China May 2nd - May 9th 2015
China
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topgun92000- May 18th, 2015
Huizhou, China May 2nd - May 9th, 2015
My Check ins
王府井小吃街 - Our Final Meal
Imperial Garden.
Palace Museum.
Zhongshan Park.
Forbidden City (Tianamen Square).
Beijing Golden Phoenix Hotel.
Beijing Capital International Airport Terminal 3.
Shenzhen Bao'an International Airport.
TrueColor.
Guangzhou Shi, Guangdong, China.
Canton Tower.
Temple of the Six Banyan Trees.
Guangzhou theatre
珠江琶醍.- Eating with David
惠州湯泉高爾夫. - Chen Family House
Baiyun Mountain GuangZhou 广州白云山.
惠州湯泉高爾夫.- Breakfast
五礦．哈施塔特. Final day of Relaxation
Huizhou, Guangdong.
Star Ferry Pier, Central.
又一城 Festival Walk Shopping Centre.
湯泉高爾夫第十五洞. - Resort
The plan for China
Hey kids, do you want to go to a place where 10% of people speak any English at most? The road rules are only a suggestion and no one follows them? An adventurous humid place where food is really cheap and spicy? If you do, then you are in luck! China is awaiting.
Eric and I decided to go on a trip to China to be adventurous. We got the plane tickets, I made the itinerary, and made sure to get our currency exchanged. The currency there is called the Yuan and $1 US = about 6 Yuan. So we divided everything by 6 in China to make sure that we were getting good deals. From past travel experience, I knew it would be a good idea to exchange currency at your current bank. We went to get the exchange at Chase bank, takes about 2-4 days. I checked to see how much it is to rent a car there, but the internet told me I needed a Chinese drivers license there. To obtain one I had to take a 200 question test and have an 80% or higher to pass. The internet also told me that taking the taxi and metro is a cheap way to go too. So we decided to do that instead of renting a car. All done and set right? Not exactly. About two weeks before the trip, Eric messages me a link to let me know that we need a Visa to visit china. I never had to purchase a visa to go to a different country before. After mildly freaking out, because we only have 2 weeks to take flight, I get the information to the Chinese embassy to get the Visa's. Thankfully I didn't have to be there to get a Visa, as long as one of us shows up it would be ok. I gave Eric $120 for visa purchase and my passport with a passport picture as well as a form I had to fill out and sign. He went over and told me that it would take 4-7 days to process. We got approved and took flight.
Air China 5/2/15
We get on the flight, we take Air China. They have a huge selections of movies, tv shows, games etc... There are movies from all over the world and are subtitled in English. We watched Fury and The Nut Job. I tried to watch a Chinese movie but it was boring so I turned it off. It was a 12 hour flight from LAX to Beijing airport. The meals were good, chicken or beef with noodles or rice. I guess not a lot of vegetarians fly to China because there wasn't an option to order without meat. They apologize if it doesn't fit your diet and tell you that they'd serve drinks throughout the flight. They feed you twice, first time I chose beef second was chicken. We land in Beijing and make the layover to Shenzhen. We got into the plane and it didn't move for an hour and a half. The staff kept telling us that they don't know what's going on but they aren't clear to take off. I taught Eric pusoy a Chinese card game. After a bit, the plane started to move and off we were to Shenzhen. After the 2.5 hour flight we finally get there, since we are in a whole different time zone it is now about 2:00am on the 3rd of May. We have to find a taxi to drive to our Resort.
Personal Car to the Hotel 5/4/15
Right after we get out of the airport I feel a strong heat wave. Oh the humidity! It was amazing how uncomfortable it was. I've been to Florida and experienced this there, I actually didn't mind it much, but this was 10x worse! A person comes up to us and asks if we need a taxi in broken English, I say yes, we need to get to Tangquan Resort. He says ok and quotes us $450. We ask to make sure that it's in Yuan not US, he confirms. So we walk to his personal car, not a marked taxi and asks us to get in. We get in and I tell Eric that there is no way the ride would be this cheap, the drive is about 3 hours to our hotel. So I show him our itinerary and point to the hotel. He realizes that this is at a different province, and told us that he thought we were going to the airport hotel. So he calls someone who speaks a bit better English and we tell them the address. He gets out his phone calculator and readjusts the price. It will be 900 Yuan. We ok it and off we go. He gets to a toll road and tells us that it will be 200 more. I get a bit upset and motion that this is going to be it and no more. He ok's it and we drive on. We finally arrive at the resort.
Tangquan Resort
We get out of the car, and again the humidity! Seems to get worse and worse. We go up to the hotel lobby and they motion that we aren't in the right place and we have to walk around the block to the actual resort. So we walk, not too far and finally arrive to the correct location. The lobby is huge with tables outside for a restaurant. We get to the front desk and try to explain that we have a reservation. The problem is, even though I knew about the time change, because I made the itinerary accordingly, I completely forgot to reserve the hotel a day later. I reserved it from May 2nd thru May 9th instead of May 3rd thru May 9th. I was hoping that they didn't give our room away. They couldn't understand what we were saying and couldn't find our reservations. My phone was dead, so I write on a piece of paper "Google.com" Hoping that they can pull that up on their computers or phones and we can use the translator. They looked at my writing and had no idea what I wrote. I couldn't believe it, who doesn't know Google.com? Then they start writing and to us it looks like "中国" We obviously have no idea what that means. I show them my reservation email and point the dates May 2nd thru May 9th. They proceed to say that it would be $70US a night. After a bit of frustrations they finally gave in and gave us a room for the week without having us pay again. They also were kind enough to give us 7 tickets each for breakfast. We head to our room, we get on the elevator and I finally notice that this place is really nice.
