E: 31/03 Win a Holiday to The Maldives, including flights

cornishpasty1

Where are you? March 2013

For a blissful escape from the stresses of everyday life, set a course for Cocoa Island by COMO in the Maldives. It's the perfect place to unwind, whether on the private terrace of your Dhoni Suite (modelled on a Maldivian fishing boat), by the 25-metre pool or in a treatment room at the fabuous COMO Shambhala Retreat.
Enter this month's Where Are You? competition and you could win a holiday for two here. The prize, courtesy of luxury tour operator Mirus Journey and worth about £5,000, includes five nights on a B&B basis in a Dhoni Suite, return Emirates flights from London to Mal! and transfers. The holiday is subject to availability and must be taken before 23 December 2013; April, August and October are excluded. For details, contact Mirus Journeys (020 7589 8800; www.mirusjourneys.com).
Identify the location on page 138 of Cond! Nast Traveller March 2013 and send in your entry to arrive by 31 March. All correct entries will also be included in the Grand Prize draw at the end of the current competition period (1 October 2013-30 September 2013).

Clue:
This pocket of modernity is in one of the most picturesque regions in the south of a densely populated country. Bombed in the 1940s, the city was rebuilt in a functional but rather brutal style in the 1950s. As the area's political and economic centre, it is polluted, crowded and noisy. However, its surroundings are magnificent. Towering karst peaks, covered with verdant foliage, explode from flat, fertile farmland, where workers in wide-brimmed straw hats can be seen, bent double over their crops. A major river passes through the concrete metropolis and onwards into a land lost in time, winding 'like a green silk ribbon, where the hills are like jade hairpins', as an eighth-century poet once said. Fishermen drift along in bamboo rafts, with trusty cormorants perched on board, ready to plunge their long beaks beneath the malachite water and seize their slippery, silver prey. Unfortunately, the city has become overrun with tourists and, today, incongruous cruise-boats chug slowly downriver from here, packed with camera-clicking Westerners. But if you can escape the throng, you'll feel as if you've entered another world. Where are you?

To enter, identify the location where the photograph on page 138 was taken

Answer: Lijang River, Guilin, China (thanks to weeowens and Motwoosotdot below please)

Enter Here: http://www.cntraveller.com/news/competitions/where-are-you-march-2013

weeowens

HI CP,

I'd say somewhere on the Li River.
http://www.chinaholidays.com/guide/guilin-li-river-cruise.html
China or Vietnam.Still digging but thought at first Guilin but it may not be.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guilin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cormorant_fishing

In Guilin, China, cormorant birds are famous for fishing on the shallow Lijiang River.

Motwoosotdot

I think it is Guilin from this page

http://www.china-mike.com/china-tourist-attractions/guilin-yangshuo/

Does anyone agree??

Thanks to all who post

weeowens

Cheers for the confirmation,I'd agree.

I was just struggling re the bombing reference.

One-Eye

Bombing:

From HERE: From July to September 1943, Japanese air units carried out concentrated attacks in three consecutive phases each targeting on a different area. The first phase from 22 July to 22 August concentrated on American air bases centered on Guilin, resulting in 50 American planes destroyed by the Japanese. In the third phase beginning in September, the Japanese resumed their attacks on targets in Guilin and Yunnan.

from HERE: Staying true to modern Chinese construction, Guilin’s architecture— rebuilt in the functional style popular in 1950s after Japanese bombing—is rather colorless.