Guilin Park Hotel
We spent one night at the Guilin Park hotel on the way to the Longji rice terraces. We arrived at night and when we checked in we asked for a Lake view room. We were told by the receptionist that there was a restaurant in front of the hotel and no rooms had views. He was clearly not telling the truth and we challenged him on this. We were shown to our room in this huge hotel, down loads of passages and it had a view of the swimming pool and to the right you could see the lake. Guess what – you could also see tons of other rooms with lake views!
The furniture was dark and dated and having travelled in the region for nearly 50 day we had seen better rooms. It was clean and even had a bottle opener in the bathroom which happily opened our beer that we popped out to the supermarket for. We had wondered around the gounds of the hotel and followed the signs alomg the lkae for what sounded like a coffe shop/bar, only to find it was all shut up. We did not fancy the hotel bar.
Breakfast buffet was pretty good and continually topped up, but the staff did not appear happy. Can’t really blame them with busloads of tourist who don’t even bother to talk to them. Travelling independently we smiled and spoke to all of them and they happily smiled and gave us good service.
If we had been staying on Guilin we would have looked for something smaller and more personal, closer to town. But for one night it was ok.
Visit the Longsheng rice terraces and stay in Ping’an village in a guesthouse and experience some local life. You still get to see the Karst mountains on the way and have an amazing experience of natural beauty without the mob!