We find our room on the 6th floor and off to bed we go. The room looks the same as any other hotel, nothing special. A think I have never seen before is there a place to put the key card in so the lights go on. Electricity will not flow through without your key card being in there. I thought that was a neat way on saving electricity.
Exploring Boluo city
We wake up, and use our tickets to eat breakfast. They had a buffet style set up. Meat, noodles, eggs, cookies, soup etc... We noticed that they like all their meals served hot. No cold drinks or anything. You had a choice of hot tea, hot rice milk, or hot water no ice. With the humidity this was a bit unpleasant. We ate and decided to explore the city. We were in a golf resort, so it had acres of land for golf. Just to walk out of the gate is about half a mile. Have I complained enough about how humid it is? We make it out and headed west. As we walk we notice that a lot of people drive motor scooters here. All of a sudden we hear a horn and there is one on the sidewalk motioning us to move out of the way. We think it's weird but move the side. We look around and realize that we are in a quite a slummy area with construction going on everywhere.
A very industrial area where people inside their shops playing either Mahjong or Chinese chess. Also every time we walk by people start to stare at us. Felt strange, I didn't know if it was because we were in a slummy area or we were white. We make our way to the actual city and another scooter comes onto the sidewalk and as we cross the street on a green light, cars are still zooming by not paying attention to red lights. I am starting to understand that vehicles have the right of way no matter what and will not stop for pedestrians even if it's their turn. So we wait and walk when clear, didn't matter if the light was red or not. I also realize that the Chinese use honking to communicate with each other. So honk if you are coming behind and are going to drive past, honk if you want the pedestrians to move out of the way, honk when making a turn, in short you will hear honking non-stop! It got very annoying very quickly. We make it to the core of the city. We want to get to a restroom and stop at a furniture store we gesture to wash our hands so we can get to the restroom, but the person proceeds to show us furniture. She was very nice and showed us around the store, and never got the bathroom. We found a grocery store located in a small plaza. We go in to buy peanut butter, bread, water jugs and other things to eat. We get inside the plaza and across the way some Chinese shopper yells to us "HI" We turn around and yell hello back, he giggles and goes about his business. We go into the store to get our things, and Eric tells me that he will be back because he needs to use the restroom. after 20 minutes he comes back with a worker and Eric tells me that he is trying to motion bathroom and the Chinese man didn't understand him. So I take out my phone and write restroom on the translator app, showed him and then he understood. Pretty much all the restroom look like this:
That is a stall for both females and males. He led Eric to the restroom. Eric came back and told me that he tried to motion washing hands so he can show him the bathroom, he didn't understand. He then squatted as if he needed to take a dump and he still didn't understand. I laughed and we proceeded to shop, we bought bread, peanut butter and other things that we had no idea what it was because it was in Chinese but the packaging looked good. We left and got a few more "Hello" on the way and every time we respond, they turn and giggle. A woman comes in front of her shop and stops us and gestures if she can take a picture of us, we give the ok and she proceeds. I felt like a celebrity. A scooter stopped in front of us and asked if we wanted a ride back, we said ok and hopped on.
We paid the nice man and got back to our hotel. Can you tell what we bought?
If you can please let me know because I have no idea.
From experience it's a good idea to have peanut butter with bread and water at the very least. It is important because when you go off to hike or explore you should stop and have a quick snack because who knows if there will be restaurants around and also you don't want to waste too much time eating so you don't miss out. Also a good way to travel on a budget. We decided to go to the pool that the hotel offered, but the hours for it were very peculiar. They are open from 10am till 2:30pm and again from 5pm-11pm. It was closed. So we decide to go the spa that was in our resort as well. Only a few people were in this spa. It was made up of a huge heated pool with different sections. On one side of the pool they had huge flat shower heads where it spouted water to make it flat. You press a button so the water comes out and you stand as the flat water hits you on your shoulders, it was nice. Then the next part you lie down on a seat submerged in water which is made of jets, you press the button again and the jets pump air out to give a massage to your whole back of the body. Next section, it was one powerful jet on the wall and rails so you can hold on to so you don't get pushed away in the water. it's supposed to massage your stomach. The next section is a place for you to lie on your stomach, this time barely submerged in water and powerful showers splash your whole back body. At the end of the pool you have to get out and you see two Jacuzzi's. One is a rose Jacuzzi that looks like blood and the other is green mint. It was neat.
After trying everything out, we decided to leave. A few ladies come up to us asking if we wanted a massage, we looked at the prices and didn't bring enough money for it so we left. We walked back to our hotel and created our dinner:
It was too spicy for me, but I ate it anyway. Before bed, I decided to look at facebook and see what is going on in the good ole US of A. I connect to the wireless and go to my facebook app, and it's not going through. That's ok, sometimes my phone's apps don't work so I attempt to go to google.com. Not working either, hmm maybe the connection is bad. I take out my laptop and attempt to do the same thing. Neither site works. I reset the connection and try to go to Bing.com. It works! Ok back to facebook, still to no avail. I then realized that google and facebook are banned in the country. Now it made sense why when I wrote google.com on the paper, they didn't understand what it meant. It was banned! I could still connect through it on my cell phone at my network which worked all over China but very slowly at 2g speed. So I went to sleep.
