After a very scenic train ride through the country from Xi'an, we arrived wide eyed at the beautiful Hangzhou. After yet another small 'disaster' of getting on the wrong bus and heading in the wrong direction a kind young chinese guy helped us, with his electronic translator, in the right direction. Our hostel was pretty cool, set upon quite a steep hill, this was not ideal with our thousands of bags we had accumilated, but it had a pretty little pond in the middle that went through the resturant and cool little wooden swings around the courtyard. We dumped our stuff and took off for a stroll around the West Lake while the sun was setting. The West Lake was a huge lake set in a Chinese National Park, surrounded by temples and pagodas and so many ponds and forests. This was to be our 'home' for the next 6 days.
As we couldnt get a train straight to Shanghai from Xi'an, we thought it would be easier and so much cheaper for us to stay outside of the city and settled on Hangzhou. Our second day we set off at 5am for the big city, our aim for the day was to get our Vietnam visa...so after travelling by train for 2hours and racing through the city by taxi for 20 minutes, we arrived at a pretty empty embassy office!! Yeh..you've guessed it, it was closed! I was sooo mad, I grumbled to the guy behind the desk "I have been travelling since 5am this morning to get here, you better tell me this place isnt closed"...after a lot of Chinese talking to me, the guy took me up in the lift to show me the entrance to the embassy. The sign stated "Due to 'some' festival the embassy will be closed from 12th-16th June"...I stormed off...back into the lift, and shouted at the guy "You should put this on your website if your gonna close it!!" Stomped out of the building and parked myself down outside! I could have cried!
So 20 minutes pass where I blame Dom, stating it was his "stupid" fault that we had to come here and saying "right well lets just go back to Hangzhou, I hate Shanghai" Dom slowly talked me round, and bribed me with a McDonald's in order for me to stay in the city for the day!! Thank goodness he is so good at this, as Shanghai ended up being a pretty city. We did the usual and walked around for most of the day, sightseeing and photographing. The view from the Bund was amazing and the skyline looked amazing in the blue summer sky. The weather was so hot, so this especially cheered me up. We had definatley made the better decision to stay out of Shanghai, due to Expo and the huge amount of tourists, it was enough to handle for only one day.
The next few days in Hangzhou we chilled out around the lake, taking in the views of the surrounding forests and beautiful lakes. Chinese fishermen lined the lake on one side and bikers filled the small paths. Our days consisted of walking to the ice cream shop for this scrummy mango pot ice cream sorbet, mmm mmm! And then finishing that off with some popcorn, a great diet. The lake was so tranquil and serene, completely different from any of the places we had stayed in China so far.
Hangzhou was surrounded by tea fields and springs and wells everywhere. We went up to the famous Dragon Well, were Longjing tea was made. It was up in the moantains in a wooded area. There was a huge well where some superstitious tea thing happened, and it was so clear I just wanted to just in to relieve myself from the humidity. We were tempted to get bikes out for a cycle round but couldnt find the kiosk, haha! It was nice to get away from so much hustle and bustle, yet we still couldnt escape the red caps! They literally got a guided tour through a signposted park! I thought this was pretty strange but one thing we have learnt from 3 weeks in China is how crazy the Chinese were!!
Day 4 came quickly and we were due to leave, as we set off on the journey with our bags in tow, mistakingly getting on the right bus in the wrong direction, we arrived at the South station ready for a 23hour train to Guilin. 1 Hour later around 7:45pm, after our train was due to leave at 7pm, we found out this unfortunately wasnt going to be our night we would travel to Guilin :( We did, however, have the option of waiting at the station for 1-2days for the train to arrive. I personally wasnt really up for this option so decided to get a taxi back to our hostel and stay for 2 more nights!!
Eventually, after 6 days in Hangzhou we were more than ready to be on our way. We got the girl on reception to ring the train company to check our train was running...which to our delight it was! So we got the right bus in the right direction and got there with, what we thought would be, minutes to spare. We had met a guy Andy who was also travelling on the same train at our hostel, so he now joined us for a few days around Guilin and Yangshuo. He is probably one of the coolest guys we had met on our trip, it was definately going to be emotional when we would part ways. Me and Dom would shed many tears...(haha, he told me to write this haha) So 7pm came and went, luckily Andy could understand Chinese, and had found out our train was delayed for 2-3hours!! GREAT! The temptation for food, other than pot noodles, crept upon us, and after Andy suggested KFC, which was 'outside' the station, he set off with our order written down to purchase tea. He returned EMPTY HANDED!! We were gutted, BUT as we knew our train was delayed for another 2hours we thought a KFC taxi run would be a great alternative!! Off we trotted in our taxi to the kernel, returning this time full of goodies :) just as we sat down, spread the mayonnaise over the tasty looking fries, our train arrived and everyone started boarding!! Great timing or what...Guilin here we come.
No comments:
Post a Comment