Hello everyone! Sorry so late to post again, been so busy, traveling alot!!!
We just got back from a week long family/business trip in Guangzhou, China. Many of you are probably wondering, Why Guangzhou? There is a big import and export there called the Canton Fair. Its one of the biggest, if not the biggest trade fair in the world. Its quite overwhelming actually, there is so much to see and only 3.5 days to see it. I say .5 days, because the last day all the vendors are packing up and selling everything off, its a madhouse the last day.
Anyway, we were there because my hubby was looking to purchase some new items for his sporting goods trading business.
Our trip didn't start off so smoothly. We took Malindo, our flight departed at 10pm and arrived at 2am. We had a driver waiting to pick us up, I highly recommend arranging a ride before hand. Trying to speak to a Chinese taxi driver can be very frustrating and (from my experience), they really try to cheat tourists. Better to avoid such an unnecessarily stressful situation. Anyway, when we finally arrived to the hotel it was about 330am. But because we arrived after 12am, the hotel had given away our room and they were completely booked because of the Canton Fair! SO LESSON 1: if you are travelling to anywhere and arriving late (after 6pm), you MUST notify the hotel in advance so they don't cancel your booking!!! So there we were completely exhausted with no place to stay, all the other hotels in the vicinity were also fully booked. We were so upset because we did our booking through booking.com and it said everything was taken care of, but the hotel's policy is to cancel any reservation if the guest doesn't check in before midnight. After several calls to Booking.com, we were about to go to a hotel across town, when one guest and his wife came out of the elevator. They were leaving to go to the airport to catch their flight back to London. We were so lucky, they were able to give us their room. So I guess we were unlucky and lucky at the same time, hahaha.
If you are in Guangzhou, I STILL highly recommend Likto Hotel, despite that whole mix up. Its a small 4-star, boutique hotel, but modern, comfortable, very clean and perfect location and...... the price is right, only about 50-70 USD per night, definitely worth it. Its located just down the street from the MRT, the area is called Yuexiu. Across the street are so many restaurants to choose from: Authentic Italian, Shwarma, PIzza Hut, McDonalds, Thai, Indian, Bagel Cafe, Chinese, fruit market (of course,hahaha)and the best for last..... a clean and cheap Muslim Halal restaurant that serves healthy and fresh food!! If any of you have traveled abroad you know, most times its very difficult it to find halal food. We ate at this restaurant every day sometimes twice a day, they have great vegetarian noodle soup, the broccoli with garlic is excellent and they have fried onion bread. Pretty much all the muslim halal restaurants in Guangzhou serve up the same menu. In fact, it really looks like they all have the exact same menu, like they bought the menu from a store, hahaha.
We have been to Guangzhou 5 times now, I will be writing up a traveler's guide blog post for Malaysians (or anyone for that matter) planning to go there. Recommendations on restaurants, hotels, services, and pretty much anything to make your trip easier.
If you want any tips for traveling to Guangzhou or about Canton Fair, drop me a message in the comments below. If you enjoyed my blog, then give an upvote.