Canton Fair - Apr 2024 - Day 2
After having a good rest, I got up really early at about 4:30 AM. The hotel was very comfortable and had a lot of amenities. I laid in the bed until 5AM and then got fresh. I then decided to sit down and do some research about the fair and which all halls will be good for me. I had got the guide from the fair yesterday so I spent about 2 hours working on them.
Also the VPN set up I had on my laptop was not working, so that caused a lot delays as I did not have much access to the internet. Although, I did resolve the issue later in the evening when I contacted PureVPN support and they provided me with the new configuration instantly and I was able to get on the internet again. So, a big shout out to PureVPN.
Breakfast was not included in my room, I did confirm it with the reception, after that I went out to get some breakfast. There was a 7Eleven store next door and I got some bread and juice. It was not easy buying the goods and everything on the packaging was written in Chinese. I made an educated guess at the contents and by the looks of the bread and bought them. Once again I paid using Alipay.
The hotel staff did not really understand English, so I had to use the translator to ask for the nearest metro station. It was YongTai on Line 3.
The Canton Fair host ground is located at Pazhou Complex, with nearby metro station Pazhou or XinGangDong on Line 8. You can get off the metro at Exit A of XinGangDong Station if you are heading for Area A, and Exit B or Exit C of Pazhou Station for Area B or Area C
I took the Metro Line 3 and then changed to Line 8 at Kecun and got off at XinGangDong as I had to go to Hall A. Once you get in, you get a real notion of how immensely huge the thing is. I kept walking up and down the hall and to be honest most of the time I was lost and did not have a clue where I was.
After a while I figured out that the big companies were all in the middle and had larger booths, but the once that were smaller were on the outside periphery. So towards the later half of the day I was going to the smaller stalls.
The best way to navigate a hall was to do it row wise, they were labeled from A to P lets say, so the best way would be to walk down the entire row A of one hall and then come back on row B. That way you can cover a lot of booths and wont miss any. The main thing is to stay in one hall, as you can easily walk off the another hall as the halls are adjacent to each other.
I was attending phase 1 of the fair and this was all about electrical and electronics. There were loads of stall for batteries, speakers, TV, monitors screens. There were even Electric Vehicles and chargers and scooters.
I was looking for smart watches and handheld fans. There were loads of stalls selling these. I also saw some other popular products like robot vacuums and window cleaner robots and jump starters. The was also a whole section for electric goods like wires, cables, switches, fans, coolers, ac, mixer grinders, hair styling products.
After viewing a lot of stalls, I was getting tired, I decided to go the food hall which was at the basement and look for some place to sit down and have some food. I decided to have the spicy chicken burger from McD. After that I went back and visited a few more stalls.
After the fair was closed, I decided to go and visit the Honor store which I had searched for and take a punt to see if I find it. I got off the Metro station which I had assumed and walked to a mobile shop. It had some Honor and Huawei stuff, but it did not have the phones and tablets I was looking for. But the salesgirl very kindly offered to take me to a bigger store. The mall was on top of the metro station Tiyu Xilu, where I had got off!
This store was literally on the opposite side of the road and it was inside a huge mall. In fact from the outside I would never have guessed that it was such a big mall. We went to the store and I was able to get all the stuff that I wanted. I managed to get a discount and also got offered a few gifts as well. I had got the Magic 6 Pro 12GB, 256GB storage for Deepika, the Pad 9 12GB, 512GB storage and the Band 9 watches for the kids. I had got all this for about £850. The problem was while paying the payments kept failing because it was a big amount. So I had to do 4 transactions using WeChat Pay this time. Although it took me a while, but it was all done.
I got back to my hotel in the metro. I noticed that there was a free breakfast voucher kept for me on the table. I was very happy. I went out to get some dinner. There was a shop nearby and I went there. I had to scan the code on the table and it came up with the menu and I placed an order for the Fried rice noodles and a soft drink.
The food was good and I paid at the end using Alipay. I came back to my room and then spoke to everyone back home. They were all excited to see all the stuff I had got for them. After having a chat with everyone, I went to sleep.
