Guangzhou

We are going to try and lump most of the destinations together to save on time and of course we don't want to bore everyone with each and every day we were away, however, a couple of specific days are worth mentioning and we will give them the special attention they deserve.

Okay, so day 1, we opted to take a late flight to Guangzhou since our flight was first thing the next day and grab a cheap hotel close to the airport.

We arrive and wait in line for a taxi, when a Chinese approaches us and asks if he would like a ride. Mark asks how much, and he quotes a whopping 200 RMB. We looked at him like he was crazy and quickly said no. If I new how to say crazy in Mandarin, I would have used it, but alas my Chinese is still somewhat limited.

Then 3 seconds later, another Chinese asks us the same thing and we get a lesser price of about 175RMB, thinking he was giving us a deal. Mark told him he would pay 30 RMB which was still more than a taxi would have been, but I think Mark wanted to have some fun with him. Clearly he didn't need the money, or perhaps he felt lucky and figured he would find some unsuspecting laowai.

Just to give you some perspective, if we take a taxi in Shanghai, from one airport to the other, which is about an 1 hour drive, give or take, the charge is generally 160 RMB. This hotel in Guangzhou was approx 15 minutes away so that gave us a good indication that there was no way that this was going to be more than 35 RMB. Actually, it should have been about a 7 minute taxi ride, but our taxi got lost so it would have been a wee bit cheaper but we weren't going to argue the point.

The total of our taxi was 21RMB and the next day, the hotel provided us with a free shuttle back to the airport.