Huizhou City 5/5/15
Next on the itinerary is to take the metro to Huizhou museum. Breakfast didn't open until 7:30am, so we decided to get it right at that time and go on our adventure. They served the same meal as the day before. After breakfast we walk out of our resort to where the metro stop should be, I see a bus pass by but it doesn't stop. Must not be the bus stop then, so we walk the direction the bus went. We decided to ask a guard standing in front of the resort on where the metro stop is. Side note, every mid-size business, hotel, temples etc... have private security standing in front. I printed out a small paper map back at home showing locations where we will be going and showed it to the guards, they look at it and cannot help because of course they didn't know what we were talking about. Then a guy in a scooter comes by to try to help in hopes that he can get a lift from us. We point to the map and show him the gesture, this is where we are and point to the symbol of the metro asking him where it is. He blankly stares at us. I decide to take out my phone and speak to the translator app that I have and ask him to speak into the phone. We bring the phone to his mouth and all he was saying was, "Whey, whey" as in saying where where. I speak, we need to get to the nearest bus stop. Put the phone back, and again, "whey, whey." At this point I understood that China is in a dire need of a charades game to understand gestures. I got a bit frustrated on not only the language discrepancy but it seems that pointing was out of the question too. The culture difference was truly unbelievable. We left and I saw the metro again, and for laughs I poked my hand out to stop it. It stopped! We went in and I pointed on where we needed to go, he brushed my hand and looked at my paper. He closed the door and started driving us. I have no idea if he knew where we were going but oh well, we were going somewhere I guess. after 10 mins. he tells opens the door and speaks to us in Chinese and we get the jist that he wants us out of the bus. The trip was supposed to be about 1.5 hours, this couldn't be the spot, but instead of arguing we get out. We realize that we are at a small bus stop. There were total of 2 buses at this stop and they were washing both of them. I go with my map to one of the people to see if they can figure out what we want. They put the hose down, look at the paper and tell us to go in again the bus was all wet but they told us to pay 4 yuan and start driving. It was so weird, but again we didn't question it. I checked my phone compass to see if we were at least going the right direction, we were. after about 1 hour the girl collecting money looked at us and told us to get out. At least I think she told us, again it was in Chinese, so we got out. After walking around for about a half hour, we finally found Huizhou Museum. Of course it was closed! We walk all over the building to make sure, and yes it was closed. Next was to walk to Yuanmiao Ancient Taoist Temple. We walk and walk and walk. After what seemed like forever, we find a garden. We decide to check it out and maybe rest a little at this Chinese Garden. We walk inside and this is the most beautiful garden I have ever seen!
It was very peaceful and so we rested and checked it out.
Walking around the Garden we noticed that it is also a park that goes around the huge lake with other temples and little spots to check out. Everything was green and lovely, there was a military building as well. We went to one of the Buddhist temples but it was under construction like everything else so the beauty was obstructed by people working on it. We also saw a very old building that's been standing since like the 1300's.
I was disappointed because we couldn't get in it. We still needed to find the Yuanmiao Ancient Taoist Temple so we walked on. We finally find it, There were about 6 small buildings that you can go into and pray to your favorite God.
So I chose and prayed to my favorite God.
After being blessed, we go to McDonald's. We ate some peanut butter and bread on the way but it must have been 6 hours since we actually had a decent meal. We were starving. We find the McDonald's, the workers know some English words, but give us a menu to look at that has English writing in it. Good to finally see something that I recognize. I get a sandwich called the bacon club. I didn't take a picture but here is a stock image of the burger.
It was meh, but noticed that they also sold, instead of apple pies, they had pineapple pies. So we bought 2 of those and decided to save them because we were full from our meals. After eating, we move on to Gaobang Mountain to hike. Again, using our compass, we walked and walked and walked. Finally found the mountain.
See that small building, we have to hike up to there. After walking 4 miles, I mapped it out not including walking all the way around the park prior to this, this wasn't an easy feat. Especially after seeing this.
But we do it anyway, we bought 4 liter water bottles which were all out even before the mountain and again, humid! It was maybe a few miles and I'm surprised we made it. We get to the now huge building that we were hiking to. It was a 6 story small museum type place. It had models of how the city looked in the old days.
At the top, it had a beautiful view of the city.
We rested a bit and dreaded the fact that we had to walk back down. There was a nearby shop where we bought more water and faced the inevitable. After hiking down, there was a tea house. We decided to go in. We were greeted by a Chinese woman who guided us to sit. She put the water to boil and proceeded to make us some tea. She took out the tea pot and laid out the cups. The cups were tiny, she poured hot water into the cups and dumped it out. She did this about three times to get the cups warm enough. She dumped the water into a box with holes in it to collect the water. she then asks us to select which tea we wanted. Naturally we couldn't read in Chinese so we smelled our three selections. We chose what smelled best and she put it into the tea pot. she used a strainer to pour the tea into our cups. She also sat with us and poured herself a cup and drank with us. After we took a few sips she wiped the small tea pot with bamboo rag and poured more. After a few refills, she took out some cookies and laid it on the table and left us alone thereafter.
