Guangshou and Wuzhou

From Hong Kong I was headed to Yangshuo but decided to stop in a couple of cities on the way rather than taking a long sleeper bus. It was a short train ride from Hong Kong to Guangshou where I spent the first night. I did not do a lot in Gangshou other than find the hotel and figured out how to get to the bus station and bought my ticket for my onward journey.

I did walk around Shamian Island which had a pretty tree lined sort of park area down a street between some European looking buildings. It came apparent to me in a short time that a lot of people must come to Guangshou to adopt children. Hotels had signs that said something about free strollers and I was ask a couple of times if I came to Guangshou for a baby. This baby thing caught me rather off guard. Lots of people have tried to sell me a lot of different things but this is the first time I was offered a child.

I was off to Wuzhou after one night in my hotel room above a karaoke bar where I could hear people singing but surprisingly did not impair my sleeping. The bus to Wuzhou was rather pleasant with a lot of trees on the side of the road with different colors of blooms. I arrived and found a hotel and set off to see the Snake Repository. The Snake Repository sounded rather interesting to me and the book says that it handles 1 million snakes each year. I caught a cab to get there but when we got somewhere I could not figure out what was the snake repository and at last thought my cabby was trying to tell me it was closed but I was never sure if I was in the right place. I was dropped off at the base of a hill and there was some sort of temple at the top of the hill so I went ahead and climbed up to the temple and looked around what appeared to be a brand new temple with the stairs leading up to the temple not yet completed.

I walked back into the center of town and at least confirmed that I was on the correct street for the snake repository but never did see a sign for it at all. Since it was still early I walked through the town and up to the Dragon Mother temple. It was a bit of a hike up to the largest statue of the Dragon Mother since it sets at the top of a rather large hill above the temple. I don't know if there are other statues of the Dragon Mother so the fact that this one is the largest did not really impress me but it was a large statue.