Guangzhou, China

En route to France, for my brothers wedding lunch in Colmar - first stop, Guangzhou, China.

We had an 18 hour lay over in Guangzhou before taking a connecting flight to Paris, so we took that opportunity to go out and explore the city!

Before getting into the goodies of the trip, I'm gonna go on a little rant about some of the frustrating things that happened earlier in the trip.

Ive always wanted to go to China, so even just for 18 hours just to get a taste of it was super exciting. However, our first trip here wasn't as relaxing as I thought it was going to be.
We knew there was no google maps, uber etc before going over and we planned ahead by getting a VPN and downloading the apps we needed. But that didn't make things easier for us (I feel like we should have done more research before heading over, but we didn't think it would be that difficult to get around in China!). The VPN we used kept connecting and disconnecting, so it was really hard to figure out where to find things, like an atm or how to get a sim card. Luckily I spoke Cantonese at home and we were able to get help from the locals (as we were staying quite far away from the main area, people either spoke Cantonese or mandarin).

So some tips before going to China:
- Get some cash out before going to China in case there's no ATM's nearby
- To get a sim card, you need to apply for it at a shop that provides a service for sim applications - we went to three different mobile stores before finding a shop that could process an application for us, no one seemed to direct us to the proper place.
- You MUST have a Chinese mobile number to be able to connect to free wifi in China
- Use DiDi app for taxi services. I suggest selecting the taxi option so can pay by cash. For trips reaching over 100cny using the express option, you have to prepay using a card or wechat pay (but the card takes so long to process and sometimes the screen just blanks out)
- use Baidu maps to get around, although it's all in Chinese, it's better than nothing!

Once we got some cash, a sim card and a taxi, we were on our way to the more relaxing and exciting part of the trip!

Our first stop was Dian Dou De for some dim sum. The food here was amazing! We ordered some shrimp dumplings, siu mai, chicken claws, shrimp roll, tripe and tong sui. I've always loved dim sum, even back home in nz, but this was just amazing! It was nice try some authentic dim sum, where it was originated from. This restaurant started up in 1933, and from the looks of it, its still be a very popular place for dim sum.
FYI, the menu was all in Chinese. As neither of us could read Chinese, the lady gave us an English version of it and she helped us select a few dishes. I wish we had more time in Guangzhou, there were still so many dishes I wanted to try, especially the ones you don't get in nz!

Next, we made our way to the Chen Clan Academy. Entry fee was about 10CNY per person, and you need to bring your passport to purchase a ticket. The whole structure of the place was so beautiful and detailed. Each motif described a scene from a story - unfortunately I don't know what these were, if we had time we would have joined a one hour guided tour of the place. Nonetheless, we enjoyed our visit. We walked through all the different rooms which showcased some very impressive wood carvings, and fans and other household objects from the 19th century that were made out of ivory.

Afterwards, we made our way to Beijing Road (well, tried to). We really miscalculated how long it would take us to walk there from the Chen Clan Academy, must've been about an hour or so? But the thing about being in a foreign place is that you don't realise how far you've walked because you're not familiar with the place, plus you get distracted by all the different things that you don't normally see! We walked past quite a few shops that sold tea leaves, tea pots (and tea kettles?!), vegetable markets, bakeries and very random shops that sold only remote controls. We did make it to Beijing Road eventually, but we only had time to grab some dinner before taking an hour long taxi ride back to our hotel.

Even though we lost a bit of time trying to get things sorted, we did enjoy our day out in Guangzhou. The food and the sights we got to see were amazing. We'll take this experience as a learning curve. At least we know now what we need to make this a smoother trip next time we're back in China!

We will be coming through to Guangzhou again in 2 weeks for our flight back to New Zealand, so we're hoping to see all the other attractions and try all the other food we missed out on this trip!Read more