Morning my friends...today we are going on a few destinations around Guangzhou city. By the way here are a few tips when travelling:
- plan and do some research of your routes early
- its good if you could get the locals to assist you. And the best source of info or assistance always comes from the ever helpful bell boys. Here in Guangzhou our bell boy Mr Ben is super helpful. He can understand English and knows the areas well and at the same time we found out on our last day that he is also the 'manager' of a rental car company. Wow can you believe it?? His job as a bell boy is just a part time...hhrmmm (am trying to search his name card and post it later)
To get to places he will translate and write in Chinese character for us to show to the taxi driver as the pronunciation is totally different from what we use to say. - Always keep the hotel card in case you need to show anyone the direction to return to the hotel later
Enough of that...let go out and explore....
1st stop - Guangzhou Baiyun World leather shopping center. Its about 5 km from our hotel. What is interesting about China is that each town and cities offers their unique products. for example in this Baiyun districts almost everywhere you go, seems like everyone is selling all types of textiles, clothing, clothing materials and accessories, leather products etc..
Pleazeee...not to bring back those oversize bags
Ladies paradise .......
Let the ladies do their shopping. We spent almost 3 hours exploring this single plaza alone (takpe nanti my turn pulak tau....)
Part of the textile city....busy busy busy
After what felt like almost eternity, we decided to split groups. YB, Shah and wife will continue with their shopping around the textile city while we headed to another location
And our next destination is my favorite shopping place i.e. motorcycle accessories shopping center. However to get there was a big challenge. Almost everyone we asked either does not know where the place was or just don't want to 'layan' (entertain) us. I almost gave up. Until we met one of the local taxi agent who claim that they knew where the place was. We were quite hesitant but decided to take the taxi anyway.
It was quite a long journey which took us almost 45 minutes. For a moment we thought we had been hit..damnn. The taxi driver could not speak English and tried few times to drop us which we felt not exactly where we wanted to go. Until we saw it entered to a town where there were many workshops and tyre replacement shops. Aaahhh...that's more like it.
We got off and the taxi driver gesture for additional fare but we refuse to budge as we had earlier agreed on the fare. So he left us there with what sounded like 'unsatisfactory remarks'.....so what???
This area is exactly what I was hoping for. Rows n rows of motorcycle shops selling everything that I wanted to search for. At the entrance there was a kinda Export center where they provided me with the list of shops around the area, with contacts, types of shops and their products....cool
To say the least, this time its my time to spend almost 3 hours here..hehehe. while my spouse spent her time at the Export center. She was entertained by this lady who was super friendly although she only can speak a little of English. Did not manage to complete to visiting all the shops here but the managed to buy the stuff I wanted at a super price compared back home.
At almost 5 pm, the lady arrange for a taxi for us to head back to the hotel to meet up with our group. But alas they were not at their rooms. But luckily we know in our itinerary we had planned to do more some shopping at Shangxiajiu Pedestrian Street.
After a quick shower and short rest we headed to Shangxiajiu Pedestrian Street by taxi.
Shangxiajiu Pedestrian Street is another popular street selling all kinds of stuff from leather goods, clothing, baggage and electronic products
And true enough we met YB and geng nearby...so my friends remember to share your plan with your group and set a meeting point should we split up
Found another stall selling the satay and roti...so makan time for today.We did not have any proper meal in the afternoon.
Let's enjoy the view of Shangxiajiu Pedestrian Street
They have many bronze art statues here.....
Group photo.....
Police buggy...
YB met a Malaysian auntie there.....
We stayed there until all the shop almost close...drop by to one of the electronic shops selling all kinds of hand phones and gadgets..we negotiated for the best price but did not buy much (jual mahal konon) and promise to come back again here tomorrow for another round of shopping.
It was already late and we headed back to the hotel by taxi and can't wait for another day in Guangzhou..
c ya later...bye
