China - Nanning & Guizhou

Guizhou

When I was telling my friends that I am going to Guizhou, many asked "Where is it?  What is there to see in Guizhou?", some asked "Go Guizhou eat Luo Si Fen (螺蛳粉)?"  "Drink Mao Tai (茅台)?" 

Guizhou is an under rated place and not too familiar/ popular with foreigners.  For my entire trip, I only encountered local domestic travelers.  While other provinces in China were developing and prospering, Guizhou was one of the poorest province (4th lowest GDP) in China. Due to Guizhou 90% mountainous terrain, it was almost an inaccessible place till 2015 when the government started to develop Guizhou.  There are 2 very significant areas of development in Guizhou: 1) Data hub and  2) Infrastructure

Data hub: Today, Guizhou is one of the highest number of mega data centers in the world.  Apple, Huawei, Tencent etc have established their cloud computing and big-data centers.  With these development, it has propelled Guizhou up to top growth province in China for the past 6 years.

Infrastructure: China "The Belt and Road Initiative" (一带一路) has created a lot of brilliant bridges in Guizhou.  Owning to the extreme difficulty of the terrain, bridge engineers were put to many tests of building record breaking bridges in Guizhou.  Out of the world 100 highest bridges, Guizhou has more than 40 of them.  Do read Guizhou road to success if you are interested.

Best time to go

Guizhou is generally around 21°C all year round but temperature tend to drop further from December to February.

Best time to go is during their lull period. 

• Mar to May (Avoid 1 May period - golden week)
• Mid Oct (after their golden week) to around end November.  December will probably be too cold to visit

Peak period will be their golden weeks (Chinese New Year, 1 May and 1 Oct week) and during Summer Holiday (Jun to Sep)

How I get to Guizhou?

You can fly directly to Guiyang or like me take a 1.5 hour bullet train from Nanning to Libo to start my travel journey.  

Guiyang ‹―› Nanning: 2.5 hour bullet train (高铁) train OR 5.5 hours via normal train (动车)

Where to stay in Guizhou?

• 荔波 - Stay in Libo old town.  I have chosen Libo Guyu Inn (荔波谷雨客栈)
• 西江千户苗寨 - Recommended to bring a day bag instead of luggage as there were so many stairs.  If you want to have minimum climbing.  Stay near no. 1 bridge (一号风雨桥) at the base OR stay near the viewing pavilion (观景台)。 I have chosen 沐野西江民宿
• 镇远古镇 - MUST get a river view room.  It's Venice of China, must I explain further? I have chosen 龙隐溪居客栈 as it is near the nicer S curve of the review with the bridge view

• 贵阳 - Stay near 喷水池 or 甲秀楼. I have chosen 雲翼印象酒店(贵阳甲秀楼亨特国际店). Top notch and best hotel ever.

All hotels are booked via trip.com app. Use trip.com instead of booking.com or agoda as they have a lot more lodging varieties.  Trip.com is a subsidiary of Ctrip which is China travel portal. 

Itinerary

	Day 1	Day 2	Day 3	Day 4	Day 5
Location	南宁	南宁	南宁– 荔波	荔波–西江苗寨	西江苗寨–镇远
Transport	抵达南宁	一日游	高铁 （南宁东站- 荔波站） 包车	包车	包车
Hotel	南宁		荔波	西江苗寨	镇远
Activities	自由活动	德天大瀑布 明仕田园	荔波大七孔	荔波小七孔 (西门进) 西江苗寨(夜景)	西江苗寨 镇远(夜景)

 

Date	Day 6	Day 7	Day 8	Day 9	Day 10
	镇远–贵阳	贵阳–黄果树– 贵阳	贵阳	贵阳–南宁	南宁
Transport	包车	包车		高铁 （贵阳站 - 南宁东站）
Hotel	贵阳			南宁
Activities	镇远 (石屏山- 祝圣桥 – 青龙洞)	黄果树 (天心桥 – 大瀑布 – 陡坡塘)	自由活动	自由活动

App that you need in China

Day tour: Ctrip. There are many day tour that you can book via Ctrip. 

Map:  Google map doesn't work in China.  You will need to use local map like Baidu map 百度地图 or  Gao De map 高德地图

Cab:  You can either flag down a cab or you can use DiDi to call cab. DiDi is our grab equivalent.  There are many options, some are estimated cost while others is fixed cost (一口价）usually you will get some discount if you use the fixed cost.  Despite linking my credit card to DiDi, it doesn't work at all.  So every payment will fail and you will have to do the 2nd time and select WeChat/ Alipay instead. It will auto deduct from your linked credit card WeChat/ Alipay.

Train:  I will use 12306.cn to check for train tickets and purchase the ticket via Trip.com as Trip.com is in English and you do not need a China phone numbers to do the booking.  Price wise is the same as what you see in 12306.cn, just that you pay in S$.  I must emphasize again, DO NOT RESERVE train tickets in Trip.com.  Just book 2 weeks before you trip and you will get E-tickets.

