Zhuhai, China

Zhuhai struck me pretty much as a beach holiday town, that seemed quite popular with the chinese tourists. The only place I saw caucasians was at the border crossing. I'm very glad that my friends could speak the language, even if they couldn't read it. At least they could have someone else read for us! It was because of our general difficulty with the reading of the language that we decided to have a tour guide (driver) take us around all day. I never did find out his name, however...

He picked us up at the hotel at about 8am and then took us to breakfast at a new hotel around the corner from ours. It was a nice dim sum breakfast, which we had the waitress read the menu out and my friends chose our breakfast. Doris knows what I like, so I ate and enjoyed nearly everything (except century eggs - gotta draw the line somewhere!).

After breakfast, we were driven to the Fisher Girl statue out on the bay. This is probably the most famous sight to see in Zhuhai. There's a whole legend around it....which I didn't get much of, since I don't understand the language... but the statue is pretty and the views from there also:

The beggars at the statue were very, very annoying though. One in particular kept touching us with his bowl and just wouldn't leave us alone. He even followed us all the way back to our car. The guide told us not to give him anything. He's probably a rich man.

Next stop was Shi Jing Shan Park, where we got a cable car to the top of a hill, for some nice views:

Not really sure what the 'wishing-rock' with the locks was about, but it was interesting:

 

My friends were very courageous and went back down with the luge, while I got the cable-car back down so I could take more photos. That'll teach me to take all the photos while I can, rather than thinking I can take more later...

Next stop was Zhuhai Museum. The guide told us it was not very interesting, and just lots of photos and text. Since we can't read anything, we decided not to enter. The building is nice though:

and has a huge square outside:

which we came back to for some shopping the next day.

After the museum, we went to Meixi Village. This place was quite interesting, having all the royal stone archways (paifang) and then some buildings with furniture. I quite enjoyed this one, even though it was quite hot walking around the complex:

 Next was the Temple of the Four Buddhas (or at least that's what we think the name is). This place was far away from everywhere, and not mentioned in any of my research. But I'm very glad we went here:

We stopped for lunch at a chinese (obviously) restaurant. The food was nice and cheap as per usual here in Zhuhai. The guide ate with us and helped us order things (that he liked, no doubt!) and then was going to finish by smoking a cigarette at the table (we told him off though!). It's strange to go somewhere that this is still allowed. 

Next stop was a traditional chinese medicine place that the guide insisted on taking us to (because he'll get commission, of course). We had to listen to the whole spiel and watched the fellow burn his hand and then put on his 'miracle cream' for 10 minutes and let us see how his skin was unmarked... Then the doctors were called out to diagnose us individually. Not that they could speak english... They had a young lady there translating and I was told I had low wind in my blood. Uh-huh. Whatever that may mean. Blood pressure it's not - I asked. Anyway: didn't learn anything I didn't know, which didn't stop them trying the hard sell. I was strong though, as were my friends, and bought nothing. We did, all of us, have headaches after this. We suspect they did something to us to make us feel ill so they could sell us something!

After this, we went to the Yuang Ming Palace. We'd been told that this place was a waste of money (the admission was RMB 110 - about $S25), so I just took some photos from the outside:

Our guide was running out of places to take us to, so he took us to the Stone Garden, which none of us were interested in, and to a shop selling stuff that was never claimed from customs. We know why it wasn't claimed....there was nothing worth buying! Our mini-bus was overheating too, so we pulled over to add water....and more water....and still more water:

It was finally time to go back to the hotel for a little while (yay! toilet! finally!) to relax before dinner in Wanzai.

The guide picked us up punctually and then drove us out to Wanzai. Here we could choose our live seafood from the stalls, and then have the restaurant cook it up for us. All very cheap. Our dinner for 5, consisting of all seafood plus a vegetable and rice dish cost us about $S50. Cheap!:

 

The guide took us back to our hotel, and we decided that since the massage on the previous day was so good and cheap, we'd have another go. This time I had a reflexology foot massage, a manicure, pedicure and full body massage. All for less than I pay for an hour's massage here in Singapore! Though the back massage was more pain than anything else that second night.

We finally got back to the hotel around midnight and agreed to meet around 8am for breakfast the next day.

We had dim sum breakfast again, but this time across the road at the markets. It was OK - I found two or three hairs on my plate which was off-putting, but ah well....it was cheap and the food tasted nice. The markets were interesting too:

This day was to be our shopping day. We'd been told that we could buy cheap clothing and leather goods in China. One of my friends had read about an 'outlet' shopping centre, so we decided to go there. We used a taxi, but true to (chinese) form, they just dropped us off 'near' our destination. Which happened to be a completely different shopping centre across from the museum. It was a nice shopping centre though, so we walked through here for a while. Nothing was worth-while buying though - you can buy the branded goods for the same price in Singapore! So we asked around to get to the outlet shopping centre. It was only 5 minutes walk, apparently...

When we got there (after asking several more times), 20 minutes later, we were disappointed to see it was only one single shop! Again, selling nothing we wanted to buy... The impressive building at the back is the International Conference Centre. The plane has something to do with Mao...but I have no idea what:

The shop was across the road from the beach, so I quickly went and took some photos, while the others found out how to catch a bus back to the hotel:

 

We got on the public bus to go back to the shopping centres near our hotel, and had a late lunch and wandered the streets until it was time for dinner:

Then it was time for more massage, this time with a nice facial after the foot reflexology.

It was midnight again by the time we got to our hotel, and we wanted to get an early start to get some more market shopping done before heading back to Macau and then Singapore.

We had breakfast at the same dim sum place as the previous morning (my friends sang happy birthday to me!) and then we hit the market where my friends stocked up on things like sharks fin and dried scallops (yum!). They also bought lots of cheap fruits (persimmons etc) to take back.

Then it was time to go back to the hotel to pack our bags and go. 

Getting across the borders to Macau was hell! It was endless queues, first for the chinese border, and then for the Macau border. It took us well over 2 hours to get through. Then we had to queue for the bus to take us to the Venetian, where we wanted to have lunch. Didn't have very much time for it, unfortunately, and no time for photos (sooooo sad!!) and then it was off to the airport. The queue to check in was the shortest, but took the longest of all the queues today. We were in that queue for at least 1 1/2 hours. It was awful!

Luckily the queue for the taxi and customs in Singapore was very short and the taxi ride home uneventful.

And thus ends my trip to Macau and Zhuhai!