My family wanted to visit Guilin for their biannual trip. Unlike my last trip to Guilin, which was a solo adventure in the same year, I had to plan for a group of five adults. There are two older members of the family. As such, all planning was a little more rigorous than when I went travelling alone. Hotels had to be top of the line, food had to be scrumptious in comfortable restaurants, and a chaperon was hired to take us all over different locations in Guilin for a good five days.

I enjoyed this trip for exactly this reason. Having a driver enabled me to go to a whole lot of places that I would not be able to go on my own. For many parts of China, the places of great scenery often require hiring a driver. Traveling solo and hiring a driver was not a kind of expense that I was willing to make.

A Brief Five-Day Itinerary in Guilin with a Hired Car

The driver offered a large 7-seater for our trip. Readers that would like to hire this reliable driver should DM me by email (quotation@chestnutwriters.com). Although we did not require his service for hotel booking, he was gracious in taking us to the best restaurants that he knows. If you so require, he will set the whole itinerary for you in Guilin, and also make bookings for the hotels that meet your expectation.

In Yangshuo, we wanted to see the Liu Sanjie Impression Show directed by famous director Zhang Yimou. It was not so easy to look up the proper ticket sales online. He got that covered for us, no hassles at all.

The Timing for a Trip to Guilin

To be sure, December is certainly a low season for traveling in Guilin. The main reason being that the water levels are low in the winter, and a lot of the great sceneries in Guilin are waterfront sceneries. That said, there certainly is a great advantage in terms of ticketing, crowds and queues when you travel in the low season. We experienced no frustration with the crowds throughout this trip, even for the hot touristy spots.

The high season for traveling in Guilin is late spring and summer. The scenery would be notably different in different seasons when you visit the famous terraced fields of Longji. When we went, the harvest had been done, and we saw rather baren fields (there will be an entry on Longji). To be fair, the scenery wasn’t too bad even at the least interesting time of the year.

Getting to Guilin

From Hong Kong, we first went to Panyu, Guangzhou on a private car. From Guangzhou to Guilin, we simply took the high speed rail. I have discussed before how the train pulls into Guangxi and the scenery changes into a series of rapidly rolling karst peaks. That was itself quite a scene. I do highly recommend taking the high speed rail to Guilin.

To book tickets for the high speed rail, be sure to watch out for the day that sale is open, which is typically 14 days prior. In certain peak times of the year, tickets can be sold out very quickly. I wanted first class tickets, but did not manage to get any of the first class high speed rail tickets even though I put in a preorder at the first available prebooking time. Good enough that we did secure the regular tickets without issue.

Weather

It came as a great disappointment for me that all the days that we spent in Yangshuo were overcast and cold. We had some pretty good days in Guilin, but Guilin city is actually not known for beautiful scenery, so to speak. The greatest beauty of Guilin is in Yangshuo and Xingping. Our driver told us that it was good enough that it did not rain heavily when we went. I will take that.

It is very difficult to know which days are good weather days for traveling to Guilin due to the advanced period of time you need to book or prebook the train tickets. Because we had a group with old people and working professionals, I was working with a tight and inflexible schedule. As such, the weather had to be an afterthought.

Considering the fact that this was the first time I organized a trip for my dear family members, all worked out quite well and I had no complaints. At the end of the day, we did not have any critical health issues during the trip and we enjoyed the company and the food. That was what really mattered.