Taxi Ride in Guangzhou

There's no doubt that visitors to the city of Guangzhou may not have major problem in finding means of transportation to move around the city area. One could use several alternatives such as train, Public Cabs, Busses, Private coasters, Scooters, Tricycles and so on.

Since we were not familiar with the destination and the places around the city, public cab was our main choice of transportation.  Communication with most of the taxi drivers was still difficult since they only speak non-other than Chinese.

The only way to communicate was by showing our notebooks or business cards which had addresses written in Chinese (We had asked a local friend to write addresses of some places we wanted to go before hand).

One of the reasons why we preferred public Cab was that most of the cab in Guangzhou was installed with meters. Hence, it could give us sense of confidence of not being overcharged by the drivers.

Taking a ride in  the city of Guangzhou was nothing different from other city except that we had to sit tight and hold on to anything that we could grab to keep us stable as if riding on a roller coaster. It was quite understandable that living in the city of densely populated such as Guangzhou, competition is very stiff and time is most important to all the people.

I would not be surprised if motto such as 'Speed is the essence of our business' is quietly being used by most of the taxi drivers – you know what I mean. My advice is fasten your safety belt and don’t take the front seat if you are afraid of sitting in a race car.

Useful Tips:

Since some of the Hotel staffs in which you stay could communicate in English, you may ask them to write in Chinese Letters all the destinations that you may want to go in your note book (with translation of course). Most importantly, you must keep the hotel business card with address in it so that you can show it to taxi driver whenever you want to go back to your hotel room.

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