Guangzhou and around

We had to replan the last few days of our holiday due to the protests in Hong Kong. The train we had booked to Hong Kong stopped in Guangzhou (Canton) so we decided to get off there instead and explore the surrounding area.

We spent the first day in Guangzhou itself. We went to some of the major tourists sites during the day (the Chen Ancestral Hall and Shamian island), then went over to a Westernised part of town for dinner in the evening. After dinner we stumbled on an electronic light festival that was very bright and confusing.

Next up we took a day-trip to Macau. Border crossing took a while so we didn’t spend a huge amount of time here, but it was definitely a worthwhile visit anyway. Macau had a completely different feel to Guangzhou - obviously much more European, given the Portuguese heritage. We didn’t go over to the part of Macau dedicated to gambling, instead staying in the old town. We again looped around the main tourist sights in the town, including the ruins of St. Paul’s Church (with only the front facade remaining).

We were flying out in the evening on the final day. We decided to go for vegetarian Dim Sum in Guangzhou for a late breakfast / early lunch to fill us up for the journey. Unfortunately we arrived slightly too late for the dim sum breakfast, so we had to make do with ordering far too much lunch food instead. We budgeted quite a lot of time for travel in to Hong Kong, but we actually got through extremely quickly without any issues at all. We therefore hung around in the airport for a couple of hours before saying goodbye as Kate flew on to Australia and I went home to London.