Another post on Guangzhou. Its gonna be a short one because I only spend around 4 days in Guangzhou. Not the overwhelming best experience but definitely a memorable and happy one. First check in China, Guangzhou, I am very happy with that! You make it love China. Tried to cover most of the specialty food in Guangzhou but because of time limitations and lotsa shopping spree incurred, I can only do my best to eat as much in a very short period of time. Noms!

Good Morning Guangzhou!

I woke up early in the morning despite the short period of time we had in Guangzhou. Tried out the food in hotel and it is a huge mistaken. My comments : Just simply eat out. Hotel Food Sucks.

So one of the place I spend a lot of time shopping and eating will be the Shangxiajiu street. It is a very well known shopping street for the locals as well as for the tourist. Tents and vendors filled up the place as early as 11am.

Like Beijing Road street market, they offers a lot of discount. Discount up to 90% and I bought around 9 pairs of shoes including winter boots with the price range of RM15 to RM40. What say u?

For guys, the shoes, the bags, clothings, you can find all sorts of item you need at Shangxiajiu Street. For ladies, earrings, shoes, winter clothes, I don’t know man! Too many to offer. But personally I used to wear a few brands of clothings only, that’s why I seldom shop for clothes in street market. But what I am crazy shopping for are shoes and earrings! God knows how much I bought!

Not only that, street food vendors are piling up along the street. 

I had curry fish balls and BBQ squid. Yums! 

Time for lunch, we tried out one of the commonly seen chinese food franchise restaurant in China. Not too impressive but the chilli pork ribs is quite okay.

And so we continue our hardcore shopping spree. Came across this highly recommended coffee place and so we tried. Its always nice to rest a while for coffee. There’s a lot of cafes around but I saw this particular one in Google and so here we are

Not a coffee fans, I have no idea how to judge a good coffee but their coffee is quite nice. At least smooth and fragrant for me.

For dinner, we stumbled upon a canton restaurant. Settled our dinner here before we head back to hotel to have a rest for count down later. I cant get enough of the beef offal stew so I ordered a small portion for myself. So good I must say! Soup is tasty as well. Noodles was alright and the roasted duck is delicious, crispy skin and juicy meat, that’s what we are looking for right? Overall rating is quite high!

Rest time!! Our hotel is just in front of the pearl river so every night we will have this magnificent view. Nap for 2 hours and finally heading out to the Canton Tower for New Year Count Down!!

As usual it was New Year Eve! Road is crazily packed with cars and human beings, we headed out around 9pm and its so jam! Stuck in the taxi for about 1.5 hours because the cab driver decided to drop us somewhere else and ask us to walk. 

It’s a long walk like another 1 hour but because the road is packed with human beings, everyone walk with you so it doesn’t feel tiring. Grab a local beer and off we go to Canton Tower!

I have no idea how far it is but after all the squuezing and running and climbing, we were finally there! Count down was VERY disappointing. WHY?

1.) They don’t have any emcee to host the events and the counting down and yet that place is crazily packed like you can’t even breathe!

2.) Everyone was looking at their clock then suddenly the clock put out the words : HAPPY NEW YEAR. Everyone was like WTF?? Where is the 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1?? Then people around us start to curse like.. OMG i came so far for this and that’s it? And people started to communicate to each other by complaining how terrible the count down is. 

Well, I put an effort to count down at different country every year and by far, this is the “worst” one. So 3 hours squeezing through the crowd and less than 5 mins of happiness. But I enjoy the process so I’m fine with it. We ended up having a drink below our hotel and met 4 new friends from other part of china and so, having a beef offal steamboat together as supper at 5am before we called it a day. Extraordinary experience for me and I actually enjoy it!