Guiyang

Last weekend was a 3 day weekend in Hong Kong (which turned into a 4 day weekend due to a typhoon that kept us from getting back to Hong Kong until Tuesday morning), so Jill and I, along with another couple (friends of ours - Drew and Maureen), spent the past weekend in Guiyang which is the Capital of the Guizhou province of China.  Until a few weeks ago, I had never heard of Guiyang.  Even after coming back, people we work with who have heard of it were like, "You went to Guiyang?  Why?".

We went because of #8 on this list.  Jill had sent the list to me a while back, and I looked for a Hyatt that was near some of those places, and Hyatt Regency Guiyang was a 2 hour drive from from the falls.  The falls looked cool, so we went.

Other than the falls we didn't have too many other plans and didn't really know what to expect,  but we're so glad we went.  Not only were the falls awesome, but we got to see and experience so much other cool stuff.  The staff at the hotel basically planned out an itinerary for us for the entire weekend.  Everything we saw really broadened our views about China.  It's very different from Beijing or Shanghai.  Here's what we did:

Friday Night

We flew out of Shenzhen on Friday morning to Guiyang.  After getting settled at the hotel we headed out to dinner.  One of Drew's work friends used to live in Guiyang, so he had provided some recommendations for food while we were there.   Guiyang's signature dish is fish in sour soup (sounds gross, but is actually quite good), so we went to a place that was recommended to us to try this dish.  One thing about being in a secondary city in China is that no one speaks English (the only English speaking people we encountered were at the hotel besides two other people that realized we were struggling to communicate while out and about over the weekend).  This made it extremely difficult to order dinner...especially because the menu was in characters.  However, the waitress we had was very patient, and after a long time we were eventually able to order the dish, along with a bottle of what is basically Guiyang's version of Sake, and beers. Here's some photos from dinner:

These two rug rats were having a broom battle just up the street from the restaurant. Chinese kids are cute so there are quite a few pics of them in this blog.  We tried to just get some shots of the people we saw...just ended up that a lot of them were kids...so don't come looking for me, Chris Hanson.

Drew picking out the fish for the soup

Our fish...they just dump the fish in the soup whole...

China's version of Sake

Our sour fish soup.  There were veggies and lots of other stuff in the soup, and you just pick out what you want and dip it in this really spicy concoction that our waitress prepared for us. It was awesome.  The soup sits on a burner at your table so it is always hot.

This little girl was fascinated by the pale skins sitting next to her.  As she and her family were leaving the restaurant, she came up to our table, smiled, and enthusiastically asked "Do you like fish?".  That's all she said, smiled and walked away.  She was really excited to see white people.  Actually everyone in Guiyang was excited to see white people.  More on that later.

Just some dancers outside the restaurant

Drew, Maureen, and Jill at our table

After dinner we walked around downtown Guiyang and made our way past some street food stands to a really cool river walk.

Ran into this little fella on the way to the river walk. He ran out of his dad's store as we were walking by, and his dad came to get him.  His dad spoke very, very broken English, but Maureen (who was actually clutch on this trip because she has been taking Mandarin lessons) was able to talk to him a little.  The people in Guiyang were very, very nice.

A street food stand.  No idea what most of it was, but it smelled good.  We didn't eat any street food on this trip.

These next few pics are from the river walk.  Did not expect to find something like this in downtown Guiyang...

 

After farting around the river for a while we called it a night and went back to the hotel.  We had to be up early the next morning to make the 2 hour drive to the Huangguoshu waterfall the next day.

Saturday

We hired a driver for the day from the hotel. In addition to the Huangguoshu waterfall, there were a couple of other things that we decided to see.  It was a 2 hour drive out to the falls, but we got there early enough to beat the crowd.

JIC

There was a path you can take up to actually walk behind the waterfall which was pretty cool.

Just another cute little kid.  

This is just one of many, many instances of some random person asking to take photos with us.  Jill and I had heard before we had even visited Beijing for the first time a few years ago that people were going to want to take photos of us, or with us because we're white.  That never happened in Beijing, but it definitely happened on this trip.  The four of us were literally just stared at everywhere we went.  I think it was even more shocking for the people to see blonde hair (Maureen), so she definitely got the most looks.

