Things I have eaten: this was a bit weird. I had breakfast on the plane from Brisbane to KL - yoghurt and a muffin - at 5am China time, followed by lunch on China Southern from KL to Guangzhou at around 10. Fortunately it did not give me food poisoning. There was a Malaysian coconutty chicken curry which was surprisingly nice. Then I had a small bowl of wuxiang niuroufen (five spice beef noodles) at around 5 and then some baozi later. The noodles had peanuts in them.
People I have talked to: The man sitting next to me on the flight to Guangzhou lent me a pen and gave me some chewing gum (for the descent) on his own initiative, but we didn’t exactly talk. I had a little chat with the receptionist at the hostel on my way out as she was leaving too. A random woman got her baby to wave hello at me on the street, if that counts. The baby was quite cute. While I was eating the noodles two women sat at my table and started a conversation but I’m not sure my Chinese was really up to it. They wanted to know how I could afford to come here on holiday but I couldn’t remember how to say ‘save money’ (oh dear). They were eating suanlafen. I also was just talking to the other person in my room (there’s just the two of us at present) who is from Malaysia and will be going to New Zealand for six months in May.
Things I have bought: a train ticket! It took me ages to find the place (a ticket outlet which is rather less busy than the train station), partly because I went to the wrong end of the street and partly because the whole area around it is either knocked down and being rebuilt, or under scaffolding. I also bought some fruit, though I do not have Janet’s nose for a good bargain and paid more for it that I should have. I later identified a couple of cheaper fruit shops.
Places I have been: the hostel is across the river from Shamian Island, the old colonial concession, where Janet and I stayed last time. I took a ferry across (Y0.5 - it’s more a thing you take to get somewhere than a thing you take for fun, like the cable car in Chongqing) to go to the ticket place and mostly wandered around that area and the area behind it, up to Renmin Lu and the shopping district on the other side of that. Most of it is under construction, as I said, including the roads on Shamian Island, which have been torn up. I believe Guangzhou is hosting something-or-other later this year [EDIT: it's the Asian Games]. When I was walking down the pedestrian shopping area I was amused to note that I kept making the same wrong turns as we did last time I was here (inadvertently heading into a residential area, for example).
Things I have thought about: there’s so much stuff! Every second street has shops and shops of things for sale. I remember being struck by it before, but not as strongly. I keep forgetting things (like, remembering to buy bottled water) but doing others automatically (the bus - but not the subway) so on the whole I’m finding re-acclimatising a bit odd. I was a bit concerned about being lonely but that doesn’t seem like it’s going to be a problem. I should also mention that it’s extremely cold, at least for this area. The top today was 8 degrees celsius, and the wind was biting. It was my first time through Baiyun Airport international landing/customs. The queues were huge - mostly overseas Chinese - but customs was pretty much a non-issue, much less intimidating than coming from Hong Kong on the train, where everyone has everything scanned. Here, they just picked the occasional person (like, one in 20 or 30).
[ Last edited 11/03/2010 12:47am ]
