Day 43: Guangzhou

The only reason we wanted to go to Guangzhou was for Chime Long Paradise, the biggest amusement park in china. We both love roller coasters. Also there was supposed to be a waterpark, so we were planning on spending two days there.

The overnight train from guilin got to guangzhou at 6:30 am on the 29th. Guangzhou is not really set up for backpackers in the same way that most cities have been, so it wasn't that easy finding a hostel. I had found a pretty cheap place called 5th youth hotel in the tianhe district of guangzhou, but I didn't have enough time to get great directions there. We managed to find the metro, and got off at the right exit. But after that my directions were pretty bad, so we set out to find a payphone to try to call the hotel. The payphones don't take change - only these phone cards, and I couldn't find anywhere to buy a card, but finally we asked someone at the metro station and he let us use his card to call the hotel. They had one person that spoke pretty broken english, and after 5 minutes it finally seemed like we were understanding each other, and that she would come pick us up.

We waited outside of the train station for 20 minutes, and we were about to get up to try to find internet for better directions, when we were approached by "Danielle" from the 5th street hotel. Apparently she'd been walking around for 15 minutes trying to find us. i don't know how they missed the only two white people within 2 square miles - but we were very relieved to see her. We followed her, and it turned out that we were about 100 yards from the hotel. The hotel was actually really nice, we would recommend it. The room had a fridge, a small kitchen and a washing machine.

After showers it was only 10 am, so we decided to head to the water park for the day. But when we got to Chime long, we found out that the water park was closed until april :( so we went to chime long paradise (the one with the rollercoasters) instead. We were planning on saving that for the next day, but oh well.

The park was fun, although not as big as we had expected. If you've been to six flags magic mountain, it was about 1/4 the size. One of the rollercoasters in particular is awesome though, it has two vertical drops. Also there is a ride called the giant frisbee, that is pretty darn fun. Here is a video I took while we were on the giant frisbee:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/42585283@N08/4057748970/in/photostream/

Also at the park we went to this Danger Action show (something like that), that was really impressive. Lots of explosions, stunts, motorcycle and jetski jumping, good stuff. We also went to a magic show, and a really weird 4D movie with dinosaurs, aliens and dragons. For lunch we ate off a food stand, where I ate some questionable chicken sish kababs that I think came back to haunt me the next day... more on that later.

Since the water park was closed, we decided to leave guangzhou after only one night. Short but sweet. Here's a few pictures from Chime Long Paradise:

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