冒险娘之旅 Part 19 Pay it Forward at Guilin

I arrived at Liuzhou 柳州 at an unearthly hour at 4am. According to my internet research, the next available train to Guilin 桂林 will be at 8.30am. Great. I will just sleep on the station walkways while waiting...not. Just outside the station, I heard touts offering private bus ride to Guilin. In China, there is always this type of buses and they normally leave once they got full passengers. Problem is you never know if they are safe or not and what time the bus would start. It was like a bet. So today I took the bet. Of course the bloody tout wanted to cash on Qingming festival and asked for 80rmb for the ride. I was just too tired to haggle so he got what he wanted. Later I heard someone haggle her ticket down to 35rmb. Sigh.

Sitting beside me was a middle-aged Thai lady from Bangkok. We started chatting and I learned that she is a 65 years old grandmother who was travelling with her husband and 4 of their friends. They do not speak Mandarin but they had been travelling free and easy in China for the past 1 week. I was really amazed by their courage. After 2 hours we got dropped at a remote bus station in Guilin instead of the main bus station as agreed. I guessed you cannot expect much credibility from these private buses. Since we were feeling perkish and it was raining, we decided to had breakfast together first. I helped my new Thai friends ordered Guilin rice noodles 桂林米粉 from one of the nearby stalls. Guilin rice noodles were really cheap and delicious at 7rmb for a large bowl.

After breakfast, I helped them get taxis to the main bus station where they would transit to Yangshou. Again it was hard getting taxis since the area was pretty remote but we succeeded in getting 2 taxis after 20 minutes of intense flagging while pulling our luggage in the rain. They thanked me profusely for my help. Throughout my journey in China, I had been accepting helps of all kinds from the good people around. Today, I was just returning kindness. I truly believed in paying it forward.

Great movie to recommend.


My first view of Guilin, 3 mins walk from my hostel. The sun and moon pagodas.