Today we head off to High Sun String and Cloth Market (Taxi from hotel 20RMB). It is more posh than I expected, it's quite clean and has aircon as well. Only downside is despite the "No smoking" sign you will find there are still inconsiderate people who smoke (you get that a lot everywhere, even in train underpass). There are plenty of shops selling materials but only a few shops doing tailoring. They do not tailor it in one day time(as i was informed on web), minimum is 10days! Craig thinks they will it to elsewhere to tailor the clothes. There are also a lot of tailor made curtains too. It wasn't a fruitful trip for us so we left pretty soon.
Next stop Beijing road(via taxi). It was actually raining intermittently the whole day and we had to duck in and out of the side lanes. Beijing Road has more hawkers and Craig was hassled by men asking him to buy watches, luggages, bags and wallets. He gets that almost every 5mins. It's a very long road and there's side streets as well. I think the hassling from the illegal hawkers puts me off and I can't be bothered looking at the shops. We went into this mall where the basement is the preservation of the Water Gate in the olden days. Towards the end of Beijing Road you can see the preservation of old streets in Tang and Song dynasty. However the glass is so slowly you can hardly see much or take pictures. Lunch at a sushi train restaurant.
It didn't take us long to have enough of Beijing Road and our final stop is the Wholesale markets near the Railway station. We took the subway from Gong Yuan Qian to Railway station (2RMB). BaiMa is obviously the more popular one and there are like 8 floors of shops. We went to Level 4 and couldn't go on anymore. Unless you have a lot of patience to go through every single shop and walk through the maze(and remember which aisle you had been down before), it's much better to just shop in a normal shopping mall. The prices are not that cheap either if you are just buying one piece. Level 1 and 2 you get hassel by the sales people and the further level you go up the less they bother you. We didn't get anything from here at all. There is a side street market that sells shoes, bags and belts. It's a tiny walking space between the shops on the left and right and you can hardly walk. The crowd is huge and there's people trying on things on both side of the street. I just walk one lane and I had enough. We then walk to MeiBo Sports Center from the railway station (about 10mins walk but caution, you got to dash across the street as there's no lights and zebra crossing is useless to pedestrians in Guang Zhou. Again, I was informed (from travel forums) Meibo Center sells wholesale sports wear. correction! only wholesale jersey(mostly football/soccer)!!! Some shops are empty and some shops are just blank t shirts where you can purchase to print something on. That's enough disappointment for the day. We decided to head back to the hotel
The street in front of the hotel sells pets in cages such as kittens, puppies, birds, mice, rabbits, tortoise and even squirrel!!. Poor animals are crying for their life and I don't think they look very healthy, probably not vaccinated too.
We didn't really had a proper dinner tonight, just couldn't find something that Craig fancy (end up in KFC in the end). Shangxia Ju road just seems like a warmer shopping place, there isn't anyone hassling you to look or buy watches. There is enough space to walk around and look at shops. There are plenty of sales people screaming and shouting out sales to catch your attention, which I guess it's just contribute to the vibrant feeling of the streets. Definitely wouldn't mind coming back again.Good that the rain stopped too.
(no pictures again as camera was stolen)
No comments:
Post a Comment