Showing posts with label Guangzhou. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Guangzhou. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 26, 2017

Train's Lyfe

July 26, 2017

09.00 // after packing all of our stuffs, we went out to have some breakfast before off to the railway station. We took our lugagges along the street, sometimes had to pick it up to go upstairs and then put it down again, until we reached the nearby subway station and then the railway station. It’s my first time traveling in China with Gaotie. The Guangzhou’s railway station was so big (i think bigger than airports in Indonesia). It had a lots of gates of ticket check points that got me confused from which one i had to enter. Walking inside the station, Q-ing for inspection and checking-in the ticket took about 20-25 minutes. Realizing that we were almost running out of time, i ran my feet off (with two lugagges) to get on board. Thankfully, we had arrived two minutes earlier before the train left.
Train Ticket to Shanghai
21.00 // we arrived at our booked hotel at Shanghai

From the almost-running-out-of-time experience that day, I promised to myself to depart earlier to the station. Not only to the station, but also to the airport and to everywhere during the trip. June-August is the holiday season in China. There are so many local tourists in every public places. Queuing is inevitable. And train, always departs on schedule.  So I have to set off earlier to anticipate. Don’t want to be in rush anymore *fiuh*.

The second day in Shanghai we went to The Bund – that famous place in Shanghai with its pearl tower, and also went to Shanghai Film Park to look around China ancient buildings locals usually use as the shooting film location. At one of local restaurants around the park, I tasted the original huiguorou.
Huiguorou (回锅肉)
is usually called Twice cooked pork or Double cooked pork belly. It is a Sichuan-style Chinese dish

#travelinfo
*) Before train checking-in, passengers should know exactly which check point they should go to have their tickets checked. The number of check point can be seen at the top right of the ticket. Afterwards, we should go to the platforms to get onboard.
*) Most local restaurants in China provide food menu which all written in Han Zi (Chinese Character) without the pictures of the food. You can recognize some key words like  ”rou” which means “meat” in common,  “ji” (Chicken),  “yu” (fish),  “niu” (beef),  “zhu” (pork), and  “ya” (duck).

A Rush Afternoon in Guangzhou

July 26, 2017
We enjoyed well in here. We spent our first (Saturday) night in Zhujiang New Town, seeing canton tower at night, taking some photographs like a pro, and stroIling around the square. The second day in GZ I arranged to met up with one of my church friends who was currently studying in Guangzhou, and Ci Se met up with her Guangzhou friend as well. The four of us spent a half day together; going to the park, and having a good lunch. At afternoon, Ci Se and I and also my friend continued to look around my friend’s campus at SCNU. As her recommendation, we tried jianbing near the campus. 
Jianbing (煎饼) is a thin pancake made of millet flour; one of local snacks in China 

After strolling for about an hour, we took sit for a while and suddenly the bad news came over us. Ci Se told me that our flight to Shanghai tomorrow morning would have been canceled due to the bad weather, as she was informed from the airlines.

It was less than 24 hours...

We tried to not looked panic. What we could do that time was only searching another tickets through Qunar app*, to make it able we still could be in Shanghai tomorrow, no matter how. In Qunar, we found some affordable train tickets for tomorrow that we could possibly buy today. To make sure the tickets were still available, we shortly went to the railway station. Our plan to watch circus show in Chimelong at night unfortunately had to be cancelled. We arrived at the railway station and saw that the q was sooo long that we couldn’t handle it. After gathered some informations from local friend, Ci Se decided we must go to another railway station to get the Gaotie tickets without having a very long queue. After 30 minutes on the way from East railway station to South railway station, we reached the gaotie ticket counter and gratefully we managed to buy the gaotie tickets to Shanghai for tomorrow.

We made every effort to arrive at Shanghai on the third day - based on our schedule because 1) we already booked a hotel at Shanghai from 26 June to 30 June. If we had not come to the hotel on the booked date, we had to pay the cancellation fee. 2) If we would have extended our stay in Guangzhou, we surely had to pay very high hostel rate only for one night. The train ticket price we purchased was as high as our flight ticket price, and the train from Guangzhou to Shanghai takes 8 hours (longer than flight hours which is only 2 hours), but it’s still okay anyway. We missed one day in Shanghai but could keep the other things still on the track. After all, we saved 380 RMB for not watching show at Chimelong hehehe.

#travelinfo
*) Qunar(去哪儿) is Chinese leading platform/mobile application of flight searching and ticket booking
*) Guangzhou has four railway stations, they’re Guangzhou railway station (广州火车站),  Guangzhou North Railway Station (广州北站), Guangzhou South Railway Station (广州南站), and Guangzhou East Railway Station (广州东站)
*) Gaotie (高铁) is bullet/high speed trains. For more informations about the type of China’s trains go check it on https://www.travelchinaguide.com/china-trains/types.htm