What I wasn’t prepared for was the stampede of Hongers who were thinking the exact same thing. The crowd at the Shenzhen train station was absolutely insane. Probably not as bad as Lunar New Year’s, but I would peg it as a close second. I arrived at around 3:30 and despite having trains leaving every 10-20 minutes, they were all full until around 6:30. Then I had a lovely time with the pushing, yelling, and rushing.

The first attraction I visited in Guangzhou was an area that was built in the style of Lingnan. The whole place was one of those tourist traps where they get you to buy food and pay for cultural ‘experiences’.

A Lingnan-style street

The best food was 双皮乃 (direct translation: double-skinned milk). It’s almost like eating cream with the texture of tofu. I had a cold one and it was really good.

Refreshing!

Another thing that was pretty cool was how they made ‘popcorn’ with rice (poprice?). A guy was tending the fire for about 10 minutes, then you pour grains of rice into this large cloth tunnel with a metal bit at the end. Once you apply the heat to it, there’s one gigantic POP and it’s done.

Fire...

...tunnel...

...BLAM!

In the afternoon I visited the Whampoa Military Academy (黄埔军校). It’s pretty cool to walk through the exact buildings that churned out the figures who changed China as a nation.

The dorms and rooms

I will never again complain about small bedrooms or hard beds

We visited a small Sun Yat-sen memorial then hopped on a boat to head back home. I swear I’ve been on a zillion boats in Asia. Everywhere I go, they use boats to get around and I love it. You’d think that was inefficient, but it’s not and it’s very integrated into people’s daily lives.

The next day was pretty packed. In the morning we had 早茶 (morning tea), which was a very Guangzhou retiree thing to do. Generally people will go really early, have 1 or 2 dishes, and sit around drinking tea and chatting till noon. Since we weren’t grandmas, we had an actual meal there. My cousin’s son (13 years old) apparently loves chicken feet. His currently record is devouring 6 bamboo baskets of them by himself. So we stuffed him with all the excess food that we ordered. What a trooper.

My cousin's son's middle school. It's soooo pretty!

After the meal, I paid a visit to the Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall. It’s not nearly as grand as the one in Taipei, but was still a nice place to chill out for the locals.

I never get tired of Chinese parks

We took a scenic walk past more public parks to 北京路 (Beijing Street), a popular shopping area. But what was interesting about the place was the display in the middle of the street. When they were digging to build the Guangzhou subway infrastructure, they came across layers of road underneath the pavement – paths that were paved from a long time ago. As they dug deeper, more and older layers were revealed.

Song dynasty and Ming dynasty roads

We then went to 上下九广场 (Shang Xia Jiu plaza) and OMGWTFBBQ the amount of people there was insane. I hadn’t even seen anything like that in Mong Kok.

GO HOME, PEOPLE.

There were some food stalls and we grabbed some street food. It wasn’t that large of an area but they had everything from noodles to seafood.

Clockwise from top left: shrimp skewer in batter, BBQ oysters, shaved ice, BBQ squid skewers

I was pretty exhausted by the time we finished walking around the plaza, so we headed back home. My relatives currently have a temporary place within 中山大学 (Sun Yat-sen University). In China it’s very common for professors and school employees to live on or around campus with their entire families.

Sun Yat-sen University

The University has the prettiest campus I’ve ever seen. SERIOUSLY it’s amazingly well-kept.

You don't see this kind of stuff at Waterloo :(

At night, there are ferry cruises along the Pearl River so we went to the dock which was directly in front of the University’s front gate.

This front gate is BOSS.

What’s interesting is that the area between the front gate and the river is probably more busy than it is during the day. All kinds of people, from kids to grandparents, show up and join in various activities. I saw dancing lessons (all free and taught by volunteers), kickball, and even catwalk practice for little girls. The whole atmosphere was very social and vibrant.

Had to join in and show the aunties how it's done.

The ferry cruise shows off Guangzhou’s night views and city lights. It takes you half an hour down the Pearl River Delta, then turns around and comes back. The night lights aren’t nearly as glamorous as Hong Kong’s, but it does go on for quite a while, whereas most of HK’s are crowded around Victoria Harbour.

A little gaudy but hey, whatever floats their boat (pun intended).

We passed like five bridges.

Baller homes

Most of the next day was dedicated to climbing 白云山 (Baiyun Mountain) with the entire family in tow. In total it might have taken us 3-4 hours to get to the top, with ample wandering and photo-taking stops in between.

I kind of have a thing for lilyponds

For the last 1/3 leg, we took stairs. KILLER.

The mountaintop supposedly grants the best city view of Guangzhou, but it was too foggy that day :(

Tea eggs and tofu dessert made with fresh mountain water!

I found the way down more scenic than the ascend. There were a lot of historical carvings, and inscriptures with famous literature.

The pillars each have 9 dragons carved into it

Bad-ass-est carving ever. EVER. (It also has a total of 9 dragons.)

Pineapple? Acorn? Pinecorn? Cornapple? Apine?

We took cable car for the last stretch downhill. Yes that school does have 6 basketball courts.

