16April 2011 Saturday
Today we start out 21hrs travel marathon. we depart home at 9.30pm for a 0005hrs flight with Jetstar. Only description I can give is bad. We landed in Singapore T1 at 0530hrs. Because it is not a connecting flight, we have to exit immigrations and travel to T3 to check in for our flight to Hong Kong. After landing in Hong Kong at 1220hrs, this is the start of a on road marathon to final destination Guang Zhou. My original plan was to take a 3hr coach from the Airport to GuangZhou Landmark Hotel. However Craig suggested another option(from someone from work) that is to take the train instead. I did a quick search at Perth Airport (thank goodness for free internet) and found out you can take a train from the airport to Shenzhen, cross the border and take another train to Guang Zhou. Because there are more frequencies for the train departing at Shen zhen than the train departing at Hong Kong Hung Hom, we decide to take the train instead, thinking it will be a quicker (more costly) option.
Upon our arrival at HKIA, the ladies at the Tourism Board counter informed us it will be quicker to take the bus instead. So we hop on AirBus number 43 and it was quite a pleasant ride for about 45mins. We got off at the Sheung Shui stop (2nd stop in the journey) and took the MTR to the next stop at Lo Hu. It was a very expensive one stop costing at 20.50HKD (19.50HKD if you use the Octopus Card). It was a mad crowd rushing from the Lo Hu MTR station to the Hong Kong customs, then crossing the border (by foot) to the Shen Zhen customs. I'm not sure the massive crowd is due to because it is a Saturday or because it's the 2nd day of the Canton Fair in Guang Zhou. The madness (of tons of people) continue on to the purchase of the railway ticket from ShenZhen to GuangZhou. There's at least 5-6times of seriously long queue of people. I am really unfortunate to be in queue where a argument breakout with the next queue(long story short, the queue was never open but mainland Chinese decided to queue there for some reason and when they realise there isn't anyone going to sell tickets at that counter, they turn nasty and merge into my queue). Poor ticketing lady had to fend them off and got verbal abuse from very nasty and rude men instead. It is definitely a ugly 1st experience in Shen Zhen for us.
The train ride took 1.5hrs to reach Guang Zhou station. If you want to get off at Guang Zhou East Station there's more frequencies (about every 10-15mins). Do not hesitate to purchase the 1st class seat!! it's absolutely worth every single cent as the next lower class does not have guarantee seats. You will see alot of people standing at the gate waiting to do a sprint to the train as soon as they are allowed. Some cheeky fellows decide to come into 1st class while the ticket inspector is not around but they got busted in the end. (Don't worry, they still put up an argument to try to win their rights). The absolute madness continue when we arrive in Guang zhou railway station, there's hawkers everywhere trying to "help" you get a taxi. Ignore them unless you are game for it. There's people everywhere!!! We later found out from the taxi driver that it is due to the Canton Fair. The taxi queue (walk towards the bus terminal and you will see it) is the most organized queue I had experience today since we stepped into Shueng Shui MTR. There is a guard distributing traffic so you can rest assured there's some sort of order. While queueing for our taxi, a little girl pee (squatting down) in front of us with the encouragement from her mum.
Next more dramas with the hotel check in when we arrived but it was soon sorted. Dinner at Tao Tao Ju was another semi disaster. I was told by the service staff that this couple is settling their bill and will leave soon and we are asked to sit with them. We ordered only 2 dishes (Fried rice and BBQ pork). The pork came almost 5mins later . After 30mins it doesn't seem like the couple at our table is going anywhere. We later realised that they have also ordered fried rice and it just rocked up. We waited almost 1hr for the fried rice and decided not to wait anymore. I've told the service staff to cancel the order as we had been waiting for a very long time. She then reply it will come in 2 mins time. After 15mins, the dish hasn't arrived yet. I've told the service staff another time to cancel the order and this time the dish came straightaway. The local couple sitting in the same table later then informed us this is very normal in Guangzhou. For large numbered tables they will keep their service up and for tables like ours (only 2 pax) they will not bothered about us until you informed them you want to cancel your order. I was shocked to hear that as I would expect they will want us to have our meal and get our so they can turn over the tables quickly. The couple said they had waited for their fried rice for more than 1hr too.
Shang Xia Ju shopping street is massively long and extremely busy, not to mentioned noisy too!! I would suggest someone spend at least 1/2 day here if you are serious about buying some good bargains!! Note you will need to forgo quality. I bought a belt for 5AUD and it was wearing out after a few wears.
Day 1 finally come to an end with me resting my feet up. The impression I get today from mainland Chinese are they don't really care about their country cleanliness. We witness a bus driver threw paper out of the bus, a few spitting cases including our tax driver, peeing in public area. Looking forward to what Day 2 brings us.
(I have no photos to upload as my camera was stolen on the way from Guangzhou to Macau)
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