Payment: WeChat/ Alipay/ Touch&Go/ PayLah

WeChat installation:

1) Install weChat from PlayStore/ Apple Store

2) Make sure that your Weixin Pay is ENABLED.

3) Verified your weChat account (upload passport details)

Set up your WeChat and Alipay wallet. You will need to verify with passport details to do wallet activation for both WeChat and Alipay, make sure you do this BEFORE you arrived as activation needs 3 days.  BUT it may still bounds to fail and you may need to do the verification again in China.  

Click on this link for instructions to link credit card to WeChat and Alipay 

Payment choice by priority

1. Alipay - pay using wallet balance. If possible, find a Chinese friend to top up your Alipay wallet before the trip.  It is much easier to use the wallet balance than charging to your credit card as it won't prompt for any verifications.
2. WeChat pay -  This is the easier to use.  Our WeChat pay wallet doesn't allow any top up.  Transaction will be charged to your linked credit card in your WeChat set up.  
3. Alipay - pay using linked credit card. This is the same as WeChat pay just that you will need to do a few verification for bigger amount.
4. Touch&Go OR PayLah - When all else failed and you don't have any cash/ merchant doesn't accept cash.
   

*** Note： 

• many places doesn't accept cash as they usually don't have any change (of cash).
• Payment of more than RMB200 via WeChat/ Alipay linked credit card will render a 3% charge.  

Transport

Taxi

Within Nanning and Guiyang, it's easier to travel by taxi or Didi (our Grab equivalent). Start off rate is RMB9 by meter.  If you use Didi, there are different rate and most of the time their fixed price includes discount.  Travelling within the city usually cost around S$2 to $3.

Train

China is widely connected via their train route.  You can practically go any part of China via train, just a matter of duration.  

If you have a China phone number, you may want to book directly from the railway/train website 12306.cn.  Do note that train tickets are only available for booking 2 weeks before the actual date. 

If you do not have a China phone number, you can book via trip.com app.  It's a lot easier and you pay in S$, price is the same if you booked directly from 12306.cn.  Do note that both 12306.cn and trip.com only allows 5 tickets per booking, if you need more tickets, do ensure that there are enough seats (check in 12306.cn) before you do your booking.

***DO NOT use trip.com to reserve train tickets in advance as MOST of the time, the train schedule changed and you will be left without tickets.  What you should do is to book the train ticket via trip.com 2 weeks in advance.  Trip.com app allows real time booking and issue E-tickets immediately.  You may want to key in your passport details in advance in trip.com for ease of booking as some train are very popular and it gets sold out in minutes.  Double check your passport details as it will be used for check in access at the gantry.

For E-tickets, you DO NOT need to exchange any physical ticket.  Look out for the red sticker (人工）on the floor at the check in gate and queue when your train boarding is announced.  Use your passport for the person in charge to tally with the system.  

Usually the E-tickets red row are at the side of the check in gantry

Both picture above extracted from https://www.icauto.com.cn/

Look for train number and colour on the sign board at the check in gate.  Once you are at the train track, the colour will indicate which carriage you are queuing.

Private driver 

I have booked personal driver from Taobao 贵州畅旅旅游专营店.  Not the best driver but he delivers what is required in the itinerary. It will definitely be better if you can find a guide that can double up as a driver.  May want to check out Ctrip or XiaoHongShu/ Tiktok for recommendation. 

Places to visit in Guizhou

Guizhou places of interest are widely spread out, getting from one place to another usually takes around 3 hours.  With the train route getting more accessible, you can try taking train to the closest town and take a bus/ hail a cab to the destination.  I have picked the following town to experience a different Guizhou

• 荔波 Waterfall/ Cave/ Greenery/ Mountain
  
• 西江千户苗寨 Miao tribe village
• 镇远古镇 Old town
• 贵阳 City
• 黄国树景区 Waterfall/ Cave/ Greenery/ Mountain

If you have more time, you may want to explore these places as well.

• 瑶山古寨 (I was recommended to go to this tribe village which is just beside Libo 小七孔)
• 梵净山
• 万峰林
• 茅台镇

荔波 

Libo is known as the “绿宝石” with a scenery comparable to 九寨沟.  Main sightseeing is 荔波大小七孔 where one can marvel the 山、水、林、洞、湖泊和瀑布 in one place. There are 2 portions: 大七孔 and 小七孔.  大七孔 takes about 2 hrs to complete while 小七孔 takes about 6 hours. We covered both in a span of 1.5 days.

大七孔

小七孔

Get in from 西门 (as you will be walking downhill) and follow the bus route.  You will need about 6 hours to complete this whole course.

