IT'S SUNDAY, I MUST BE IN GUILIN

Ah, Guilin. Beautiful, beautiful place. Subject of all those Chinese silk streamers and paintings you see so much in oriental art books and all-night take-out menus.

As the official tourist brochure said, "the mountains erect like green jade towers."

OK.

Potentially a NFW moment, but the fog/haze somewhat muted the colors, and we spent a lot of our time inside our ferry, working away on our laptops. Sigh.

The mountains themselves weren't connected to each other as ranges. They were more like thousands of individual shards of glass forcefully jabbed into the earth in a protective arrangement. Think the top of those perimeter walls you sometimes see around Philippine middle class houses.

Strangely, as gorgeous as the scenery was, the faces of the tourists REALLY lit up at the end of the trip when we docked and were greeted by miles and miles of stores and shopping.

PLACE KINDA REMINDS ME OF - The place where we docked is like a much bigger and more organized Benguet. The river itself, of course, is straight out of the Lord of the Rings media guide.

hmmm...wonder if there's anything to see around here...maybe if i turn around...


oh, man...ther're nothing but dudes on this cruise...


The great Republic of Tandang Sora - Kingdom of Binondo bilaterals of '06

The delegation was split into two: the working boat, and the party boat. That's the party boat.

There were so many mountains behind mountains that it gave the illusion of a double exposure photograph


Next stop....Mordor!!!