Hangzhou > Wuzhen > Suzhou

July 31st

This morning it was raining again. In an effort to keep my backpack drier today, I wore a poncho which was basically a trash bag. Oh my god it was hot as hell!!!

We began with a leisurely morning cruise on the West Lake. Again, lots of beautiful gardens and historic sites to see.


Our Boat


Lotus flowers – they are all over China


View of Hangzhou from our boat

Mom in West Lake Park


Sorry, I couldn’t resist (and that is fresh water, not my pee - yet)

Then we visited the Pagoda of Six Harmonies. Which of course was surrounded by lush gardens and very beautiful. Still pouring, but beautiful. The Pagoda was built in 970 AD – it stands over 197 feet tall. It served as a lighthouse up until the Ming dynasty.

View of Pagoda from boat ride on West Lake

Tree growing in men’s room at Pagoda of Six Harmonies

Next we rode the bus for about an hour to Wuzhen where we took a tour of a 1,000 year old water town. A water town is just that – a town surrounded by water (moats). On the bottom level is your shop and above that is where you live. Quite rustic conditions.


Not in cage, just hanging out

We had lunch in the water town which is pretty much what I pictured all the meals to be like. For starters, it was about 110 degrees in the restaurant. We were seated on benches that were 2x4’s – and we were crammed in together. My back was touching the person at the table behind me.

The food was horrific… including the fish in his entirety. He was watching me from across the table the entire meal. I ate nothing. I sat (sweating) holding a napkin over my mouth and nose.

Once we escaped the sauna-like restaurant, we walked around water town and saw the sites.

After this, we got back on the bus and rode to Suzhou.

Here is a different style of squat toilet. Works the same – but this style typically has automatic flush. I was in the stall for over a minute so the attendant was banging on the door screaming at me in Chinese.


Suzhou has a network of canals, bridges and canal-side housing. It dates back to the 6th century when the canals were first built to control the low water table.

We visited the Institute of Embroidery which was truly amazing! The artwork looked like paintings, but when you got up real close, you could see it was actually thread. We were not allowed to take photos as they were original works of art. Truly amazing!!

My favorite was an embroidery of “Starry Night” by Van Gogh that was $53,531 USD.

Later, we checked into our hotel. The Aster hotel in Suzhou.
Nicer view:

But oh my! It smelled so bad. It was old & dirty – musty smell. It was a rough one!

We did not feel like joining the group for dinner, but since we had skipped out the night before, we felt obligated. We regretted that decision! The restaurant also was dirty, smelly and HOT! I had rice with soy sauce. Everything else was very strange – everyone agreed with me for once!

Upon returning to the hotel, I was completely starving so I went to gift shop for a snack. Original Pringles and Sweet Cherry Tomato Lays. The Pringles were terrible! Smaller than ours and very greasy. Lays were normal texture but after you ate one it was like there was a breath mint in your mouth. Very strange. So I ate a granola bar, drank a few beers and went to bed.

Xi’an > Hangzhou

July 30



Hangzhou
(pronounced hung-shoo)

Didn’t sleep very well – short night!

We had breakfast at 5:15a and then on the bus at 6.

Upon arrival at the airport, we were given our boarding passes. Mom’s was still “TRIMMER” and mine was now “RTIMMER”. Our tour guide was a bit panicked because the lines for security were really long. He told us to just get in line and hope for the best.

Thankfully, the security agent didn’t even look at our names. She only looked at the photos on our passports, then stamped our boarding passes and let us thru.

The flight to Hangzhou was 2 hours – again on a 737 – I think it was China Eastern Airlines. We had a choice of noodles with mystery meat or rice with carrots & peas on the flight. I went for the warm OJ.

Upon arrival we hit the bathrooms – oh my! The smell took your breath away. Nothing like the airport bathrooms in Beijing, that is for sure!

The bus ride was about an hour and we saw a lot of countryside for the first time. Lots of farmers. However, their houses (from the outside) are quite big & new.


They only have a tiny piece of land to farm on though.


Our tour guide explained that the 1 child policy is not enforced for farmers, so that is one reason why the houses are larger. They are new and more modern because the government gave them money to build them when the freeway was put in a few years ago.

