Today we decided to get up early and after a yummy breakfast of fruit with red date yoghurt and pork buns we set off to explore Guangzhou. We took the bus to the Orchid Garden and couldn't understand why we received change after trying to pay the enormous sum of 80p each that was listed on the entrance board.... We soon realised that although the park is beautiful there were no orchids!!! The wrong season.... Susie was amazed to realise that every time she walked past a strategically placed post the piped music became louder....
It was a much hotter and stickier day than yesterday and we soon retreated into a cool calm Starbucks for coffee. This particular outlet is built into the China Hotel, a wonder of marble and probably the only western toilets in town! Luxury! And you can get baked beans for £1.05 and real Heinz tomato sauce!
After waking Sam, we left and started wondering towards Yuexiu Park where all of the families in Guangzhou seemed to be taking in the sights. Sam got us the best pork steamed dumplings yet, these were even better than the breakfast buns in Hong Kong. We encountered smiles, laughs, kids randomly saying 'hello' and the strange phenomenon of 'walking your goldfish'! Sam is convinced that this is what a particular family were doing, I however prefer to believe they had won the said fish in the fairground area!
We saw the Zhenhai Tower, the Asia games stadium and a huge monument to the six rams who apparently founded Guangzhou! We experienced soya ice creams, yummy!
We walked past the Sun Yatsen memorial hall and eventually found the
Buddist Temple of Six Banyan Trees (see photo). On our way we found hundreds of street stalls selling a huge selection of golden windmills, incense sticks and beautiful paper structures that people buy and then ceremoniously burn in tins on the side of the road. As soon as we entered the temple, we encountered calm. The whole area was filled with prayers, incense, different styled Buddhas from around the globe and a much slower, more peaceful way of being. We were faced with an array of poor human beings with awful disabilities outside the temple, all begging for money. It is difficult to rationalise or understand communism, socialism or religion when watching the wretched state that they are in.
And on to another temple, the Guangxiao temple, which features a huge golden Buddha.
By this time we were all getting tired, so we took a taxi to Ping Sha, an area over the road from Sam's school. We saw the most dangerous examples of babies on motorbikes.... One girl had a baby wedged between her and the handlebars and a toddler perched behind her on the seat! Not a helmet in sight, they just don't seem to realise. We tasted Mongolian pizza, a very thin doughy base with tomato and chilli sauce and started exploring. We went into the 'pound shop' and I got a Chinese chess set for 20p; we saw, of all things, a shop dedicated to Arsenal;
and we explored the very basic marketplace. I was amazed that Susie managed the meat and fish stalls but I don't think she saw what we were walking on or realised that the gutted fish still had beating hearts!
This is definitely a much grittier, down to earth area, the smells bombard and assault your nose....
We ended up in a supermarket and I bought a tea set for £5.80!
Eventually we chose a cheng du restaurant for dinner where we had one of the best meals yet; we had more than we could eat and drink for under £15! When we had finished the whole family who run the restaurant came out to sit and talk to us, they also brought their two cats and their four lovely tiny kittens out to play! I just hope they are destined for a long and peaceful life!
On the way back, we were deafened by the longest, loudest firecrackers that I have heard, from a restaurant on the road that we were crossing!
We finished off the day having tea with some of Sam's colleagues back at the School.