What I can conclude is that I love visiting relatives! They take such good care of you, and it’s nice to forget about school, social obligations, and errands for a while. Guangzhou is no less than a world-class city, and that was definitely not my last time there!

• Pizza Hut with some of my girlies. Pizza Hut here is no joke. It’s high class and the restaurants are very classy and have an extensive menu selection. I had escargot as part of my meal.
• Meeting up with Redford for dinner at Crystal Jade. Best xiao long bao and ramen noodles ever. EVER.
• Meeting up with Wesley for dessert at Tong Pak Fu & shopping at Causeway. Mango shaved ice with marshmallows & fruit. Mmmm…
• Meeting up with Red again for dinner at Modern Toilet and drinks in Langham Place. The very top floor has these really nice bars. We went to one that advertised ‘buy one, get one martinis’ so we were really smart and ordered 2 different martinis. Turns out it was buy one, get the same one, so we were rather amused when the waitress brought us 4 drinks.
• …I don’t even remember what else I did for reading week. I guess the rest was relatively low-key.

Famed xiao long bao at Crystal Jade. You can also see part of the ramen

Shaved iceeeeee

After that I had a hella crazy week of school. Two assignments and two midterms burnt me out a little, so I thought it’d be a good idea to go to Taiwan for a weekend trip. Also, it was dirt cheap. Unfortunately the trip didn’t really turn out how I’d hoped.

The good:

• Flight exceeded my expectations; I highly recommend Thai Airways.
• Hostel was nice and clean. The staff were really helpful with any questions we had, and it was in a prime location, with the train station and subway (MRT) right outside our building.
• Taipei is a nice city. Not as crazy and fast-paced as Hong Kong, and the locals are soooo nice when we ask for directions/favours.
• Foodgasms everywhere. I think the best thing I had was on the first night at Raohe Night Market. It was a whole squid, fried in some kind of batter, and drizzled with various sauces.
• I felt like we hit most of the places I really wanted to see, and made good coverage for essentially 3 days: Taipei 101, Raohe Night Market, Babe18 (nightclub affiliated with Room18), LUXY, Wulai, Shida Night Market, Shilin Night Market, Yangminshan, and Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall. Wulai and Yangminshan would theoretically take you entire days to fully explore.
• LUXY has the most stunning interior of any club I’ve ever been to. Also I enjoyed the atmosphere at both clubs.
• Everyone can speak putonghua, so we were able to get around quite easily.
• The areas surrounding the city are naturally very beautiful.
• We met a really really nice cab driver who took us all the way from Yangminshan to the Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall for TWD 200.

The bad:

• I lost my camera. Yes, the very camera I said I just purchased in my last post. Yes, it also means I lost my memory card, not to mention all the photos from the first day. Yes, it was completely my own fault for leaving it in the back of a taxi. Yes, I am still hating myself.
• After I lost my camera, I was so depressed, I didn’t want to spend money. So I didn’t buy/eat much.
• On the third day, we went to Wulai. It was a positively gorgeous place, but not even halfway through the day, my friend’s camera battery ran out so we have no photos of some of the best parts.
• The exchange rate we got was horrible.
• I got no sleep the night before we flew there. Damn java sockets project.
• We went up Taipei 101 about an hour before it closed, and didn’t realize there was an outdoor observatory until they were ushering people out. We begged the security guy to let us go up for 2 minutes, and he gave us exactly 2 minutes.
• We were late in leaving for the airport on our way back, and had to taxi it for a ridiculous TWD 1000. Though if you think about it, it’s actually only about CAD 18 per person. But still. If we left earlier, we could’ve taken an airport shuttle for 1/5 of the price.
• After this trip, I would definitely not ever go on a multi-day trip with only one other person whom I don’t know very well. We did have a lot of fun, but constantly had conflicting opinions of what to do.
• I thought I got about 13 mosquito bites. Turns out I missed some small ones and I have around 20. I’m pretty sure I got all of them during the night. Must’ve been a few bugs hiding in our room.
• Yangminshan was a big letdown. We MRT’ed, bussed, bussed more, and walked a lot to get to the “flower sea” which was supposed to be really pretty. It was just a bunch of calla-lilies, half of which were dead/wilting, in a small area that wasn’t even nice to look at. On the other hand, the area we went to was maybe 10% of the entire park. It’s gigantic.

To summarize, Taiwan as a place was amazing, but due to some unfortunate circumstances and events, I felt like I wasn’t able to enjoy it fully. I will definitely be going back there to explore and eat more (and hopefully take some photos!), but probably not anytime soon.

We met up with one of our tour guides at the airport, and set off for Bangkok International Airport. The flight was very enjoyable, and I highly recommend China Airlines. For a two-hour flight, we were provided with all the food and amenities you would expect on an overseas trip.

Bliss

Once we landed, we met up with our other tour guide, who is actually Thai and speaks fluent Chinese. Our tour guides were very nice and always translated everything in Mandarin for us, since most of us couldn’t understand Cantonese. We then shuffled onto our coach bus and were whisked to Pattaya, a beach town about an hour drive from Bangkok.

