Park Hotel in Guilin, Friday March 27

View from my room.
I forgot to mention:
It rains here a lot, but it is warm rain and it rains only softly, like the Irish say. Then it stops again, so you really do not get wet.
It is warm, in the (high?) 80ies.
I picked the rainy time of the year. Beginning April, the farmers start to plant the rice fields and in July the second plant starts.

This morning I strolled around in Guilin. Two worlds confront each other. The elegant one with well dressed young people, the shopping malls, main street Zhongshan Rd. and wonderful parks along the lakes and the Li River. Just next to the mall is the market for the farmers with life chicken, dugs (one for 15 Yuan I found out) and fish. Vegetables, spices, meat and food prepared and raw. I took some nice pictures and videos. I will try to add some next time, but it takes awfully long time to load them up. I need help from my computer specialists. Outside the market there are all kind of shops, looking dirty and old. Places we know from our last tour to China in 2001.
After a rest in the afternoon I met Foring, my tour consultant in the lobby of my hotel to go out for dinner.
She chose a huge restaurant famous for goose. So we enjoyed the goose in two different styles, crispy baked the way we know from Christmas and chopped into small pieces fried with delicious sauce. The first part of the goose was cut into handy pieces with bones, which you eat with chopsticks without fingers. The other one we wrapped into a sort of small Tortilla together with thin sticks of onion, cucumber and pepper. This was my favorite. Of course the waitresses brought delicious soup and vegetables besides. I had a local beer and Foring coconut juice and together we drank some tea with white flowers. Foring, I hope I did not forget any essential part.
The smile in her face was natural, although I asked her to say Niko Niko (the name of the shopping mall) which means smile smile. She smiled all the time and it was wonderful to talk with her. She smiled all the time only partly due to me, she still is in honeymoon just married since two months. Besides political issues in China and informations about Europe we talked about the question if it is better to have one or two children. Well she actually is allowed to get two children, since she and her husband come from a single child family. So the question is not purely academic and she tends towards two children. Foring, thanks for the time you spent with me. I really can recomend her as tour consultant if you plan visit China. She is very professional in her job.
Good night, after the computerwork I´ll go to bed. My guide for the Guillin tour will pick me up at 9:30 tomorrow morning.