Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Guangzhou

You can feel the summer heat when you alight from the aircraft at Guangzhou International Airport. Unfortunately, there are no air-conditioning in the aero-bridge so you can feel the heat hitting your skin straight away. The Guangzhou airport is huge and modern.

The taxi took about 45 minutes to reach The Garden Hotel (located at 368, Huanshi East Road) - a five star international hotel. The wall-to-wall panel at the reception area was impressive in gold colour of Chinese impressions. I was expecting a 'shoe-box' size room but surprisingly the rooms are spacious, clean, nicely decorated and comes with free internet access. The lobby is spaceous and gives a grandeur feeling to the hotel with the focal point being the water fall in the garden - with obvious reasons why it is called "The Garden Hotel". A very centrally located hotel with their staff ever willing to help.

This is my second trip to Guangzhou - the last time was via a train from Hong Kong for a day meeting. The city has a dull overcast due to the ever increasing industrial estates polluting the sky which can be felt as far as Hong Kong during certain times of the year.

The local restaurant I tried has a wide Guanzhou cuisine. Bing Sheng - very crowded and the food is local and the price is reasonable too.



The other restaurant was at The Garden Hotel - Peach Blossom restaurant. This is a Cantonese gourmet dishes - the restaurant was well decorated and the food is very good.

Upon my departure, at the immigration check point - you will come across a customer service panel just in front of the immigration officer - you can rate the service by pushing either one of the four buttons. I push the Excellent service and the lady officer said thank you and she smile - probably that simple effort would give her enough points to jump to the next promotion.

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