Guilin 1: Back...

I'm back from my trip to Guilin... nowadays every time I go on a trip there i am relieved its over and it felt like it was too long... whereas every time i go to Japan I'm sad its over and it felt too short...  I think I'm getting old. :-P

さき中国から帰った！広西の桂林（けいりん）へ行った。お母さんを連れって行った。写真とビデオ一杯撮った！一寸待て、準備の時間要ります！今何枚写真だけアプーする。。。

Anyway I took about 900 photos in my short, rainy weekend in Guilin, China...  so it'll take me a while to hone it into a signature Etchy blog... some of you seem to prefer the travel ones, some prefer the humor ones, and some of you prefer the Edison Chen Sex Photos Exclusive Abalone Sausage blogs (41.6k views and counting!)).  So for the travel blogs fans, here's one or two to hold you over...

This is where I went, the city of Guilin, in Guangxi Province (actually 'Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region' is the official name... just like Tee-bet, its an 'autonomous' doesn't really mean autonomous...)

Guilin is in the NE corner of Guangxi, about 1.5 hours by plane from HK.

Since I was traveling with my mom, i got a much nicer hotel then I would normally get if I was going by myself.  In this case we splurged on a 'river view' at the Li Jiang Waterfall Hotel in Guilin...  We got there at night, but they had the pagodas in the nearby lake lit up quite nicely (China has gone APESH!T over fancy colored lights in the last few years in case you didn't know)。最近中国の何所でも夜時の色なライトー一杯になりました。ホテルからの景色に色のライトが有った：

Here's a fuzzy pic from our window:

That's 'Fir Lake' (Shan Hu),  which has two pagodas in it... 

And to the east its the Li river with 'Elephant Trunk Hill' in the background... more on that in upcoming blogs. ;-)

We went out to grab dinner and find a Bank of China ATM (you can never find one when you need them... just like taxis). Now they close off half of the main street for a night market... it was ok, but can't compare w/ Shenzhen or Mongkok... 　夜のマーケト。シンゼンの法が良いけど。

On the way back to the hotel I took out my mini-tripod and tried to get a good picture at the lake's shore...  now that I've figured out the long exposure settings on my canon, I can get some nice night shots (you'll remember these amazing night pics I took at Kyomizu temple in Kyoto).

I was pretty impressed with the results:

What do you think?

Actually just after I took this one and was setting up for a second,  they started switching out the lights! it was 11pm on the dot:

doh!   at this point i was really really hoping the one picture I took w/ the lights all on came out clearly... 

Just to be safe, I tried a super-long (15 seconds) exposure w/ the lights off to see how that'd look,  its not as colorful, but its cool considering the lights were out:

which one is your fav?　どちらの方が好き？

As I mentioned, the weather was not cooperative,  Saturday evening and all day sunday it was raining...  and the visibility was that much worse:

But the trees look cool at least...

let's try another one:

like I said... APE$HIT w/ the lights!

ok, thats just the manmade stuff,  Guilin is actually famous for its natural beauty...  stay tuned!