I’ll sum up the first bit of Guilin quickly. If I did not, someone might accuse me of being verbose, and we just couldn’t have that, could we?
We filled our first (and only) full day in Guilin. We began bright and early with Elephant Trunk Hill. En route, however, we picked up a new friend. Now, when I say “friend” some random fellow on the street who happened to speak English and wanted to be our tour guide. He was not up front about this fact, though, and instead tried to pass himself off as a teacher. We will never know if this is true or not, but from the evidence, he was less than honest about his profession. We met him because one member of our group is a tad too sociable with random Chinese people. This has, from time to time, got us into unfavourable situations. So, this Chinese fellow, who now laid off the rest of his day to show us the best sights in Guilin, led us to the entrance of Elephant Trunk Hill. We snapped a few pictures of the astounding geological feature and explored the rest of the park. There was a quaint, understated Buddhist temple, and a portion where you could actually explore the “trunk” area. John, Stewart and I got asked to be in several pictures, and I believe I was mistaken for Hugh Jackman a few times. I can’t be sure, but I think I heard something like “Wolverine” once or twice amongst the titters, giggles, whispers and stares.
We left Elephant Trunk Hill and were directed along a circuitous route past some astonishing old pagodas toward a so-called Irish pub. My rump. Lunch was fit for a prison in France circa 1789. After that traumatic experience, we trotted over to Seven Star Hill. We parted ways with our impromptu guide. Here was the find of the day. A large Buddhist temple stood beneath a jaw-dropping cliff face. We toured the temple grounds and then proceeded to crawl into the cliff face and survey Guilin from some very dusty old caves that had a slight stinging insect problem. No casualties, though. By this point, the group had split into two factions. I was in the latter half. We took the scenic route while trying to find our lost companions. They mentioned something they had dubbed “Monkey Mountain”. They hadn’t seen any primates, but there were signs (written things on posts; nothing mystical here) indicating that they existed. We made our way to this Monkey Mountain and found no friends, and no monkeys. When we were about to call it quits, we saw a man and his son holding a bag of fruit and tossing bits into the brush. We thought it a tried and failed method of attracting animals. As it turns out, we were wrong in our assumptions. He wasn’t luring one of these little imps to the food. It had come of its own volition and was giddily catching and snacking on the food tossed by the father. Seeing our immediate fascination at a live monkey outside a cage or net, the man kindly offered us stock in his store of monkey comestibles. This soon became a game of “Get the Monkey Close”.
That then evolved into “Get the Monkey to Snatch it From My Hand”. In that game, we were the grasshoppers. This went on until we ran out of fruit. Then, the monkey we thought to be the alpha male (turns out there was a bigger one; that’s not my story, though) became aggressive and challenged Ned (a college athlete of burly, Irish build) over some sweet rolls sitting between them. We left, and quickly. We started seeing signs for pandas (pronounced, at least to us, “pander”) and went on an earnest search for them. Nothing could deter us. Nothing, that is, except peacocks. There they were, perched on stilts and daring us to hold them. Being a connoisseur of all things fantsy-pants, I had to. I convinced my friends, and we each paid 
our 5 yuan (less than a dollar). It was awesome. I felt like a king. Frivolities past, we continued our search for the giant pander. At first we only found the incredibly adorable red raccoon/red panda/xiao xiong mao. After meeting a witty elder British man who gave us a name for the treatment we’d received from the Chinese (Caged Panda), we circled back into the park and saw a real, live, bona fide Da Xiong Mao aka the Giant Panda aka the Giant Pander aka Po aka Great Big Cuddly Thing Nomming on Some Bamboo. Checked that goal off the list. 
We left Seven Star Hill to grab some dinner and prepare for another early day. We had no idea what adventures lay in store for us only 12 hours in the future.
-Topher, who looks like a Nazarite
P.S. Secret location coming soon. Please remain in your seats for the remainder of the buildup.
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