Panyu

General information

Where is it?

Panyu is a district in the city of Guangzhou in the Guangdong Province in China.

(For more detailed maps, please go to http://www.6088.com/pyclimate/panyumap.htm)

How to get there?

From Hong Kong, you can reach Panyu by

- tour coach (usually take around 2 hours)

- by sea from Hong Kong to Nansha or Lotus port (about 1 hour)

Weather Information

Weather in Panyu is very similar to Hong Kong

* Spring (March - April)

* Summer (May - August), hottest month is in July, with an average temperature of 29 degree celcius

* Autumn (September - October)

* Winter (November - February), coldest month is in January, with an average temperature of 13.3 degree celcius

Note: Typhoon season from May to October.

Language

Cantonese and Putonghua

Why worths visiting?

Panyu is famous for its beautiful sceneries and historical buildings. There are various landmarks which should not be missed:

The Baomo Garden

This garden has an area of 100,000 square metres, and it combine the culture of an upright official, gardening arts and ancient building styles in Southern China, waterside scenery in the Pearl River Delta and exquisite works of arts in ancient or modern time. Do remember to bring your camera with you, I am sure you will be attracted by the beautiful sceneries and the traditional Chinese culture.

For more details you can visit http://www.baomogarden.com/

The Sunflower Garden

This garden is famous for its 'sea' of sunflowers. Besides, you can see a number of different animals like the little pigs, pigeons and squirrels. Children especially will have great fun feeding these little animals.

Yuyin Shan Fang (Ancestral garden)

This garden is one of the four great famous ancient gardens in the Guangdong province. This garden is originally the home of a senior official of Qing Dynasty who resigned and built this garden. It is famous for its brilliant design and layout despite of the small size of the garden.

For more details, you can visit http://www.6088.com/pyclimate/sight/yysf/index.htm

The Chime Long Night Zoo

This zoo opens in the evening and you can have a look of animals from around the world in a half-an hour adventure on a 'train' in the dark. Apart from seeing the animals, you can also have spectacular show and magic show which are both fascinating.

For more details, you can visit www.chimelong.com.cn

Apart from the above-mentioned mentioned attractions, there are still others which i have not visited yet. For example, the Xiangjiang Safari Park and the Lotus mountain.

My memories of Panyu

This time I joined a 2 days' tour to Panyu. To be frank, the cost is quite expensive since I have chosen to live in the newly built Chime Long Hotel which is just next to the night zoo. This hotel is famous as you'll have white tigers accompanying you for breakfast!!!

Concerning the attractions, I especially like the Baomo garden. Although I am unlucky that there was a thunderstorm during the time I visited Baomo Garden, you can still walk around the garden as it has sheltered paths throughout the garden. I am not much interested with the statues or ancient drawings in the museum (although these are treasures), but the beautiful sceneries were enough to occupy the one hour stay there.

The night zoo is another favourite of mine. Although I was quite exhausted with the long bus trip during the day, the spectacular circus show and the little train trip to the animals kept me up till 10pm. The train trip was originally quite scary to me, because we were not allowed to switch on any light source and not to take photos as this will stimulate the animals. Besides, we are not at all protected in the 'train' as the both sides of the train do not have windows. However as the train moved along, we found that those only those mild animals like sheep and giraffe could come onto the road, other fierce animals could not. The only bad thing was that the train sometimes moved too fast and we miss some of the animals. Concerning the spectacular shows, the circus show will be substituted by another kind of show in October 2003 onwards.

On the whole, I enjoyed these 2 days' trip pretty much. Whenever you have a chance to go to Panyu, I would say, never miss the Baomo Garden, the night zoo and the Chime Long hotel!!! Joining travel tours may be too rush for some people, package with transport from HK to Panyu, entrance fee to night zoo and accomodation at Chime Long hotel is also available. This may be another alternative, especially for those who will go to Panyu not for the 1st time.

For details, you may go to http://www.chinatravel1.com/zy/guangdong/zypanyu-taopiao.htm

For more photos about my trip please go to Photos - Panyu Trip