Well, the title of this review said it correctly. I can't blame my Meizhou friend for recommending that we take the train from Guangzhou to Meizhou. Well, we did, and stayed on it for a good 5.5 hour ride. That was a good start to what I told myself, a "rough journey". Anyway, I shall not bore you with the interesting train ride experience, which I will share in greater detail in my blog later.

When we arrived in Meizhou train station, we were greeted by many unlicensed drivers. We were experienced enough to make a bee line for the official taxis parked further in front of the gate. Interesting, as we got into one taxi, another man got into the same taxi and asked to share the same ride. Since we knew Ramada hotel was just a stone's throw away, we conceded. It was a nice sharing experience as that man also shared some local tips with us.

When we arrived at Ramada Hotel, we were greeted with so much warmth and professional friendly service. It was unlike a typical 4-star hotel in China. It was more like a 5-star hotel decor, plus 5-star customer service! We were upgraded as there were no more non-smoking rooms for us. We had a good deal from the hotel for the same price. Anyway, the prices range from RMB138 to above RMB1000 (for the suites). We had our room for RMB218 per night with breakfast. So, we decided it was a great deal and we extended our stay for another 2 nights. We had originally planned to stay for 2 nights only, then proceed to stay one night in Dapu, and one night in YongDing before heading back to Guangzhou by train. Since we "fell in love" with the room and great customer service, we decided to make Ramada Hotel our base. We travelled out to Dapu one day and back. Then, we travelled to YongDing and back. This turned out to be a much better strategy as we really enjoyed ourselves back in the hotel, after roughing it out in the mountains in the outskirts, capturing the various details of the TuLou and the Hakka villages.

I strongly recommend anyone thinking of visiting Meizhou to stay at the Ramada Hotel. Not only is this hotel very near to the Meixian Airport and the Meixian Train Station, it is not far from the "downtown" shopping area. It is also very near to the HongDu Food Street where you get very nice Hakka NiangTouFu (beancurd).

The hotel has nice and friendly facilities including mahjong room, restaurants on ground and 10th floor, a gym, and a La Maple Spa (which is very popular). The only sore point was that it didn't have a swimming pool. Oh, if you need extra cash, there is one PLUS/VISA ATM and bank right across the street. You can also walk further up to the circle and withdraw from the Bank of China too.

The hotel helped us to make arrangement for a car and a private driver for the two trips we made. Not too bad at all. Both drove a small 4-seater Suzuki. Their charges to Dapu/YongDing was about RMB600 for a whole day use. We treated the drivers to lunch and we had a good time chatting with the driver on the journey as well. One good tip, as we learned, would be start off early from Meizhou if you want to capture some nice shots in YongDing. We set off at 6am and reached our destination at 8.30am. Even though the distance between Meizhou and YongDing was less than 80km on the map, the actual distance inclusive of the mountain winding roads added up to more than 100km!

If you need more information, just drop me an email. Thanks and happy staying at Ramada in Meizhou!

Clayton