After the big waterfall, we made our way to the next destination which was called the "Tianxing Scenic Spots".  It was a really cool hike through a rocky trail with a couple of waterfalls, bridges, and views of the countryside. There was also a really cool cave that we were not expecting to see.

Just another random person that wanted a picture with a white dude.

JIC

This cave was awesome...and we had no idea it was there until we happened upon it.  Obviously it's an attraction with all the lights and everything, but we weren't expecting it.

And another waterfall

Drew and Maureen on the gondola back up to where we started the hike.

After this we tried to go to another spot called Dragon Palace, but we were exhausted and the sun was going down.  We actually drove to where Dragon Palace was, but after realizing it was going to be more hiking and with not a ton of daylight left we called it a day and headed back to the hotel.  However, we were able to see some amazing country side.  The only bad part was that there was so much haze.  There were a ton of rice farms, and they were all burning stuff.  Not sure what they were burning, but there were burn piles everywhere, and the air was thick with smoke...

JIC

JIC

JIC

Just drying out some corn...there were just piles of corn laying out to dry everywhere along the side of the road.

They dry out their chili peppers too

I like to think that I captured this kid right after we passed in the car, and this is his face trying to figure out what he just saw...was that 4 white people?  Naaahh....

 After getting back to the hotel we made a quick trip to the pool and then went to bed.  We were exhausted.

Sunday

We went to the Qingyan ancient city on Sunday morning.  This was a historic part of town that had ancient temples, monestaries, pavilions, etc. that had been turned into a bit of a tourist trap, but it was still very cool to see nonetheless.

JIC

Another rando wanting pictures with the white folks

Rice drying in the sun

More chili peppers drying in the sun

The ancient city had a lot of pretty flowers

Two people that are not children

A Mom playing with her sons

This one's for my Hyatt folks...I think this is Hyatt Regency Guiyang's lab room.

I think it was actually just a room where you could leave wishes/messages/prayers etc.

I like peppers...

No idea what this was and did not try it...

Randos

Randos

Randos

Dog Day Afternoon...

Randos

Rando

After the ancient city we went to a park in downtown Guiyang.  We rented one of those 4 person bikes...which was awesome for about 15 minutes because after making two loops around the park we couldn't really take it anywhere else, so after that we just walked around some more.

Ping Pong in the park...doesn't get much better than that.  I wanted to play but figured the guy had winner...or his wife was just making him spectate.

Long story short, a typhoon hit Hong Kong on Sunday night which was when we were supposed to fly back.  The next available flight back was Monday night, so we had another night and day to kill in Guiyang.  The lovely people at the hotel (after re-booking our flights for us - they were rock stars) made dinner reservations for us as well as reserved us VIP seats at the Colorful Guizhou show that night, so after showering at the hotel we headed to dinner.  No sour fish soup this time, but it was still really good.  We went to a place called "Chew It" (which I think was just a play on how the Chinese version of the name was actually pronounced), and what we had was like fondue, but instead of dipping the food (we had beef and pork) in oil or cheese to cook it, you dip it in a boiling soup.

After the dinner we got to the theater and were escorted to front row seats of the Colorful Guizhou show.  It was basically a song and dance showcase of the cultural history of the Guizhou province.  It was done all in Mandarin, but still pretty cool to see.  Plus they had clappers at each seat, so that was entertaining all by itself.

Halfway through the show they got 5 people up on stage to see who could get dressed into a costume the fastest.  This Pakistani guy who was with a tour group won.  He was awesome.

Monday

With the extra day we decided to go back to Dragon Palace.   It was more waterfalls and caves, but we're glad we went back to see it.

We had to access these caves by boat

We didn't get back to Hong Kong until 1:45 AM Tuesday morning, so we have been tired all week.  But the trip was definitely worth it.  There are people in my office who have lived here a long time and have never been to Guiyang, so we feel pretty lucky to have experienced it.  The cool thing is that there is a lot more to see there, so who knows, we may go back.

Alright...that was probably way too much info and way too many photos for one blog...sorry about that.  Jill and I are excited to be heading out of town again. We are meeting up with Jill's parents in Maui, so I am sure I'll have a ton more photos to post soon.

Til Next Time,
Luke & Jill