It was hot as all hell, but thankfully we had some mild air conditioning on our bus. We were a group of 12, and probably annoyed the other people on our tour by being loud, obnoxious, and late many times.

Our first destination was a Zoo (?). It didn’t have many animals, and I thought the exhibitions were rather gimmicky. The one thing we learned off the bat was that if you wanted to take photos, you need to pay up. The highlight of the day was definitely the tranny show. It was quite the feast for your eyes. However, the elaborate costumes and sets didn’t make up for the lack of showmanship by the performers. Most of the scenes consisted of people coming on stage to poorly lip-synch, wave their arms around, give a few twirls, and then exit.

Some of them were really pretty. Others were just manly.

Little did we know, that night as we ate our first dinner in Thailand, it would probably be our best meal over the next few days. We did a little street shopping before retiring to our hotel for the night. Shopping in Thailand is relatively a lot cheaper than even Hong Kong, and some people even swear the quality is better. I ended up not buying much, but that was mostly due to my guilt from dropping nearly HK$2000 on the camera.

Day 2 was what I was looking forward to the most – hitting the beach! We rode a speedboat to this sketchy-looking platform thingy floating in the middle of the ocean. It was the place where you could go parasailing. The concept’s a bit scary but it’s actually really cool and you feel safe. This was definitely my favourite part of the trip.

Parachute + cord + speedboat = parasailing

We then continued on the speedboat to an island that had a beach with beautiful waters, and participated in some water activities. We rode a banana boat (inflatable pillar that’s dragged by a jetski), shopped at the markets, and just chilled in the water/on the sand.

This is what a beach should look like. Woodbine will never be the same.

In the afternoon we went for a 1-hour Thai massage. For a “western” massage, you get kneaded and pressed. A Thai massage is almost like visiting your chiropractor. They stretch, crack, and flex you. I didn’t feel much different afterwards, but the people who paid for the full 2-hour massage claim it was positively orgasmic.

On Day 3, we were on the road back to Bangkok. Along the way we visited a lot of shops – honey, snacks, leather, jewelry. We felt they were a huge waste of time, and nobody really bought anything. We stopped by a place to see a monkey show (it was rather sad to see how they treated the monkeys), ride a horse-drawn carriage, and ride an elephant.

He's named after Andy Lau. Must be the striking resemblance.

First-person view. All you have to do is imagine the eau de horse shit.

Not irrelephant

For dinner, we were each issued a 200 baht voucher (1 Canadian dollar equals approximately 30 Thai baht), and released into the food court at CentralWorld mall. I used exactly 200 baht to get a pad thai, gyoza, beef ball skewers, Thai iced tea, dessert, and a fruit shake. Unfortunately we were rushed, and I probably only finished about 80% of my food.

Any Asian mall >>>>> Eaton Centre

If you ever get a chance, MAKE SURE you try a Mister Donut donut. Or two.

We visited the Suan Lum night bazaar where I bought a few trinkets, and then checked into our hotel. Our tour didn’t include the Grand Palace or any temples in Bangkok, which was ridiculous, so the next day, we broke off from our tour group and explored Bangkok ourselves. Transportation was rather tricky, but thanks to good planning, nothing ill befell us. First, we hopped on a ferry to get to the Grand Palace. Many people were commuting to work on the boat, so it was jammed full by the time it reached us. We somehow managed to cram all 12 of us in, and I hypothetically questioned how something like this would fly in Canada.

The guy in the blue shirt walks along the edge of the boat (while it's in motion) and collects your fare

We made our way to the Grand Palace by asking random locals for directions, and made it just in time before the ticket booth closed.

The large statues are demons

The Mansion

The weather finally fatigued us, so we went to the city centre, where there were malls with air conditioning. After grabbing food at a local market, we took the ferry and BTS (Thailand’s subway system) to MBK mall. The mall wasn’t that impressive… it was catered to young people, so it was squished like P-Mall and didn’t have all the lavish shops. The highlight was probably getting free Thai iced tea from the food court, for being a foreigner.

Bangkok traffic, with MBK Centre to the right. The taxis are very colourful.

We reunited with our tour group at the Siam Paragon (a very nice mall; shame we didn’t have time to wander around). That night, we went out for dinner at this mall called… The Mall. Seriously. For dessert, we decided to try some roti. We gathered to watch the guy make them at the counter, and he did all these crazy spinning/throwing/catching tricks with the dough. He did mess up a few times. Mine was naihua + banana + egg + chocolate. OH EMM GEEEEE it was so good.

*Salivating*

The next day was mostly spent packing up and saying goodbye to Thailand. We were at the airport by noon, had very expensive lunches, and arrived back in Hong Kong around 6pm (Thailand is one hour behind HK). My point of stupidness was when I forgot to pack my aerosol sunscreen in my check-in luggage, and so they confiscated it at security. RIP, pricey sunscreen :(

The trip was a lot of fun, but at times I did feel myself missing the comforts of Hong Kong (ie. English, MTR…). I’m looking forward to more adventures in South-East Asia in April/May when a handful of Waterloo people are coming to visit!