12:19 AM
A city with few tourists
12:19 AMThis post is way overdue but anyway, this trip took place during recess week earlier this semester in September. We went to Guangzhou for ...
Day 1:
Our flight was at night so we had dinner at the airport before boarding. We ate at some food court and damn, the prices there were inflated double so I spent around 12 bucks?? on my meal of bak kut teh. It was really good though.
Coincidentally, we all brought matching bags to the trip!
-In Guangzhou-
Once we landed we faced two problems:
#1
This was a minor one but anyway the moment we got our baggage this guy approached us and offered us a ride to where ever we wanted to go and Guan was won over by his words so we followed him out to the taxi area. But me and Kiat didn't trust the price he quoted so we went to ask around the other taxis- turns out he was charging nearly triple the normal price! We freed ourselves from his clutches and went into a normal taxi instead. G has too much money to spare.
The taxis there all have theses metal bars, to protect the driver perhaps? We dubbed it the 'social grill' because everything I said was ignored by the driver but he replied G(who was sitting at the front seat) with much enthusiasm. Yup to make myself feel better, I'm putting the blame to the bars.
#2
So G was the one who settled the accommodation but turns out he didn't book a place to stay for the 1st night cuz he thought since the flight would land quite late, we could just tank the night at the airport and wait until the check-in time for the 2nd night hotel. But NOPE, the flight landed an hour earlier and we were all dead tired too so we decided to find a place to stay instead.
Grabbed this off google but yep this was the aparthotel we stayed at! The rooms have different themes, ours was more victorian with princessy chairs haha. Pretty cheap too, around 40sgd/person.
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Started our day with dimsum breakfast nearby before going to Chimelong Zoo which was around a 15 minutes walk from the aparthotel. There's Chimelong Circus/Theme Park/Water Park too so we left the latter two for the 2nd day.
Hi camel!!
Hi iforgotwhat'syourname!!
In the bamboo forest
We stayed till the zoo was closing and then we noticed a very strange thing- a lot of the animals we saw in the open enclosures earlier on had disappeared. Then we saw these huge trucks trudging into the trees and we were wondering whether they were loading the animals into the trucks for the circus show.
Later on at the circus, true enough, we saw the animals. I don't know whether it's the same animals but I really hate seeing animals being used for circus shows. To be fair, the animals acts were probably 20% of the show and the human acts were really really good but they really didn't need to them at all.
Still, I'm guilty of entering the circus with the knowledge that there were going to be such things so that is something I'm ashamed of :( But no more circuses for me, ever!!
Dinner was amazing, these were some of the dishes we had at a roadside shop. Especially the beef and lamb skewers!! Really so delicious. The shop had a karaoke machine as well so some men were singing which albeit horribly, was adding to the lively atmosphere. Would definitely come back here if I'm in guangzhou next time. 8.5/10
Day 2:
Another dimsum stall for breakfast. Not very nice, but I did like the liushabao. 6/10
After breakfast, we went to the Chimelong THEME PARK. I love theme parks hehe. Wei Kiat was really scared of the rides though, especially the higher ones. He legit looked like he was gonna cry haha.
Stolen from google again. So there's this ride called the Giant Frisbee at the theme park and we spent half an hour convincing K to get on it. At one point of time, I thought our friendship was gonna be at stake because he really didn't want to go but G kept persuading him non-stop and he was really exasperated. But he went in the end and he freaking loved it!! Wuhu.
Went to the Chimelong Water Park next. And bam, we were bombarded with swimsuits of every colour possible. Floral prints, frilly seams, literally every female there had some sort of fancy swimsuit on. It was really quite the sight. Wei Kiat wore his Hall 9 trunks HAHA I was supposed to wear my Hall 9 swimsuit with him but I didn't bring it. On hindsight, I should have huh I would have been able to fit with the crowd perfectly.
Anyway the theme park queues were really empty but it was quite the opposite for the water park. I guess everyone wanted to avoid the hot weather.
Also, there's this pool with hot water and K&G went inside it so I followed but GUESS WHAT. They went inside there to pee fml and they didn't tell me so I was just frolicking around in the water. Luckily I wasn't that near them. Is peeing inside swimming pools a thing?? Omg.
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G's parents came to pick us up in the evening! We stayed at their house for the next 2 nights. Their family used to stay in China for a few years so they're pretty familiar with the place. Really glad and thankful that they were there because they brought us to eat so much good food and sent us around too.
They brought us to dinner at some shop where they're regulars at I think, because the people there seemed to know them. These oysters were delicious! Especially with all that garlic on top. Yumz. We also had some other dishes too. 8/10
Day 3:
Started the day right with more dimsum. This was the best yet! Especially the liushabao, the liusha just oozes out like water and the filling was super generous as well. The boluobao was also very good! Crackling skin and yummy meat. 9.5/10
We were super full from breakfast but we had some hiking to do in the afternoon so we spent a few hours digesting first before going to 圭峰山.
The climb up the mountain killed me, especially with these two fit boys- they gym like 3/4 times a week while my only form of exercise is my netball mod- so their pace was faster than mine. I felt rather burden HAHA but oh well, we managed to conquer the mountain together. While we were happily descending, they found another path that leads up to the neighbouring mountain and they decided to climb it and inside I was like... kill me now... but well well we did it.
Dinner was with some of G's other relatives at this grand restaurant. His mum helped us to bring more presentable clothes to change from the hike. Don't have any photos from the dinner but yep good food as usual! And his relatives are very nice too, they treated me and Kiat like we were part of the family too.
Thank you Papa Guan and Mama Guan!! Btw, don't you think his dad looks like LHL.
Day 4:
Shopping day although we didn't buy much. We wanted to take the train to the wholesale area but the waiting time was q long so we took a bus instead. If you watched my vlog, you can see the part where they went into this shady place which was actually a shop selling bags and stuff but I didn't dare to go in haha. Then the shopkeeper actually came down and showed me the cctv of the shop showing them and telling me it's fine LOL so creepy.
Dinner at Hai Di Lao!! Their service is really commendable, like I went to the toilet and when I came out to wash my hands, they actually have staff waiting for me with a towel to wipe my hand dry. I felt like royalty.
We got the idea for this pose from a poster hanging on a building HAHA.
Thanks for the trip homies. x