Guilin 桂林, Guangxi China

I realized that every July I unintentionally take a blogging break. This time around it was because I planned a very impromptu trip to Hong Kong and Guilin with my lovely mother! Guilin claims to have the most incomparable landscapes of mountains and waters under the sky. With over 300,000 small peaks amidst a winding network of rivers, Guilin's And you know what comes with great water? Amazing tofu and fresh seafood.

Guilin is most famous for its rice noodles. I was never a huge rice noodle person, but these are different. They're thicker and more slippery than any other rice noodle I've had before. All you need is some cooked rice noodle, a mushroom/pork broth, peanuts, fresh scallion/parsley, blanched vegetables, pickled string beans, and chili soy sauce. I had it for breakfast every morning with a nice fried egg, and I even had it for lunch on some days with some snails. Other than slippery rice noodles and the silkiest tofu, Guilin also has a lot of fresh water seafood such as crawfish and catfish (much like the south). Their most famous preparation for fish is called beer fish, which is a fish slightly pan fried and braised in a beer based tomato sauce. Goes great with white rice. So there's plenty of Guilin chili sauce and fermented tofu to buy as souvenirs, but my personal favorite is dried osmanthus flower (gui hua 桂花), also Guilin's namesake. It has a distinct sweet floral smell that adds both fragrance and color to any tea or dessert. Apparently the city is in full bloom during mid Autumn festival!