Guangzhou- Youth Hostel

After checking in to my room at the youth hostel in Shamian Dao I went out to explore the city. I heard that there was a brand new part of the city which was a must see. Due to a sightly drunken night the night before I had lost my map but tried to find the area anyway. I ended up walking down these really cute lane ways and just hanging out with locals and testing my non-existing Chinese. Thanks Hayley for those key phases they really help!

Down one lane way I came across 4 women playing Manjong. I watched for a while and then was offered a sit at the table. I have played manjong before when I was in Singapore and Hayley and I hosted a manjong night at Holden Street earlier this year so I thought I would give it a go. The women I was playing with were very fast and played for money, so I had no chance in hell at ever getting a hand.

After a day of exploring I headed back to hostel to see what was happening. When I had first moved in there was only a Chinese guy in the dorm. When I returned an English couple (Adam and Amy) had just arrived. Adam and Amy are 18 and have been travelling around Asia for the past 3 months. Adam was wearing a “Cat Empire” T-shirt which I thought was awesome. We got chatting and a Germany guy also arrived called Michael (a different guy from the other night). After working out I had taken the wrong bed by accident the four of us headed out to see Guangzhou!

The place to go out according to Lonely Plant was at Fangcun Pier. After grabbing a few travellers from the 7eleven we walked over towards the Ferry to Fangcun Pier. On the way we chatted with the people at the local fish market. (Hayley and Bob I asked “if they have any older brother” but I think the one child policy has kind of ruin that pick up line.)

We then saw a boat moored near by and decided to see if we could get the owner to take us to Fangcun. There were three guys in front of the boat. Adam and Michael started asking them about the boat while I jumped on to look around. They were not overly impressed by decision to board the boat but soon came around. They could not speak any English and kept taking photos of us on the boat with their phones. Aware that this could potential get us into trouble I started taking photos of them. Not sure how that was going to help but hey! After about 15 minutes of us asking to be taken out for a ride we said our farewells and headed for the ferry.

two of the guys on the boat that kept photographing us on the boat

The ferry was filled with locals on bicycles which I naturally took for a ride around the boat. After about a 2 sec ride we arrived in Fangcun.

On the ferry to Fangcun

By this time we got there we were so hungry and in need of another beer, so we went to a dodgy little restaurant with a few locals inside. After establishing that no one could speak English we then ordered by pointing at other peoples meals in the restaurant. The food was great!! The chicken had more bones than meat but was still good.

After dinner we went to check out the bar scene. A lot of the bars appeared to double as brothels so we needed to choose carefully. We came to one bar which promised to have the WORLD famous singer “David” and his band playing at 9pm. None of us had heard of David but decided it was a must for the evening.

David the WORLD famous singer

To kill sometime we headed off to another bar which was completely empty. All the drinks were over priced for China so we ordered a ‘Singapore sling.’ When the drink arrived it appeared to be clear in colour and we started to have a few doubts about it. After a sip it appears a ‘gin and tonic’ is the same as a ‘Singapore sling’ here. Well they do drink G and T in Singapore so who can argue.

After the drink Michael called it a night and Adam, Amy and I headed off to see David. Amy and I could hardly handle the excitement of seeing David. Once inside we were greeted by the owner of the bar also called David, who was from Hong Kong originally and could speak English. David told me “that if you ever have any problems in China call me. I knew a lot of people.” Sounds great I said and took his card. After a few beers David (the singer) took his place behind the keyboard and stated singing Elton John’s “Can you feel the love tonight.” Not my favourite song but he was very good.

Adam and Amy getting into the song with David's backup singer.

We got to request a few songs but they had never heard of them. David (‘the owner’) made me have a dance with him to one of the songs. After that we were invited to join a group of 8 or so Chinese guys for some drinking game that involved dice.

Adam, Amy and local drinking buddies

The game involved everyone having two dices and one pair of group dices. If you got the same number as the group dice you had to take a shot... Well that was the rules for everyone else the rules for me appeared to be I had to drink every time anyone else did. We started with beer but progressed to tequila. At which point Adam, Amy and I thought it was best to leave. We took the ferry back to the hostel via a street market stall for a few munchies.

Yum market food munchies!