It seems like I haven’t been anywhere for ages thanks to the first term at work always being s**te, but I managed to get a bit done at the weekend.
I had some bulls**t work thing where all the teachers had to go to Guangzhou for some anniversary thing. The place I work started off in Guangzhou before being taken across to Hong Kong. I tried to get out of going by claiming I had no Chinese visa, and that it was impossible for me to get one without plane tickets anfd hotel bookings - not true, but they don't know that - but when they offered/threatened to get a travel agent on the case, I suddenly “remembered” that I had one after all. Twats. Anyway, because this was a Friday/Saturday thing, they gave us Monday off to make up for it, so I decided to get the train from Guangzhou to Nanning on the Saturday evening rather than head back to Hong Kong with everyone else.
The end of our staff trip was at some crappy “cultural” theme park. We got there around 2 and were left to our own devices until 4, when we were supposed to meet back at the bus, but I just took my stuff and f**ked off almost immediately, not before scouting the place for creds.
Lingnan Impression
“Theme Park” here just meant crappy tourist trap selling s**te from fake “traditional” buildings.
This looked promising:
The map also showed something which looked as though it would be a powered dragon coaster, but the map lied. It turned out to be this:
Like, what the f**k even is that? It didn’t move or do anything. Just sat there on a short piece of track. Bastards.
Anyway, since I’d decided that, unlike my coworkers, I didn’t need to spend two hours taking selfies in front of fake s**t, I ditched early. There had been no plan to get any creds in Guangzhou, but there were a couple of +1s listed not too far away. These were also, quite luckily, in a stupid part of the city which I’d decided to ignore when I finally get back to Guangzhou for a proper cred mop since they’re nowhere near anything else.
As I was looking these places up, something else caught my eye on Google Maps. Since it was on the way to a place I knew to have a cred, I thought I might as well scope it out even though there’s nothing listed there.
Baolong Amusement Park
Although this was “in” the city, it was pretty much in the middle of nowhere, just off some very minor road in a farming area. As is the usual these days, I used Didi, so there was no issue with taxi drivers. It wasn’t too far from the place I’d just come from, but I still doubt many drivers would know the place.
And the hard work pays off! Another glorious jungle mouse to add to my collection. Discovering creds is fab. At this point, I feel I’m probably in line for a Nobel Prize or summat, given all these life-changing discoveries I’ve made for the betterment of humanity.
The next place, which should’ve been the first place until I made my Earth-shattering discovery, wasn’t too far away, so I decided to walk it. See what I mean by middle of nowhere:
Fantasy D World
Despite the promising name, this place was extremely disappointing. They were getting ready to close up for the day and there was nobody around at all. Given the state of the place, I’d be surprised if anyone had been there at all. Awful craphole in a crap location, but like many of these awful Chinese crapholes, it’s somehow still clinging on.
Yay for another Jungle Mouse at least.
My favourite thing here is the stolen height marker from Chimelong Paradise just down the road. When I say stolen, I don’t think it was just copied, but actually nicked.
Onto the final +1!
Xinghai Park
This was much more of the typical city park with rides type of affair, so was actually busy.
Look! People actually riding something!
So, considering no creds were on the cards for this day, the +3 – including the new discovery – was a decent little bonus. Like I said before, I need to do a proper Guangzhou weekend at some point to mop up the 20 or so +1s dotted around, but the two (now three) in that area would definitely have been last on the list given the location, so my crappy work trip worked out quite well in that respect.
From there, it was onto the train station to take the three-hour trip to Nanning for some proper parks. That’ll be next then.
I had some bulls**t work thing where all the teachers had to go to Guangzhou for some anniversary thing. The place I work started off in Guangzhou before being taken across to Hong Kong. I tried to get out of going by claiming I had no Chinese visa, and that it was impossible for me to get one without plane tickets anfd hotel bookings - not true, but they don't know that - but when they offered/threatened to get a travel agent on the case, I suddenly “remembered” that I had one after all. Twats. Anyway, because this was a Friday/Saturday thing, they gave us Monday off to make up for it, so I decided to get the train from Guangzhou to Nanning on the Saturday evening rather than head back to Hong Kong with everyone else.
The end of our staff trip was at some crappy “cultural” theme park. We got there around 2 and were left to our own devices until 4, when we were supposed to meet back at the bus, but I just took my stuff and f**ked off almost immediately, not before scouting the place for creds.
Lingnan Impression
“Theme Park” here just meant crappy tourist trap selling s**te from fake “traditional” buildings.
This looked promising:
The map also showed something which looked as though it would be a powered dragon coaster, but the map lied. It turned out to be this:
Like, what the f**k even is that? It didn’t move or do anything. Just sat there on a short piece of track. Bastards.
Anyway, since I’d decided that, unlike my coworkers, I didn’t need to spend two hours taking selfies in front of fake s**t, I ditched early. There had been no plan to get any creds in Guangzhou, but there were a couple of +1s listed not too far away. These were also, quite luckily, in a stupid part of the city which I’d decided to ignore when I finally get back to Guangzhou for a proper cred mop since they’re nowhere near anything else.
As I was looking these places up, something else caught my eye on Google Maps. Since it was on the way to a place I knew to have a cred, I thought I might as well scope it out even though there’s nothing listed there.
Baolong Amusement Park
Although this was “in” the city, it was pretty much in the middle of nowhere, just off some very minor road in a farming area. As is the usual these days, I used Didi, so there was no issue with taxi drivers. It wasn’t too far from the place I’d just come from, but I still doubt many drivers would know the place.
And the hard work pays off! Another glorious jungle mouse to add to my collection. Discovering creds is fab. At this point, I feel I’m probably in line for a Nobel Prize or summat, given all these life-changing discoveries I’ve made for the betterment of humanity.
The next place, which should’ve been the first place until I made my Earth-shattering discovery, wasn’t too far away, so I decided to walk it. See what I mean by middle of nowhere:
Fantasy D World
Despite the promising name, this place was extremely disappointing. They were getting ready to close up for the day and there was nobody around at all. Given the state of the place, I’d be surprised if anyone had been there at all. Awful craphole in a crap location, but like many of these awful Chinese crapholes, it’s somehow still clinging on.
Yay for another Jungle Mouse at least.
My favourite thing here is the stolen height marker from Chimelong Paradise just down the road. When I say stolen, I don’t think it was just copied, but actually nicked.
Onto the final +1!
Xinghai Park
This was much more of the typical city park with rides type of affair, so was actually busy.
Look! People actually riding something!
So, considering no creds were on the cards for this day, the +3 – including the new discovery – was a decent little bonus. Like I said before, I need to do a proper Guangzhou weekend at some point to mop up the 20 or so +1s dotted around, but the two (now three) in that area would definitely have been last on the list given the location, so my crappy work trip worked out quite well in that respect.
From there, it was onto the train station to take the three-hour trip to Nanning for some proper parks. That’ll be next then.