Here i am going to share my experience during my recent short trip to Guangzhou China. As it was a business trip so didn’t got much time to roam around the city and capture lot of images. However the overall experience was good.

It was a long journey from Pune to Guangzhou, as i had to opt for Srilankan airways via Colombo to Guangzhou. I started my journey from Pune to Bengaluru with GoAir followed by Srilankan airline’s flight from Bengaluru to Colombo and then again one more flight from Colombo finally to Guangzhou. The ticket cost was almost 60% in comparison to a direct flight from Mumbai or Delhi to Guangzhou.

As there was almost 9hrs of gap between flight from Colombo to Guangzhou, so i opted to stay in Serendiva Colombo Transit hotel located on 2nd Floor of the airport. The room was nice and clean with to relax at a tariff of $65 for six hours with capacity of 4 family members.

After the transit time i went ahead to board my next flight from Colombo to Guangzhou. By the time i reached Guangzhou it was 11PM China time and the next thing i had to do was to search an ATM to withdraw some Chinese currency for Taxi as Taxi drivers don’t accept cards. After searching for around 30mins i got the cash from the ATM and came out to hire a Taxi for hotel drop. As i was already aware that if you want to hire a Taxi in China then you must have address written in Chinese, otherwise it will be troublesome. Following the same i had printed the address in Chinese in big font so that the Taxi driver with specs should not have any problem in referring it while driving.

The Soluxe hotel which i had booked was around 40Kms from the airport and it took around 50mins to reach. The hotel was quiet beautiful but all decorative lights were off as it was almost 1AM by the time i reached. After completing the formalities at reception desk i went into my room just to relax. Feeling sleep i had a glimpse from the big glass window of my room, the night view was beautiful.

As said earlier it was a business trip of one week only so didn’t had much time to roam around. However we managed to visit Guangzhou tower on an evening. The tower is huge having antenna height of 604 mtrs with observation deck at 454 mtrs and offers different ticket options. It takes around 2-3 hrs considering the time to wait in ticket queue, then in queue for lift to go up and then to get down.

It took around one hour for us from ticket purchase to reach the top. But the view from top was awesome, so if you are in Guangzhou then this is a must place to visit. The surrounding area of the tower is also nice and is good place to spend some time.

During this visit i along with my colleagues tried to look out for some local food options in streets nearby to our hotel. Also with the help of our Chinese colleague we visited a Chinese restaurant and he guided us in selecting some vegetarian food along with Non-vegetarian food. The restaurant was nice and we enjoyed the food.

On the way back again i followed the same route from Guanzhou to Colombo and Colombo to Mumbai with Srilankan airlines.

It was a nice short visit, with few experiences i can share. The Whatsapp don’t work properly in China so its better to use WeChat. Google maps also don’t work so its better to get a Chinese app for maps. Always keep your address written in Chinese and English languages. Always have cash if you are going to hire a Taxi, however there are some online options also similar to Uber where you can call the taxi and pay online but you need a Chinese bank account to connect with it.