It was a good experience. We relaxed, they were closing so we proceeded to go back to our hotel. It was about 7:30 pm, we had no idea what bus to get onto and worse, we didn't bring enough money to take the taxi home. It starting pouring rain hard so we bought umbrella's while we were walking. We get to a bus stop and ask some teens to see if they can point out which bus to take. I tell them what city we need to go to and show it on my map. They take out their cell phone and attempt to navigate, yes! This is the way to do it, finally a younger generation that understands us. They show us what number to get to but still seemed to be confused. A bus come's and it seemed like they changed their minds and told us to get onto that bus. We get on but realize that we don't recognize the buildings from which we saw when we were going the other way. We decided to get off. We decide to look for a bank in hopes to get more money to take a taxi home. Problem was, banks close at 6pm and buses stop coming around 9pm and we had no idea where to go. It was pouring rain and whats worse, since we weren't anywhere where I can charge my phone, my phone was dead. We walk into a mall to buy a map of the city. We see a walmart and go in to find a map. They didn't allow backpacks inside so I sat down in front of the store while Eric went in. I sat down onto the floor in the mall and I see a woman from a nearby tea shop approach me. She gets my attention and asks me to follow her. I follow and she pulls up a chair in her shop and asks me to sit down, I thank her and gesture that I don't have any money with me. She then starts pouring tea, and again I motion her to stop and try to pull the cup away, but she stops me and continues to pour. She poured it almost exactly like the other woman did at the mountain. She gives it to me and so I drink. She smiles and speaks to me in Chinese. I tell her that I don't speak Chinese and thank her but she pours me some more as she continues to speak to me. Eric finds me with the map. I thank her again as she now tries to pour a cup to Eric, I tell her no way, and give him my cup he drinks a bit, we thank her and we leave. We open it up the map and of course it's in Chinese. We had no idea what we were looking at. We put it down on a nearby kiosk and attempt to find our location. The kiosk owner see's that we need help and attempts to help us. We motion to ask her to see where we are. She doesn't understand. Another Chinese person comes up to us to help, and still doesn't understand us asking on where we are on the map. After about 5 minutes on trying to explain to people to point on where we are on the map, another Chinese man walks up to us and asks, in broken english if we needed help. Yes! We asked if he can point to where we were and so he did. We told him where we needed to go and he located that on the map too. He tells us he will walk out with us from the mall and stop a taxi for us so he can explain to the driver on where we needed to go. We were so grateful we couldn't thank him enough. We get into the taxi and he drove off to our place. Which was an hour and a half away. Which we didn't have the money for! Worse comes to worse, we had US money in the hotel and hopefully if we pay more than he asks for, he will be ok with it. Halfway to the hotel, I decide to ask if there was a 24 hour ATM. Eric thought there was no way he would understand ATM, but he did. He stopped at an ATM, we were so hoping that we can actually use it and it would let us take the money out. ATM was of course, in Chinese! We pressed a couple of random buttons and actually saw an English menu, thank God. We were able to take the money out and back to the hotel we went. Whew. We got the hotel and ate our Pineapple pies, they were amazing, I would prefer them over our apple pies here.
Hong Kong 5/6/15
We wake up at 5:30 am so we can have time to explore Hong Kong. We make our ramen breakfast since the resorts breakfast didn't open till 7:30. I go to the lobby and ask them to call a taxi so we can get to Hong Kong. Taxi comes and drives for about 40 mins and tells us that we are here. This isn't right, Hong Kong is at least 3 hours away, where did he bring us? We get out and see a hotel, is Hong Kong passed the hotel? We go in to find out. I ask the lobby person where Hong Kong is, she points outside and gestures us to go left. Ok, we go outside and go left, before we leave the property a guard of that hotel stops us and asks where we were going. He didn't understand what I was saying but we found another white couple outside of the hotel approach us and I asked them which way Hong Kong was, they said I don't know which way it is but there is a shuttle that goes there from the hotel that we just walked out of. I was confused on why we were told different by the lobby person. So we walk back in and look at the hotel's brochure and there it was the first shuttle comes in at 7:30am. We wait and in a half hour the shuttle comes, and off we go to Hong Kong. We get to the border and the bus drops everyone off so we can depart from China and enter Hong Kong. The lines weren't even there, Seems like only the people in our bus were the only one's trying to cross over. They check our passports and let us through, the bus picks us up and drives a few feet only to stop and let us off. We get off and now we have to show passports to enter into Hong Kong. I found that amusing. We get back onto the bus to go to downtown Hong Kong. First thing I noticed, that we were now driving on the other side of the street, England style. The street names and signs were both in Chinese and English! We get to downtown bus station. Our next stop is to get to the welcome center. We ask which bus to take, and they answered, in English! We were supposed to take an actual metro to get there, we go to the ATM to get HK currency to buy the tickets and off we go to the welcome center. The metro here is amazing! America, please adapt the China's metro system. It was very easy to navigate, and is very clean. They have a map where it is very clear on where the stops are and where you can connect to another metro. When your inside the metro, there are lights on the map to tell you where you are and what the next stop will be. They also had free wi-fi so everyone was on their phone's. It was awesome, we knew where we were the whole time!
It was during work hours so there weren't a lot of people in the metro, but after people got off work it got very cramped. As soon as we get out, we are approached by an Indian man trying to sell us watches, "We have good deals on Rolex." We politely decline and a block later another salesman trying to sell something else, they were all over the place. I was glad to see different races in Hong Kong but I didn't appreciate the hassling. Welcome to the capitalist part of China I guess. On our way to the visitors center we found another McDonald's. I decided to go in to see whats different in this menu, they had green tea fudge ice cream! So we got it. I would have liked it better without the fudge. We get to the visitor center and a nice Chinese lady helps us out in what seemed to be a slight British accent. I was in love. I asked her a few questions and she brought out a map and pinpointed on where we needed to go and where to get off on the metro. First stop is the Chi-Lin Nunnery. I'm thinking that this is going to be a Christian place with nun's running around. But alas it's another Buddhist temple, I was confused. Beautiful none the less.
