Getting to Guilin was a straightforward night sleeper train from Xiangtan. Our hostel was just up the road from the train station so it was quite handy. We arrived early morning, so our room wasn't white ready yet. The football highlights were on, so John was happy to catch up on that. By the time it was finished, we were able to check in to our room. We caught up on sleep for a few hours as usual.

Sun and moon towers

Feeling fully refreshed, we headed out of the hostel to check out the scenery around Guilin. We walked up a few streets and came to Fir Lake which has two beautiful pagodas. It's a new built scenic spot in the Fir Lake. The Sun-Moon Towers stand vertically up in the Lake. These two towers-Golden Tower and Silver Tower are very beautiful to look at and I took pictures of them all around the lake.

The Golden Tower is a nine-storeyed architecture of 41 meters high. Built with copper, it ranks as the highest tower as its kind. The Silver Tower, 35 meters high, is decorated with colored glaze all through. The two towers are linked by aquarium under the water. Bearing colorful designs on the doors, windows. You need to pay to enter the towers, so we didn't bother. I was just happy to see them from their exterior.

As we were wandering around by the lake, a Chinese man stopped us and spoke English. He said he was a school teacher and walked around the lake with us. I wasn't sure if he had a hidden agenda or not, so we let him walk and chat with us for a while. He told us about the sites to visit in Guilin and gave us a bit of history about the minority groups of people who live in the villages near Guilin. He said his family are farmers and come from those minority areas. Then as we walked around to see the elephant trunk hill, he wanted us to go into a tour agency and book a river cruise. We said we'd have a look but we wouldn't book anything. So he must make commission or something. Afterwards he wanted to take us to the elephant hill, but we just said we'd like to do our own thing as we're only here for a day. He was nice, but we do feel that people always want to try and get us to buy something, and we didn't want to be pressured, so went our own way. We didn't go to elephant trunk hill as you have to pay to enter, so just looked over the bridge towards it.

We went back to our hostel later to find out about the cruises and rafting. We were originally going to do a Li River cruise from Guilin to Yangshuo, but we'd heard that there are lots of Chinese tour groups, which make it overcrowded and just not enjoyable. We decided against that, in favour of just going to Yangshuo ourselves. We can take a local bus there independently for around £2.00. Once we get there, we'll have the flexibility and freedom to choose what we want to do around the area. I'll just be happy to see all the amazing scenery around the river. We had dinner in our hostel and met a Dutch girl who'd already been to Yangshuo, she said it was lovely there. We chatted to her for a while then went to pack our stuff for Yangshuo tomorrow.