Sorry for the lack of updates everyone! Over the last few months Annette and I have been been doing super exciting things (separately) that we'd love to share with you all and to each other, so we'll be uploading more posts in the next couple of weeks, we promise. As for me, here is my first post on my travels in Guangzhou, China. For a bit of context, I got lucky enough to be accepted to go on exchange to NUS in Singapore this year. However, I wanted to do some travelling before semester started in January and hence found myself in China as well as Thailand. So I said goodbye to Australia in December last year, hopped on a plane and flew to the other side of the world (almost). This is what happened in Guangzhou told through a series of photos:
The obligatory shot of the view from a plane window.
You may have heard the infamous tales of China's heavy air pollution. This is the view from my hotel room on the first night and unfortunately, the air quality that day wasn't spectacular. But Guangzhou is located in the South of China and normally isn't this bad, certainly not as bad as Beijing or Shanghai. Blue skies do exist!
See! Blue skies! This was taken on a better day.
From afar, Guangzhou looks highly metropolitan and developed with all those tall skyscrapers doesn't it? It has definitely advanced a lot since what it was like a decade ago in my memories as a kid but a lot of old, not so fancy buildings still exist including this unit where my aunt lives. There's a beauty in these older establishments though.
Another shot from my aunt's place. This is the view from her window which has those cage-like bars.
I spent Christmas over there and whilst Christmas isn't a big thing in China as it's not a public holiday, a lot of places still had some Christmas decorations up. I particularly liked this unique looking Christmas tree outside the La Perle shopping centre.
I kind of forgot where this was but I remember going very far to visit a restaurant specialising in pigeon dishes and there was this really nice park next to it, where I found this interesting tree. So cool how it grows in multiple directions.
Who can go to China without stuffing yourself with food? Yeah that's exactly what I did all day everyday. Whilst all the food I had was great, I've got to give it to this place which had some of the best yum cha I've ever had but also amazing ambience to top it all off. I mean just look at how it's decorated. And the seats were really soft and spacious so you could eat in comfort. Oh yeah, this is an all day yum cha place so if you're ever craving yum cha at night...you know where to go ;) (But I forgot the name of it so maybe you don't lol)
In between all the relatives we had to visit, we wanted to take a break and do some sightseeing. Since we had heard that there were some nice flowers that had just bloomed here at Liuxihe National Park, we decided to make a day trip up to check it out. Boy were we severely disappointed. It was nothing like what they advertised and there was literally nothing to see there except this lake. You could walk around the whole park in 15 minutes. It wasn't even a free national park either. No wonder it was so empty. At least I got a nice shot of the lake.
Here's another shot of the mountain in the distance.
And that was pretty much it for Guangzhou. I didn't really get to do much since the main purpose was really to visit my relatives but hopefully this gives you a little bit of insight into what China is like. Next stop: Chiang Mai, Thailand!