We were getting hungry so we went to another huge mall to eat. I noticed that every stop that the metro did, it was near a mall. We ate at a place called Food Republic. Another ramen place where the menu's were in English and we knew what we ordered this time, not as fun but hey it was good. We ate and went to see big Buddha. We took a fairy to another part of Hong Kong. It was part of the metro so it was the same price!
We get there and look on the map where to go, got lost. We found another visitors center close by and decided to ask there. The lady responded that we took the wrong fairy and the Buddha will because it was 10 minutes to closing at this point. Sad, we took the Fairy back. That's alright, it will be on the list for the time I come to Hong Kong next. On our way to the Sky Tower, the website told me that the best view would be on sunset so we explore Hong Kong more. First we rested in style!
I wanted to take a little dip on the Pacific Ocean since we were on the other side of it. The problem was, all of Hong Kong was a port and we couldn't find a place to swim. Then we found a park, we ate our handy dandy peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and decided to head toward sky tower. We came to another mall where it was but sky tower was also closed! We were 10 minutes too late. Yet another thing I have to do when visiting Hong Kong again. That was our last thing to do for Hong Kong so we took the metro back to the border. We get there and now have to find a taxi to get back home. Someone approaches us again almost right away asking if we need a ride, we were smart this time to say no. They kept asking anyway, and so we ignored them until they left. There was a huge line for a taxi but we waited anyway. Finally it's our turn to take the taxi, this time we were also smart enough to give the taxi the business card to our hotel. He looks at it and starts speaking Chinese. Ah, we are back home where we can't understand anybody. Someone overhears and come up to us and in broken English tells us that the place we are going to is too far. "Yes we understand this, but we need to get home, is there another way?" we ask. She talks to the taxi driver and tells us how much it's going to be and so we make the deal and drive off. 2.5 hours later we get home and exhausted. Eric and I were both wondering if the taxi drivers liked us for taking long trips or hated us. Maybe they were about to be off work and had to drive for another 2.5 hours one way and 2.5 hours back home. I also pondered whether I liked Hong Kong or not. I realized that I did, I would definitely live there if and only if it wasn't so humid. Too bad it was.
Relaxing at the Hotel and exploring Huizhou 5/7/15
Next on our Itinerary was to go to another city. But we decided to switch those days and have a relaxing one instead. We had our hotel breakfast and off we went to explore Huizhou. Instead of walking we took a taxi to downtown. We walked around, there were farmer markets around every corner. We got some cumquats and walked on. This seemed to be much less classy as Hong Kong so the malls were much smaller, so we decided to explore one. Again everyone was looking at us and at one point someone stopped us and motioned for us to stop so she can take a picture. I took a picture of her and Eric with her camera. Not that we minded, but can someone tell me why Asians like to take pictures with white people? Either way, we went into a few shops. Nothing in the mall interested us but we did come across a few small stores while we were walking around. Eric bought a nice tea set and I decided on an MP3 player. The mp3 players was very inexpensive and the owner of the store did something very nice for me which now really made me appreciate non-capitalist China. He gave me an American wall plug for the player so I can keep it charged at home. He didn't charge me and was very grateful that I bought from him. I know It's not much but I've realized that people here don't seem to really care about money. Not everything has a price. In fact things are really cheap and they'll still give you free things. After Eric bought the tea set, he realized that it didn't come with one of the pieces that we had seen the girl use with us at Goabong mountain. Later in this story I will talk about how Eric buys a tea pot for Radhika and I find the missing piece, which again the store owner gives to him free of charge. Whenever we tipped the taxi drivers and waiters, they were so very appreciative. Also, even if we don't understand Chinese, they always gather and try to help us when we are lost or looking for something. Americans would always be in a rush and put a price tag on everything instead of helping distant travelers. Except for the airport personal drivers, The people in China are very courteous. So we buy our things and we now get very hungry. We decide to go into one of the local restaurants.
The restaurant wasn't any bigger than a standard 2 car garage in America with 4 small tables. We take a seat and they give us a menu which to us was very useless. Since we couldn't understand what it said, we decided to be adventurous and just randomly point at the most pricy food item and order. The most expensive thing on the menu was for 2.50 each. They brought out some dimsum with peanut butter dip and beef with noodles. We were very delighted.
After we stuffed our faces, we decided to go back to our hotel. We went back to the spa, this time with enough money to get a massage. We got our massages, they weren't anything special. It was a 1 hour massage that was done over our clothes! We didn't even take off our shirts or anything which I thought was weird. I'm not much into massages, they hurt, and this was no exception. After the massage, we went to the pool. The pool was really nice.
There were frogs there which I think were released so they can eat mosquitos. The frogs didn't go into the water or anything but it was an interesting way to get rid of the bugs. Didn't really work though, because we still had bites.