It was pouring rain due to a typhoon that was passing thru the region so they had to change our itinerary a bit. We started with lunch which was pretty good. I actually ate an entire meatball – it was beef or pork (or so my mom said). Of course, dessert was watermelon (which we have been served for dessert with EVERY meal so far)

We then went to the Lingyin Temple. It was outdoors and raining very heavily – because I can’t leave my laptop on the tour bus, it proved to be a challenge to keep it dry. I wrapped my mom’s jacket over it and tilted the umbrella so it wouldn’t drip on it (small umbrella) – so basically the front of me was soaked and the back of me was relatively dry.

Anyway – the temple was beautiful! Endless Buddha’s carved into the mountainsides. Because of the rain, we only went to the main parts.

They did allow us to take photos of the Buddha’s here as long as we didn’t use a flash. The highlight was a 66 foot tall Buddha carved in 1956 from camphor wood.




I forget what the girl Buddha is called - something like Buddivista (sp??)
Anyway - look at all the creatures on the wall behind her (if you can see them)


Again, the grounds were amazing, but very slippery. You would never find such footing in the states – too many lawsuits!

Next, we went to a tea museum. The mountainside was covered with tea trees. I hope you can see them in the photos – rows as far as you can see up the mountains.


We had an excellent presentation of the history of tea and taste testing. Mom and I bought some tea – there is plenty for everyone we know (and then some!).

Then we went to the hotel – which was the nicest Ramada I have ever seen!
However, our view was terrible!

Mom and I decided not to join the group for dinner as we needed some time to ourselves. We walked around the city for about an hour – which was interesting. Tons of people and shops. We didn’t stop at any of the shops though – mainly clothing places.

We had dinner at the hotel – which had numerous western dishes. It was very good!

I had internet issues in our room, so went to the business center to check email, etc.

We finally got some much needed sleep.

Special Requests?

Ni Hao!
(hello)

Does anyone have any special requests from China?

Mom returns to Columbus on Sunday, so I can send stuff back with her (Dave can distribute if needed).

I will be back on August 25th - so if you think of anything, let me know!!

Again, thank you all for reading!!

I just posted our travels for Tuesday, see below.
Will update again on Friday morning :)

Xi'an

July 29th

Xi’an, pronounced ‘shee-ann”

Our morning started early once again.

Our first stop was tomb of China’s first emperor, Qin Shi Huangdi. His tomb was accidentally discovered in 1974 by peasants digging a well. This is the site of the Terracotta Warriors which have been guarding the tomb, underground for over 2,000 years.


They are truly amazing life sized warriors made out of terracotta. There are over 7,000 soldiers, archers & horses. Many are in good shape, others are crushed.


However, they are taking them out piece by piece and putting them back together.


Each warrior is different - which is incredible!


This is our tour director, “Peter”.


After this we went to lunch where we saw Chinese noodles being made. That was pretty cool.

They also had snake wine - which totally freaked me out. Basically, a huge snake in a huge jar with liquid that they claimed was some sort of wine. I turned my head each time they came by with it.

I have come to the conclusion that I can get by on the following items: marinated cucumbers, fried rice with sauteed celery and then I pick the onions out of the other dishes and add to my rice & celery so there is some flavor.

We then visited the Great Goose Pagoda built in 652 AD.



Made a quick stop to take photos of the Xi’an city wall – which is the only standing city wall in all of China. All other city’s have been destroyed over the years. It is 9 miles long in the shape of a rectangle. 39 feet high and have bases that are 56 feet thick. Inside the walls is the downtown.


When you see people waiting around for a bus or taxi or just hanging out in general, they squat. This explains how they are able to use the toilets here.

(see guy on left)

Tomorrow we are flying to Hangzhou – our tour director told us on the way back to the hotel that our luggage had to be outside our doors by 10:30pm. In addition, no liquids are allowed thru security at all. So we couldn’t even keep the basics with us for our carry on bags. In addition, we had to be at breakfast at 5:15am and on the bus at 6am. All of this information was not taken at all well, especially by the ladies!

