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There no longer is a ferry that goes to Wuzhou. It used to be necessary to take the river boat from Guangzhou to Wuzhou, then it was a possiblity but not a necessity, and finally, just in the last few years, the quick, two hour bus has killed off the slow, twelve hour bus. We, unfortunately for the slow dreamers we are, arrived to late to savor this part of old China. So we arrived by bus, coming from Zhao Qing, about noon in this small city. As we arrived and as we looked around, we saw it was not overwhelmingly pretty.

Wuzhou Wednesday, Feb 7 - Friday, Feb 9
Wednesday Leaving Zhaoqing & Getting to Wuzhou

Gerry was up and in the shower before 7:30 and the news that Ariel Sharon had been elected Prime Minister of Israel. We had eaten breakfast and were all packed just after 8 and were checked out and at the bus station by 8:30. The bus, however, was late and so we didn’t actually leave town until almost 10 a.m.

The ride was quite pleasant. We had front seats behind but above the driver. Even though the weather was drizzly and overcast, we were driving along the river and after the first half hour, the countryside was quite pretty.

On arrival in Wuzhou, Gerry went scouting while Jan stayed with the bags and came back with a proposed Y200 room at the New World hotel. Jan was quite content so we walked over and checked in and then had lunch in their restaurant. The restaurant looked fine except that the table cloths were no longer white and some of them had mending seams and tears in them. But the staff was quite friendly, the price was right, and the food turned out to be quite good. We ordered small dishes of fried noodles, mixed vegetables in garlic, and scrambled eggs with shrimp and got what we considered giant portions of each. We could eat only half or less of each dish, but enjoyed what we did eat. After lunch we went for a walk around town and around a local hilltop park and then back to the hotel stopping only to pick up drinks and snacks for dinner.

Thursday Cultural Park and Dragon Mother Temple.