We headed uphill to Dr. Sun Yat-Sen’s memorial tower. He was the first president of China and a local of Guangzhou. The tower has engraved his last will and testament and is clearly holds a special place for the locals (and visitors too).
We could not get up to the top of the tower so headed back
to the museum, where we could see people on the balcony on the 4th
floor. We hoped for some good views. The
museum was interesting too, with lots of information about the foreign trading
through Guangzhou, with even a mention of a Swedish ship coming here to trade
about 300 years ago. There were some paintings where you could see Swedish
flags as well in addition to the usual suspects.
The funniest moment of the day was when we were relaxing on
the balcony and an old Chinese man next to us insisted on taking our camera and
taking a photo of us. There was a girl who looked like a uni student with him
who could speak some English so we felt it would be OK. When he took our camera
he was so unsteady and unfamiliar with it we had visions of him dropping the
camera. However, he took the photo and with the camera safely returned we asked
the young lady with him whether he was her grandfather and she said “no, I
don’t know him at all he just talked to me but seems kind”. We tried not to laugh out loud but giggled
the whole way down thinking we had trusted our camera to a funny old Chinese
man!
We had been walking a while and wanted to find the famous
statute of the “five goats”, which is part of the ancient mythical history of
the city. Five celestial beings were said to ride into Guangzhou, on
goats/rams” bearing riches for the area.
Do you think we could find the statue? We followed every sign pointing
to it (and there were many) but no luck.
We must have wandered an extra two kms searching and finally have to give
up cursing goats all the way.
We did find these
“outstanding” loos though!It’s time for lunch as we’ve been walking now about 4 hours pretty much non-stop. We hop back on the subway towards town to look for some local food places. Finally, we found a shopping mall with a food court area and choose a Korean at a place called Fairwood. Reasonable food and value and at least we’re off our feet.
We realise we’re close to the temple of the 6 banyan trees (Liurung temple) and go in search of it. The map is not clear but we find it with some good sign spotting by Hans. This is a lovely old Buddhist temple area with a 1,000 year old pagoda. It’s a haven in a chaotic part of town.
We decided to walk back to the hotel, taking our time and finding some interesting parts of town – the electrical district, flower area and shoe markets (of course none fit our big hoofs!)
A coffee and a pastry on the way home and back to our room
around 4.30pm.
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