We would be going for a 5-hour river rafting along Yulong River in the morning and watch the "Impression Liu San Jie" show in the evening. I was extremely excited!
Before dinner, we decided to take a walk along the famous West Street (Xi Jie) which was just a stone's throw from our hostel. It was just as well as we planned to have dinner at one of the restaurants in West Street.
That's the stone carving with the words "Xi Jie" on it.
There were a lot of western style restaurants and eateries along Xi Jie street, mostly charging at "tourist" prices. I learnt that some of the shops here were actually opened and owned by foreigners who had settled down and married the local people here. No wonder West Street is sometimes known as "Foreigner's Street"!
In fact, it was a very touristy place with bars and all. Kind of reminds me of Bangkok with its go go girls although there were no go go girls here. There were however pretty girls dancing outside the bars! (pity I had to delete the photos as they were not very clear).
There were a lot of shops and stalls along the street selling anything from clothes, shoes and antiques to paintings, craft works and calligraphy. There were hotels too although I think staying here would be too noisy!
I could see that many foreigners of different nationality walking on this street and a large number of them were also seen enjoying their food at the cafes and restaurants here. I guess foreigners really love West Street!
There were also a lot of local Chinese people here. Maybe to them, walking and shopping in West Street made them feel they were in a foreign country. And perhaps that was the "in thing" to do!
Of all the places I visited during my China trip, I have to say I feel most comfortable at West Street. The reason is that a lot of the locals here speak English! Of course, they would still speak Mandarin when they talk to me, but if I responded in English, they could carry on the conversation in English!
I think they really take English seriously! While there, I even noticed there were a number of small schools teaching English! No wonder West Street is known as one of the biggest foreign language centres in China!
After walking for some time, we started to get hungry and decided to check out places to eat. We decided on Cloud 9 Restaurant because we wanted to be on cloud 9! Haha!
This is the entrance to the restaurant which was located on the first floor of the building.
There were not many people dining here probably because it was already close to 9pm. But the interior of the restaurant was nice and comfortable.
Since we did not have to pay the tour company, we decided to splurge a little bit for our dinner! Some sort of celebration, if you like.
We ordered their famous beer fish.
It was delicious! Wonder if there is any restaurant in Malaysia serving beer fish? Anyway, you can cook your own beer fish with the recipe here.
I guess with the Li River nearby, they would have no problem getting fresh fish!
Next, we ordered their pork and yam dish.
Another delicious dish! But the yam made it very filling for us. We could not finish it completely!
All meat and no vegetables would not be good, so we ordered broccoli.
After a whole day outside cruising on Li River in the morning and visiting the various tourist attractions in Yangshuo in the afternoon, we felt really thirsty. So we ordered Chinese tea, and coupled that with Coca Cola and a bottle of beer!
LiQ beer must be a very popular beer in Guilin and Yangshuo as I could see this brand in almost all restaurants! Since I do not drink beer very often, I really do not know if it was as good as famous brands like Carlsberg, Heineken and Tsingtao.
The bill came up to 139.80 yuan (RM71.30) or about 46.60 yuan (RM23.80) per person.
From Cloud 9 Restaurant, we could see an interesting restaurant opposite called Mei You Cafe. Mei You means "don't have" in English. So what is it that this particular cafe does not have?
I hope it is not mei you food and mei you service! Maybe it's mei you charge! Haha! I shall blog about that in my next post coming right up!
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