Guangzhou 5/8/15
We wake up and take a taxi to visit Guangzhou. It was another 1.5 hours drive. We got dropped off and went on our way to hike Baiyun Mountain. This mountain was actually mountain where lots of activities are held. They have carnival rides, different sights, aerobics, bungee jumping, etc... It was very neat and huge. It was about 4.00 US to get into the mountain. We were walking up enjoying the sights. I realized how huge the mountain was and stopped to look at a directory. Maybe we can exit another part of the mountain to get the Temple of the Six Banyan Trees. Like clockwork a lady stops and tries to help us. I show her on the map where we need to go and she starts speaking Chinese. I thank her but tried telling her we really don't need help and we move on. Throughout this trip Eric and I have been walking with a pretty good pace so we don't miss anything. After about 8 minutes of continuing our quick stride up the mountain the same super lady catches up! I was in shock. She stops us and takes out her cell phone. I think she was motioning us to come back down we came and take the metro, we thanked her again and moved on. We got to the top.
We noticed that there were some interesting activities going on. The most peculiar one we saw were people playing hacky sack in a circle. The weird part was that the hacky sack had a feather type thing so it was easier to kick and keep in the air. Lots of groups were playing that and badminton. It was nice to see people being active and engaging in these kinds of things. At the top of the mountain we were pretty tired, and saw that there was a gondola that went up and down the mountain, we decided to pay and take it down.
We get out of the mountain and decide to try and take the bus again to get to Temple of the Six Banyan Trees. We try to look at the directory, and I try to ask someone to see if they can point to where we are, and this is the first person to deny me. A lady with tattoos didn't want anything to do with us, she shook her head no and went on with her business. Right after that a man comes up to us and helps us out. A Chinese man who spoke a bit in English. He didn't know what the temple was, so I pointed to something near it, a theatre. He said that it was in downtown and he is on the way there himself. In the bus we tell him about our travels and he talks about himself. He asks us if we are married, after we say no, he asks why. We really didn't have an answer for him and shrugged it off. He then proceeds to tell us that he is a failure too. He is a man without a home and a wife. The man looks like he is maybe 40 years old and we try to tell him that there may still be time to turn things around. We get off the bus and we walk to the theatre. He joins us and says that his English name is David. As we walk he becomes our tour guide, and tells us main parts of the town such as the govt. building where we were. As we walk by a little shop, he asks if we want water or food which he would pay for us. We of course decline and tell him that we owe him for being so nice to us. He leads us to the theatre, we pay for his ticket and go in. A nice theatre with a small museum inside talking about Guangzhou. We ask David if he is hungry and ask him to take us to a nice restaurant where we will all have lunch together. He agrees to take us and on the way there we go through a park. He walks us to the exact center of the city. It was a compass type monument on the ground.
At this point Eric tells me that David must be leading us to some fancy restaurant to dupe us. I start laughing and say, how much can a restaurant possibly cost here. Given the recent history here, we had our amazing meal for $2.50 US. Even if he is duping us, what will we be spending? $12/person on a meal? He eased up and we get to the restaurant. It was one of those, pick your food and they put it on the plate, then they charge on how much you got. We all got pretty much what David got and ate. Meet our Chinese friend David.
The restaurant was good and inexpensive. I was still determined to get to the Temple of the Six Banyan Trees. So we pull out he city map that we bought on the way and I show David. He figured out where we needed to be and on we went. We get to the front gates, and I asked David if he wanted to go in, we would love to have him. He declined and told us that he was going to leave. We offered to pay him for being our tour guide but he absolutely declined. We tried to insist, but he wasn't having it. We said our goodbye's and I got his email so I can send him pictures and this journal. Oddly enough he took my email address on his Iphone 6 which was surprising he had such a phone. We said our goodbyes and went inside the gates. We paid 10 yuan and they gave us a handful of incense. I guess we were supposed to light it up and put it near our favorite buddha. There is also a place where you can put them in the middle, we decided to do so before we burned the place down.
I was sad that we couldn't go inside the main temple, but there were other buildings within the vicinity where we can go into and see the Buddha's. I have probably seen enough Buddha temples to last me a lifetime at this point, so we walk on to our next destination. After walking for miles and miles again, we see the Chen Family House, it is a folk art museum. However from where we were standing the entrance was blocked by a row of bushes. You can see the bushes behind us.
So we decide to walk around. We find ourselves in very small alleyways getting thinner and thinner. The streets aren't even and it became like a maze to come out. People were staring and we didn't know if this place had a way out. Being adventurous, we ventured on. Finally found ourselves in the same exact spot as we began, behind the bushes blocking the entrance. Laughing about it, we decide to try walking around the other way. It worked. There was a ticket window, we paid and got inside. This place actually had English font in front of displays. One room had Ivory, it said that the practice was of course banned and these were the collections before the ban was made.
I did feel sorry for the tusks that were used to make these but it was very beautiful and detailed. There was another interesting piece telling us about the single women in that part of China. They refused to leave their rooms in protest of arranged marriages. I forgot what the group is called, but if anyone knows, please let me know I cannot find any research on this. Next thing on our list is to go to the zoo. We take the metro, the metro here was kind of like Hong Kong, it was pleasant, clean, and had English writing. We got off to get to the zoo and started walking again. We ended up getting lost just a few blocks away from the zoo. We took the map out and again had a group of Chinese people trying to help, I couldn't stop laughing. They didn't know what we were saying and we had no idea why they were responding in Chinese instead of pointing to the map. Again someone else comes inside our little circle of help and helps us in broken english. "Oh the zoo is just around the corner." He tells us. We get there and this looked like it would be a very nice zoo. It had a safari tour and a walking tour, it was huge. By the time we got the ticket booth, it was closed. No panda's for me. Yet another thing I have to do when I get to China, we start going back exit but see a lake with birds right at the exit of the zoo, so we sit on the bench to relax.
