagmites, all dressed up with colored lights and beautiful music. Much work has gone into the presentation of these caves resulting in a magnificent brilliant spectacle that is not to be missed should you be visiting Guilin. These caves saved many a life during World War 2 as they were used as they were used for shelter.

We just have visited the South China Sea Pearl Museum. Very elegant jewelry of many types. We are now passing Banyan Tree Lake. We enjoyed a very nice lunch at the Guilin Bravo Hotel. It's not my intention to be heavy with the superlatives. If I am it's because, it's because it's the truth. 😄

Julie now is giving us a Mandarin Chinese language test as we head towards the airport. I'm afraid that I didn't do too well. Jīchǎng is the Mandarin word for airport. It's 2 PM and we are at the airport. We said our 'goodbyes' to Julie and wished that she could join us in Xian. "Zài jiàn" or goodbye Julie. She was outstanding.

Say good-bye to Julie at Guilin airport

The flight from Guilin to Xian takes about 1 1/2 hours. While in flight, a tasty lunch was served. At Xian we quickly passed through security and passport control and quickly retrieved our luggage. Waiting for us was 'Sunny', our local guide while in Xian. Sunny is her name and 'sunny' she is. She has a very cheerful disposition.

Our Guide in Xi'an

We ate at an airport restaurant where a buffet of many choices was awaiting us. Many, many choices along with many, many calories. A great start for our Xian experience. I had a beer with my lunch. I'm certainly happy that I rediscovered beer on this adventure. Our hotel is an hour's drive from the airport. Sunny, age 23 gave us some history of this very old city of 8.5 million. Our hotel is a very modern hotel located in a very busy area of the city. While driving from the airport to our hotel, we talked about the 'free bike ride' program. Prior to using one of these free bikes, one registers and a small deposit is collected. One is then free to use these 'free bikes'. All of these bikes are equipped with a GPS (Global Positioning System) and all of these bikes are accounted for. You find such a bike (green or orange), pedal to where you choose to go and then just leave the bike there. Guilin as well as many of the cites in China have such a system. This program is an attempt to lessen the heavy automobile traffic load.