It was a gorgeous sunrise this morning from our top floor room at the St Regis in Chengdu. The top floor was thanks to being a Titanium Elite in the Marriott Bonvoy program with a complimentary upgrade 🙂

Today, our plan is to fly south to Guilin.

But of course we had to relish the idiosyncrasies of the Chinese airport culture. For some reason, men do not like getting close to urinals, so they all must be encouraged to not pee in the floor and actually pee in the urinals.

It was a short flight (< 1.5 hours) down to Guilin, and I must admit the scenery was quite unique when flying into the cloudy mountains. You encounter short cloud breaks and then observe all the windmills that are actually at the top of the mountains. Quite tricky to fly into this area…

Since there were no crowds and waves of tourists, we hopped on a flat bottom river cruise boat to explore the Li River and mountain scenery.

We ended the river cruise near the Yangshuo village which is centered in the mountains.

It is definitely a tourist town with gorgeous scenery and a business that thrives on people cruising the river.

We found a great place to stay in the area that is just outside the Yangshuo village area. Very much a resort style hotel that is close to the river and has a lot of luxury amenities and activities.

The banyan tree yangshuo resort is pretty impressive.  Pools, river access, large fish ponds and wild peacocks which they will give you food to feed if they will pay attention to you 😉

Stay tuned to this channel for an update on the local report!