The Caves of Guilin, Elephant Hill, and Love Island: Ashley's Blog!

Today, our morning alarm rang at 7:30 AM, and we had to pack our bags since we would be going to Hong Kong in the afternoon. Since it was our last day in Guilin, the tour guide made sure that we knew what this place was all about. Guilin is known for four major aspects: its green hills, its clear waters, its fantastic caves, and its spectacular rocks.

Speaking of Guilin’s key attractions, we got to experience some of them today. We got to see the fantastic caves of Guilin, specifically Reed Flute Cave, the most popular cave out of the 2000 caves in Guilin, despite it not being the largest one. This one was only 500 meters, compared to the largest one in Guilin which is 5.3 kilometers and takes half a day to explore. Even if it lacks size, it definitely makes up for it in beauty. The whole cave was truly breath-taking, and it felt like a fantasy walking through it. Everything in there was illuminated in different colored lights, so it was like witnessing an indoor rainbow. A fun fact about this cave is that one of the scenes in the infamous movie The Journey to the West was actually filmed here! 

For the “spectacular rocks” part of it, we went to visit Elephant Hill, which is the city symbol and a “must see/must do” thing in Guilin. Like the name implies, there were a lot of (statue) elephants there. We all climbed onto the statues, even though it was really hard. 




Another place we visited was Love Island, which used to be called Three Star Island. The reason for its change in name is because there used to be no forms of entertainment back then such as KTV and movies, so people went there a lot. When it got dark, there were a lot of young couples going on dates there, hence its new name: Love Island. There were lots of cute statues there, and they all had to do with love. 


After we went to all those places, we had lunch at a restaurant and then headed to the train station to catch our train to Shenzhen. It was a three hour ride, and I slept throughout the whole thing. We had dinner in the mall in Shenzhen and immediately had to ride the bus for about 40 minutes afterward to the place where we would cross the border to Hong Kong. Once we crossed, we had to ride for another 40 minutes to get to our hotel. We arrived at such a late hour! Nonetheless, today was a really fun day packed with so many activities! I really love it here in China, and if I’m to be honest, I really would like to stay here forever! But I do love America too :) 

Thank you to those who have been reading our daily blogs! I hope you all miss us as much as we miss you guys! We’ll be seeing you all next week! Don’t miss us too much~ 
— Ashley Hong