After resting, we walk back to the metro. We stumble across some of the thickest banana's I've ever seen. Of course we buy it and try it out. It tasted exactly like a banana but more filling because every bite had to be huge due to the thickness. Right inside the middle it was a bit red, the bite got hard as your about to chew a piece off. It was good, I'd recommend it.
We get to Canton tower, a beautiful lighted up with colors building that overlooks the city.
We go in and pay to go up. It was a whopping $45 US each to go to the highest part of the building. Although interesting, it wasn't really worth the price. We did it anyway and starred into the depths of Guangzhou. The tower has over 100 floors and you go up so fast that your ears pop. On top you notice that the city is very colorful at night. With colorful lights on cruises that were sailing along the rivers, bridges, and buildings colored the city.
After taking in the view, time to go back down the elevator. The problem was that there was only one elevator, there were many people waiting so there was a huge line. I couldn't imagine a fire happening and we all had to take stairs, it would have been tragic. We get into a crammed elevator and finally get down. We find a restroom and change with clothes that we packed so we can be nice looking for True Color night club. We decide to take another scooter taxi to the location. I wasn't kidding when I said that the road rules are nothing but a suggestion. We hopped onto the scooter, this one had one front wheel and two back wheels with two seats in the back. We show the driver where we need to go, he understood and started driving... On a one way street... Going the wrong way! It was nuts, by the time Eric got the camera out, we were pretty much out of danger, but we couldn't believe it. The driver was honking for the cars that were moving the right way to get out of the way.
After making sure that we have survived the ride, we find the night club. Before we go in, we decide to walk on and find a good place to eat. We find a sushi place. We go inside and have to step over, what I later found out, was a bench to sit down. I thought it was cool so I had someone take a picture of us and the table.
The menu was in English also so we ordered our food. I guess I was missing home so I ordered a California roll. And what a great decision it was, this wasn't anything like the California roll we are used to. This had green and orange caviar which I haven't seen before. I was laced with tarter sauce with what seemed to be yellow salmon. Kudos to you China, it was the best sushi I had ever had in my life!
After eating, we get back to the club. There were pretty Chinese models standing outside of the door giving out free energy drinks. We get the drinks, I gave mine to Eric, we buy our tickets and go in. The club is consisted of a Chinese female DJ in the front stage, a narrow catwalk that goes off of the stage to the middle of the room. All around were very small tables where people gathered around to socialize and drink. The house was packed where we could barely move.
The music was bumpin'. It ranged from Chinese, English, and even Russian dance songs. So naturally I wanted to dance, but not one single person was dancing. Everyone was just drinking and socializing. It was a bit sad, we didn't know Chinese to socialize with anyone, nor did I want to go on the narrow catwalk only to be the only one dancing.
I guess this wasn't a club to dance at. We walked around took some pictures, relaxed a bit outside of the club in the back. I did a bit of people watching and we left. We go to the ATM to get money for a taxi to drive us home. ATM isn't giving us money. We don't understand what is going on so we try another ATM, same problem. We should have had enough, there is no way we spent everything we had, is there? I then realize that we have maxed out the daily ATM limit. So we decide to take out a little less and thankfully it worked. We had just enough to get home. Apparently we cannot take out more than 300 yuan/day. We get home and start packing to go home the next day.
Saying Goodbye to China 5/9/15
We wake up very early, got very little sleep, and take the taxi to the airport. "Goodbye Tangquan Resort, goodbye Huizhou city, you've been good to us." We get there with plenty of time. We have burger king for breakfast at the airport and get onto the plain. Eric and I were sitting in a different part of the plane but we didn't mind it since we were probably going to be sleeping through the flight anyway. This is a 3 hour flight to Beijing, we have a layover there where we wait for 2 hours and we board to the U.S. I hear the plane's engines and I close my eyes. I mumble, "Goodbye China." And fall fast asleep. We get to the layover where we smoothly transition over the the plane that goes to LAX and make it home in one piece living happily ever after. LMAO haha j.k! This is what we call a "Leo Trip" and I would be surprised if it ever works out as planned. After mumbling Goodbye China and falling asleep I wake up after a really good sleep actually. I stretch and see that we have landed in Beijing, I take off my seat belt and see that people are still sitting down with their belts on. That's weird, did the pilot not tell us we can go yet? I buckle my seat belt back on and look through the window, we aren't in Beijing at all. We are still sitting at the same airport, we haven't even lifted off the ground yet! I look at the time to see how long we have been sitting here. 1.5 hours! This is ridiculous we will never make our layover. After another half hour we finally take off. At this point I wasn't sleepy at all, they had different movies in the plane this time. I chose a pretty cool Mexican movie that had english subtitles. It was called The Noble Family. Was about a rich widowed dad who owned a business and spoiled his kids rotten. After finding out how much his kids were spending, he pretends to tell them that there was fraud committed and they now have to live in a dumpy old house and get jobs. I recommend it but I digress. We get to Beijing and of course our flight already had left. We find out that the next plane to LAX leaves in 5 hours. I ask them if instead we get a hotel for a night and leave at noon the next day, the attendants take my offer and call us a shuttle. It took us to the Phoenix Airport Hotel. They gave us our suite and told us that breakfast and dinner was to be compensated and served within certain hours. We find our hotel, we didn't have anything to unpack just our backpacks with laptops because we didn't have our luggage. We see that dinner begins in about an hour so we decide to explore. As we step outside we notice a breeze, a cold breeze! The air felt amazing and not humid at all. It was very much like LA weather, we were happy. I was actually getting a bit cold. We walk around and notice that a lot of the buildings were abandoned. In Huizhou a lot of buildings were getting worked on with construction but here they are just abandoned. It was sad. We walk around the block and didn't find anything too much of interest so we get back to the hotel and eat dinner. It was about equal to what we had in the other hotel but with a bit more choices. We go back to our room and I get onto my laptop and go on Yahoo because Google is still banned and find out what we can do for a day in Beijing.
