It's heavy in tropical atmosphere, with palm & mango (?guava?) trees all around. The buildings are in a colonial style, reminding me & Dyanne of those in New Orleans.
It's HOT. Very hot. We're talking 96-97 °F, high humidity, tropical sun. Luckily, not many bugs. At 8AM, if you walk outside, you start to sweat. The last time I felt heat like this was back in 1989, when I visited Okinawa.
One of the streets.
As I saw in Hong Kong back in 1989, they use bamboo for scaffolding here as well.
I walked from Shamian Island into Guangzhou to find some blank CD-R discs and toys for Alan. I saw some neat stuff along the way:
An interesting study in contrasts. Here's a guy with his bicycle, in flip-flops, wearing a straw hat, but he's dialing his cell phone.
Along the way, I popped into a local bank to exchange some money. Simple, right?
WRONG!
You enter the lobby (pictures forbidden, unfortunately, by the ever-present unarmed security dweeb), and you take a ticket from a machine. The ticket has your number. You wistfully compare the number on your ticket to the numbers displayed above each of the 3-4 service windows. In my case, the ticket showed #273 or so. The numbers being served, however, were somewhere around 167. This explains why there were chairs lining the perimeter of the bank, each chair filled with another customer patiently clutching their magic paper ticket.
I tried to be patient. HONEST!
But after waiting 15 minutes, seeing little or no change in the "number being served", I approached a guy sitting behind one of the windows. I asked him if I could exchange money here. He said that I could, but I'd need to take a paper ticket & wait.
I thanked him politely & left, figuring that it would be faster to walk back to the hotel & exchange money than to wait for my magic number to come up.
I got back to the hotel around 2:40PM. Unfortunately, I was told, they stopped exchanging money at 2PM. I needed to go to a Bank of China branch right outside the hotel.
That branch was much less crowded. After getting my magic paper ticket, filling out a 1 page form (requiring such info as:
Name
City, State, Country of birth
Address in China
Guide's name in China
Passport#
Amount to be exchanged ($$$)
I managed to get my Chinese currency. They must severely punish the poor teller if his cash drawer is short a fraction of a Yuan at the end of the day. The guy that waited on me ran the money through a cash counting machine at least 3 or 4 times, then counted it by hand each time. So much for efficiency!
I finally took a cab into Guangzhou, heading to a Toy Market to get some stuff for Alan. The driver had some trouble (big surprise, huh?) finding the place on a map provided by the US Consulate. I was dropped off near a hospital.
Entrance to hospital Emergency Room. Note the gurneys waiting on either side of the door. Adds a homey touch, don't you think?
After wandering around for a while, trying to find the Toy Market, a young Chinese lady helped me out. She brought me to the nearest city bus stop, and told me which bus I needed to take, and told me at which stop I needed to exit. She even offered to give me the 2 Yuan ($0.25) bus fare.
After a fun filled bus ride (young Chinese people are polite & give up their seats for elder Chinese folks, especially ladies, by the way), I reached Kids City.
A van parked in front of Kids City.
This placard was on the side of the van. Not sure what it means, though.
After a while wandering through Kids City (a big shopping mall, mainly for kids' clothing), I found some Ultraman goodies for Alan. Don't tell him, though - he's not seen these things yet.
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© 2005
Jeff Johnson
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