Hi there. In this travel post I cover going from Guangzhou, China to Hangzhou by high speed train.
This is a part of my own China travel blog series.
Topics
- Lavande Hotel In Guangzhou
- Going From Hotel To Guangzhou South Railway Station
- Guangzhou South Railway Station
- High Speed Train From Guangzhou To Hangzhou
Lavande Hotel In Guangzhou
In the previous travel post, our travel group arrived in Guangzhou from the Emirates flight coming from Dubai, UAE. We went with a hotel connected with the Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport. This hotel was called Lavande Hotel.
The room I was in had 3 single beds. Photos taken from my Samsung A50 at the time. (I may have reused one photo or two)
With the washroom be careful with the floor. The whole washroom is the shower room too. There is a slight ramp for the water to go to the drain.
Yes there is a delivery robot. Any food orders from outside the hotel go to the robot waiting on the lobby floor. The robot is automated to go from the lobby to the elevator and then to your door.
Going From Hotel To Guangzhou South Railway Station
Our route plan was to stay the night at the hotel. The next morning would be explore the local area and then board a high speed train. In the original plan it was going from Guangzhou to Chengdu or Chongqing in west China. The problem was that on Trip.com only Hangzhou was available for the train tickets. We would go to Hangzhou then Shanghai then Beijing and so on. Our final China destination would be looping back to Guangzhou.
Since our hotel was not near a metro station we decided to take the shuttle bus back to the airport. Then we would take the metro system from Baiyun International Airport to Guangzhou South Railway Station. There might have been a better route at that time.
The route from Baiyun Airport to Guangzhou South Railway Station was long. It did take around 70 minutes or so. Ticket costs were cheap though at around 7 CNY per trip. This was around 1.40 CAD. Here were a few pictures showcasing one metro station with barriers. (I did not take many pictures at the start of this trip.)
The Guangzhou metro route was from Line 3 Airport North to Nancun Wanbo station. Transfer to Metro line 7 and head to Guangzhou South Railway Station. Metro Map Reference
Guangzhou South Railway Station
Guangzhou South Railway Station is quite a large facility. It looks like an airport. A better than Toronto's Pearson Airport (cough cough). The floor above the connected Metro station is the main floor. You need to go up the escalators to the second floor where there is security check-in and a waiting area for boarding the high speed trains.
The security check-in area is very busy but the waiting times are not too long on a weekday. For non-China foreigners you have to find a line that has a person manually checking your passports. You do one passport check for security check-in and then another one at the train ticket gate.
It is important to note that your passport will contain your train ticket information. There is no need to have a separate ticket to hold. Train tickets are booked through Trip.com. Trip.com is a very useful app for booking train tickets and for booking hotels. Other options are Alipay or Wechat Pay (Weixin Pay). When you book train tickets with Trip.com you do have to enter in Passport information.
I wish I took more pictures at the time with my Samsung A50 phone. Here are some pictures.
High Speed Train From Guangzhou To Hangzhou
The Trip.com mobile application on Android does provide information on where you board your train. In our case we had to find the train number G1404 with the gates A6 or B6. For the seat information my seat was 13F in car 2. Each train has multiple cars. Make sure that you don't accidentally take the right seat in the wrong car or the wrong seat in the right car.
At the time there were no second class seats available. We had to pay a little bit more for first class seat trains. The second class seats in the high speed trains are the lowest tier seats and the cheapest. These second class seats can be considered as economy class. In second class the seats are in a ABC DF 3-2 seating format. First class seats cost a little bit more than second class. The seats are more comfortable with more leg room. Seating format in First Class is AC DF in a 2-Aisle-2 format.
Business Class is the highest tier train seat. It is like first class on a airplane. These business class seats can recline and lay flat for sleeping and snacks are provided.
More details on seating on high speed trains here.
The train from Guangzhou to Hangzhou took 7 hours and 34 minutes with multiple stops. One notable stop was Changsha South. The first class seat cost we took at that time was 1140 CNY. Assuming a 1 CAD to 5.18 CNY exchange rate, the first class seat cost was 219.80 Canadian dollars. This is still cheaper than a domestic flight in China. Many people consider the high speed train as more convienient and more cost effective compared to domestic flights. The train does take a couple of hours more compared to flights but the cost savings.
Again I wish I took more pictures. Here are two pictures of the front of my seats. The high speed trains here are very fast. This one can reach 305 kilometres per hour at its fastest.
Thank you for reading.