After another hot night in Shanghai we were quite ready to leave town this morning. We spent the day hanging around the hostel trying to get on one of the 8 computers but they were constantly busy. It was hotter than hell again in the city and we didn't have the desire to go see any of the sites. That and there really are not that many in Shanghai. We easily could have done them all in 1 day. And Hangzhou was a 13 hour day trip which we really did not want to do regardless of how beautiful it is. So we played pool, sat by the fan and read books.
At around 2:30 we left for the airport. After enduring 20 hours on the train from Xi'an to Shanghai it did not make sense to us to get on a 24 hour train to Guilin when it would cost as much to fly and take a 10th of the time. Since Aaron and Stefanie have been preaching the perils of air travel in China we did not want to tell anyone we were flying until we had safely landed. Much to our surprise the flight was very uneventful and actually rather pleasant. The plane was a Boeing 767-300 which is a rather large plane (7 seats across). We got the 2 seats on the right of the second aisle and enjoyed more leg room than we ever have on an American carrier. Even though the flight was a mere 2 hours they served us a small dinner of noodles with some sort of meat (I assume beef but couldn't really tell. It was good though). Overall it was a good flight and we debarked the plane cursing ourselves for not flying all of China. But the trains were a good experience and we still have 3 more chances for train travel.
Now in Guilin our original hostel seemed a little sketchy. Something never did sit right with me when the way I booked the room was by sending an email and receiving a response in bad Chinglish. I asked Justin to look around at some of the other hostels in the area in case there was something better. That was when Justin discovered our hostel only had squat toilets. I still am not prepared to venture into that area unless forced to so we weighed our options on what to do. Justin ended up calling in a favor from his coworker Janie and she saved our asses (literally). She booked us 3 nights using her reward points at the Sheraton in Guilin, right on the river and a 15 minute walk from Elephant Trunk Hill, a famous landmark here. We arranged car service with hotel for about 30 bucks to take us the 40 minutes to the hotel. We both smirked and laughed when 2 guys showed up to pick us up in a Lincoln Town Car. We laughed even harder when the herd of white people on our flight with the professional tour group loaded into a bus headed for the Sheraton as well. The room has AC (of course), free breakfast that I assume will be good, the concierge booked us our day trips to Yangshou and we are within walking distance of some of the other sites. Safe to say Janie can have my first born child if she wants it.
Just for anyone keeping score our trip so far has been hostel, hostel, Hyatt, hostel, train, Hyatt, train, hostel, Sheraton. Not exactly roughing it but we never claimed to be. We just said we wanted to do it cheap and nothing is cheaper than free. Besides, we will have plenty of time to cry, use squat toilets and rough it as we camp across Africa. Pretty sure tents don't have AC.
We leave Guilin Sunday for Hong Kong. In the meantime we are doing a river cruise one day up the Li River and a half day tour of Guilin. Just from the drive in at night the place looks pretty amazing so expect lots of pictures. Now it is off to my frigid room and my pillow top mattress. Traveling is so rough.