西江千户苗寨

There are 56 tribes and Guizhou has 49 tribes. This Miao tribes village is the biggest. Miao tribe night scene is something they boost about.  You should stay a night.  Arrive just before evening to enjoy the night scenery and spend the next day exploring the paddy field and see the village culture/ performance and handicraft.   There are many shops in the village to rent Miao costume and do some photography. If you are heading to Zhen Yuan after this village, you may want to leave around 3pm (as the journey takes about 3 hours) just in time to catch Zhen Yuan night scene. 

Recommended route in the Miao Village

Time Schedule in the village

镇远古镇 

Zhen Yuan gu zhen is a 2000+ years old town and some of the buildings still remain its state. It is also known as "Venice of China". Got to see both the night and day view.

黄国树景区 

A trip to Guizhou is never complete without seeing Huang guo shu waterfall.  This is Asia and also China biggest (width and height) waterfall.  All China Chinese learned about this waterfall from their primary school textbook. For most of us, we probably seen this waterfall if we watched “Journey to the West” 西游记 where the monkey god flew into the waterfall 水帘洞。

There are 3 main stops in the park. 

Recommended route:  天心桥 -> 大瀑布 -> 陡波塘  

1) 天心桥 - Takes about 5 hours to complete the upper and lower portion.  The beautiful and must see part in at the lower portion.  Upper portion consists of some rocks and a cave while the lower portion is the converging waterfall.

Rocks and cave at the upper portion

Converging waterfall at the lower portion

2) 大瀑布：You can either take the 2 way escalator or single trip. If you take the escalator down, you will have to walk up if you want to go to the 水帘洞 as the escalator will bring you straight to the base of the waterfall. Best way is to walk down hill and go to the 水帘洞, after which if you can pay one way escalator trip up the hill.  You may want to climb up the 700m stairs if you want some exercise.

3) 陡波塘: This is the easiest and takes about half an hour to complete this portion of the park.

贵阳 

Guiyang is the center point if you travel Guizhou.  We didn't explore the places of interest except for White house and 黄果树 shopping mall.  This mall is more trendy with the youngsters.  There is another mall called "The One", it's the more upscale mall that housed all the branded shop (aka our ION) which we didn't visit.   

"White house" - better to view at night

Eat 

Do be warned that food in this region is pretty spicy.  Their 微辣 is equivalent to our 中辣.  Chili is generally in ALL dishes, even when they tell you "not spicy".

西江千户苗寨

• 打糍粑
• 黑猪肉串， 黑猪蹄，黑猪腊肉汤面
• 竹筒饭/ 腊肉饭
• 乌梅
• 苗王鱼
• 酸汤鱼
• 折耳根炒腊肉

南宁

• 淡村海鲜批发城
• 老南宁·三街两巷文化历史街区
• 兴宁路步行街
• 朝阳广场

镇远

• 安家烧饼 
• 卫校桥凉粉 
• 黄糕粑 
• 袁家嫩豆腐 
• 老字号豆花鱼 
• 古城苗家土菜

贵阳

• 正新街/ 民生路
• 青岩市场
• 丝恋红汤丝娃娃 (wide range of Guiyang dishes)
• 金牌罗记肠旺面
• 花溪牛肉粉
• 但家香酥鸭
• 卫城王马儿辣子鸡
• 一烙锅
• 老两口特色洋芋粑

Nanning and around

Nanning was intended to be our fly in fly out city but the 1 day trip to Detian waterfall and Ming Shi was really unexpectedly good. I would highly recommend you to try if you were to fly in to Nanning.  

Nanning is known to be a green city.  You can see hectare of hills.

Where to stay in Nanning?

You should stay around 朝阳路.  Stay around Parkson shopping mall where the walking streets are.  I have chosen to stay around 南宁站 (take note, this is not 南宁东站 or 南宁北站）as I thought it will be more convenient to travel by train.  Airport train stop at this stop.  Apart from the airport train, we have been taking Didi cabs as it is much cheaper and convenient. 

Places to visit around Nanning

德天跨国瀑布 

Detian Transnational Waterfall is Asia biggest transnational waterfall. World 4th biggest transnational waterfall.   China side of the waterfall is known as 德天 and Vietnamese side of waterfalls is known as Ban Gioc.

Left side smaller waterfall belongs to Vietnam, right side belongs to China.  You may take a boat ride to cross over to Vietnam and back.

Boat ride to the waterfall is a must

 

Magic carpet (reverse escalator) to the top of the hill

Walk on the glass bridge before you slide down

明仕田园

Ming Shi Tian Yuan is a also known to have the scenery like Guilin. Beautiful scenery throughout the journey. Peaceful and quint place and not too commercialized.  Good to stay for a night to enjoy the tranquility. 

If you have more time, you may want to explore these places too:

• 通灵大峡谷/ 古龙山风景区 (near De Tian waterfall)
• 北海 (need to take a train down south)

*Disclaimer:  This is a personal blog, no monetary received for the above said recommendations.