Already in 2016, we did the initial scouting for a trip to Guilin, but eventually, put it on the back burner because of time constraints. The beginning of this year we decided to resurrect the Guilin tour and dusted off all our previous contacts, and, eventually, at the end of July, we revisit Guilin to check up on some gaps in our planning.
Xingping Sunrise
This tour will have two major destinations, namely Guilin and Shenzhen. On our previous tour, Shenzhen was not seen as a destination, but rather just a starting and ending point. But Shenzhen has so much to offer that we decided to dedicate about half of the time to visit Shenzhen. Shenzhen is also our home base, so we have the advantage of local knowledge!
The tour will be a full 16 days long starting on 25 May on Hong Kong Airport and ending on 9 June back at Hong Kong Airport.
You will need to wait a little bit longer to get a day to day breakdown of the tour, but for now, I am willing to show some photographs of the Guiling part of the trip.
The Guilin part of the trip will be mostly about landscape photography, which is very dear to me.
Although you will always hear about Guilin, it actually refers to the Guilin District, rather than Guilin, the city. So our trip will start at Yangshuo - about 100km south-east of Guiling, and then go on to Xingping, Xianggongshan and Putaocun before actually arriving in Guilin, the city. We will only stay one night in Guilin as our experience was that, although it is also situated on the banks of the Li-River, the photographic opportunities are not as good as the preceding days' destinations. From Guilin, we will go via Tianxincun to the Longji Rice Terraces.
Some photos taken at Yangshuo (click on an image to see a larger version)
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Xingping has two mountaintop vantage points for sunrise and sunset photography. (The first photo in this post was taken during sunrise from one of these two vantage points)
There are many photographic opportunities within walking distance of our hotel, but we may also make use of bicycles and electric scooters in Xingping.
The famous cormorant fisherman is also available for a sunset photo shoot at about ¥100 per person (plus another ¥50 to take the little boat to the island where he is photographed!). We did not go on the sunset shoot but did see him the next morning where he docks to take tourists on a trip on the river. Although it is a very cliche photo, we will most likely arrange such photo shoot and add it to our library of photos.
Sunrise in Xingpin by Xioayi
The main attraction of Xiangongshan is its high vantage point looking out over the Li-river with Xingping visible in the distance. It is a morning shoot, but based on past experience, the weather is very unpredictable. We, therefore, will stay two days to double our chances for a good sunrise.
Sunrise at Xianggongshan
There are many interesting landscape scenes around the town that do require a bit of hiking (2-3 kilometres at most) which we will explore on the first day, while we will visit Putaocun on the second day by bus to photograph yet another landscape. Putaochun is typically a sunset photo opportunity.
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This is all you get to see for now! More to follow...