Traveling to Guilin

From Xi'an we flew to Guilin to take a cruise on the Li River. This part of the country is beautiful and reminded us more of the China we saw in pictures. Our drive from the airport led us past rice paddies. There were people in the fields planting and harvesting rice. You can see a man in this picture working in the field.
We had lots of time that day to explore the busy city of Guilin. Our hotel was a 5 star that looked more like a 3 star so getting out and exploring was a good idea. It was hot...about 95...but we pushed on. Ducking in and out of many many stores, we shopped for everything imaginable. The girls bought head phones in the shape of fruit and watermelon fruit drinks. (more later about the watermelon) Most of this area catered to tourists in town for the cruise and beautiful country. We were hungry and Bob was in search of something authentic. No KFC or McDonald's for us. We had avoided the fast food so far and that was not going to be any different. We stumbled upon the place below.

Absolutely NO ONE spoke a word of English. Nothing. They motioned to us to pick out our fish from the live tanks and we assumed that would be our dinner. We chose scallops and shrimp to be safe. After a lot of hand motions and pantomime, we were taken to a private dining room with glass doors on one side and its own bathroom. (more on bathrooms later) It gave us a little uneasy feeling to see waiters and waitresses peak around the corner to get a glimpse of us. We were obviously not in a tourist restaurant. All of a sudden our waitress (below) brought in the waiter (below). He actually spoke a little English and said we should also order some rice and boiled weeds. We ended up having a wonderful time with these two cute Chinese people. They kept the food and cold drinks coming as their coworkers peaked in to see the Westerners with blond hair eating Chinese food. It ended up being another great meal with the tastiest shrimp ever! As we were leaving the waiter asked us why we didn't just go to the KFC down the street. We said we would rather eat the food of his country which prompted smiles all around and the need for a picture to remember this special day.
We walked back to our hotel across the Li River from the pretty town of Guilin.