Beijing 5/10/15
We wake up very early, take our backpacks because we weren't planning to come back to the hotel and take a taxi to Forbidden City. We see the military in formation walking around as we explore. It was pretty empty on the square. We see that there is an entrance to the Imperial Palace, however it was still closed. We had about 1.5 hours, so we head to the park and continue to explore.
We went west and got to Zhongshan Park, it cost 10 yuan to get in. We went in, the park was huge and had a lot of things to see. Again we saw hacky sacks with feathers being played and a lot of aerobics going on. We saw the Grain God square, different colored grains converging together.
We also found people doing Tai chi, so we decide to join. I do it for a while, it was relaxing but harder than it looked. I decided to step out to take a video, Eric was doing great but got shy haha.
Afterwards, we leave the park and get tickets for the Palace. This time the square was packed and I mean packed with people to the highest degree. There were all types of people not only Chinese. I noticed there were senior citizen, French, Italian, and all other kinds of tour groups going on. People were wearing one type of clothing so they can find each other, some were carrying flags around. It was crazy and very much disorganized. I was astounded on how many people showed up just in the past hour. We had to go through a metal detector to get into the Imperial Palace and oh my it felt like every man for himself. I felt crammed and was pushed around. We finally went through. The palace consisted of bridges that go over canals leading to a building.
We get to the building, you can't go inside but you can take a look through the openings and see what the inside looked like. You really had to push and shove your way through just to look in the openings. It wasn't that impressive.
We go on the side of the building to continue and like a de ja vu, you again see the same exact thing you had seen last time, bridges over canals leading to another building. We walk through, this time not looking inside the opening. We go through the side and we saw the same thing again! We had to go through about 6 of these. On of them on the side, they had a huge pot standing outside. People were rubbing the golden creature faces sticking out of it. So we had to rub it too.
We finally get to the end of the Palace, there was a small garden. There it started raining. Our backpacks had our laptops and we didn't want to get them wet so we bought some plastic raincoats.
It was very helpful. We start heading back, a few Chinese girls stop us and ask if we can take a picture but in English this time.
They asked us how long we were staying for. Why haven't we met these girls, or David in the beginning of our trip? I think it would have made our lives so much easier. I told them that we already stayed in Huizhou and only have one day in Beijing before leaving. They ask me to back up and ask me to repeat what city we were in. Huizhou, I repeat and specify the province, Guandong. They had no idea what I was talking about. I told them north of Hong Kong, they nodded and said ok. The girls told us they were from Beijing and thanked us for the picture. Later on Eric said that we must have been on a quite adventure since even the people from China didn't know where the hell we were. On the way to the exit we stopped to get sausage on a stick.
It was laced with cinnamon. I usually don't like cinnamon, but these were pretty darn good. We had to get to an ATM again to get to the airport. We exit and walk toward a busy street. We walk across a small table with Keifer jugs standing on the table. I didn't know what it was at first because it was written in Chinese and the person who was in charge of them didn't speak English. I thought it was just milk. Curious we bought a bottle and started drinking.
You poke a hole through the top with a straw and drink away. I think it was strawberry flavored. It was delicious. Too bad we couldn't keep the jugs and had to give them back. We continued to walk and a restaurant caught Eric's eye. He wanted to go there because the chairs had smiley faces on them. So we did.
We went inside and the woman explains to us what we need to do in Chinese. We don't understand so she takes a plate, puts ramen in it and motions us to go the bar and put in what we want. Eric and I go overboard and put in everything that was in the bar. In hindsight, we should have taken the ramen out, Eric should have got half of what the bar had to offer and I should have taken the other half. I guess we were way too tired to realize on how much food is going to be made if you choose everything from the bar in one plate.
We give the plates to the cooks. In front of the kitchen there is a little girl, maybe their daughter, who seems like she is practicing for school. It was our little entertainment while we waited. The music was quite loud but the go-pro for didn't pick it up very well. You can hear the obnoxious honking though!
After barely making a dent in our plate because of so much food, we take the rest to go. We have about 140 yuan left and decide to call a cab just to ask how much it would be to take us to the airport so we can take that out of the ATM and not go home with a bunch of yuan left over. We pull a cab over, and he says it's 200, we say ok thank you so we can go the ATM and pull out 60 more. He doesn't let us go and starts speaking in Chinese. On his calculator we type in 140 to tell him that is all we have. He says ok and drives us anyway. We pay him and finally take China Air home to LAX. Side note, they did let us take our to go food onto the plane.
Thank you China for having us, this was definitely the most adventurous trip I had ever experienced. Eric agrees. The people are great and very nice. Thank you David for showing us around and being a great tour guide we really appreciate it. I will definitely go back to fill in what I have missed and explore other parts of China, like the great wall in the future. Most people would probably find this trip to be too exhausting and chaotic. This was not one of those relaxing vacations. So I wouldn't recommend this to everyone. But if you like adventure, find joy in not knowing whats going to happen next,and experience one of the most non Americanized countries out there, then I say go and experience South Eastern China!
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