Guangzhou Hotels
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Work Class Amusement Park
Entry 11 of 16 | show all | print this entry |
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This update is delayed because the one I had almost completed became corrupted on my phone.
Also, the title of this entry isn't a typo on my part but a copy of the text that we saw on an advertisement for Chimelong Paradise in the Guangzhou Metro.
We began with an early start on Tuesday in order to catch the bus to and eat breakfast at Hong Kong's Hung Hom Station before our train departed at 8:25am.
Our Premium Class seats on the top deck of the KCRC owned Ktt train, with good service including free drinks and snacks of choc chip cookies and nuts.
The contrast between Hong Kong and China was very apparent; our new surroundings were more manky and severely more polluted.
The train was delayed by around 20 minutes due to track work to upgrade the line between Shenzhen and Guangzhou for the recently launched Chinese Railways high speed railcar sets. Not only were the mainlines being upgraded but the entire system in the region, with an army of workers to be found along every track.
Arrival into Guangzhou brought on more culture shock; we were dodging the spit and weaving through crowds in the dirty ground level of the station.
The Metro came as a clean and relatively new change, with signs and ticket machines including english as well as Chinese languages. The system looks to be modelled on Hong Kong's MTR, down to the similar but more basic interior of their new Siemens trains.
We found it very odd that there were long pauses between the train arriving at a station and the doors opening as well as the doors closing and departure. Station dwell times were also long and at some stations the driver made announcements, but not in english.
We did eventually arrive at our stop on the recently openned line 3 extension, which is a sandpit at the moment. Chimelong Paradise had an info stand at the station exit, where we were directed to the bus to connect us to the park itself.
The local buses are very spartan by Australian standards, featuring hard plastic seats and rough, noisy suspension.
We were dropped off in the middle of a carpark, forcing us to follow the road signs to find the park entrance. Once we had purchased our tickets we passed under the confused fantasy castle entry gate into the asian tiger promenade.
It was very clear that the park was almost completely empty of guests.
We used our time in the park to ride the 10 inversion, halfpipe and motorbike launch coasters as well as all the thrill and kiddie rides in between. The only thing holding us back was waiting for enough people to get on for the rides to be run!
Of note was the river raft ride that took us under a fully flowing waterfall, much to Belinda's delight as well as the funny english signage!
By 6pm when we left the park was a ghost town, even though it was open until 7pm.
Our impression of the park was that it was confused and strange, though we're glad we made the trip and think it was better than Ocean Park.
We must admit that we were disappointed about the lack of staring at us white folk but there were so few people in the park.
The return trip to Hong Kong was much the same as on the way out except that our Ktt train departed late due to its late arrival, again resulting from the track works.
By the time we had caught the bus back to our hotel and had a snack it was late and we didn't get to sleep in our beds until around midnight.
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