We were on our own for dinner tonight. The hotel we were in (Grand Mecure) was part of a Sofitel hotel complex. There was a French restaurant in one of the other hotels, so mom and I went there. It was very nice. We both opted for a pasta dish – although different – still tasty.

Apparently wine is not very popular here. It tends to be very expensive compared to all other drinks. Also, each time we order it, the servers never know how to open a fresh bottle. It’s quite entertaining!

After dinner, we went back to the hotel to shower and pack up our stuff to have out by 10:30p for the bag boys.

Beijing > Xi'an

July 28

Our tour has strict limitations on luggage size & weight. Since I am going to be here for 5 weeks – this was an issue for me. There was stuff I will need for work once I get to Qingdao that I didn’t want to lug with me during the tour. So I had arranged with our tour hotel in Beijing to hold a bag for me while on the tour. I will pick it up on Sunday when I return to Beijing for training. When I return, I will be staying in a hotel about 30 minutes away (via taxi) so that should be interesting going from one hotel to another to retrieve my bag.

Anyway, it was difficult to leave the bag behind as I am fearful it will not be there when I return. For 3 of the 4 days at this hotel, I saw luggage in the foyer that simply had a big fish net over the top – that was how it was being stored. I was assured mine was being locked away – but I am still not convinced.

On to our day…..
We took the bus to a Hutong in Beijing. A Hutong is basically an old neighborhood that is still left over from before Beijing became a modern city. They are kinda like duplexes in that they are connected.

Each unit consists of 4 rooms – kitchen, living room, 2 bedrooms.

bedroom


living room



kitchen

In the middle is a shared courtyard where you grow a garden.


courtyard

Notice I did not list a bathroom – there are none – you have to use the public toilets. We did not see any of them – but saw signs. They are spread out all over the Hutong – can’t imagine not having a bathroom in my own house!?

Upon arrival, we took a rickshaw ride around the Hutong.



There are parks, stores, restaurants & bars and then the ‘houses’ are in the alleys.


The family we visited was the parents, their 2 sons and 2 daughter in-laws.


family we visited (parents)

Each had their own 4 room ‘house’ and shared the courtyard. It was in pretty good condition considering some of the exteriors of the others.


After our rickshaw ride, we took the bus to the Beijing airport to fly to Xi’an. Because this flight was booked by Globus (our tour company), we didn’t ever see the tickets until they handed them to us at the ticket counter. They spelled our last name wrong – TRIMMER.

The ticket agent was attempting to tell us we had to go see a manager, but we had no idea what she was saying. We got our local tour guide to explain it and he took us to the manager who corrected it. By crossing it out and writing on the ticket. (I could of done that!)

We eventually got thru security – which you have 3 different phases of for domestic flights. International flights only have the standard 1 checkpoint.

We had an hour and had to eat lunch on our own. There was a KFC so mom and I were eager to eat some Western food. Well, that proved to be a challenge because the menu is completely in Chinese – everywhere else we had been also listed a few words in English so you have a vague idea of what you are ordering.

Anyway, they had a picture menu so I ordered what I thought was 2 breasts and mashed potatoes for us to share. The mashed potatoes came in a container that was maybe 1/3 cup in size and tasted nothing like KFC mashed potatoes! The breasts were more like the back of the chicken. Very little white meat on it and very bony. (And most of you know how I feel about “meat on the bone”). I tried to eat it, managed about 2 bites and then broke down and ate some of the skin out of desperation.

We eventually boarded the Air China flight- which was a huge relief since it was a “real” plane (737) and not the rusted prop plane we had envisioned. Mom and I were in the very last row. It was a thousand degrees on the plane.

The flight was 1 hour 45 mins and they actually served us a meal – which is shocking! We didn’t know what most of it was, but had fun looking at the packages.

Upon arrival in Xi’an one of the ladies in the tour group fell in the bathroom – so there was all sorts of commotion and delay getting to our bus.

Xi’an is more like what we pictured China to be. Very old and more third world country like. We assume it has not been spruced up because it is not a host city for the Olympics.

We had about 1 hour once at the hotel to rest and get ready for dinner, however, our luggage was being sent in a different bus – so we were told we might not get it in time. We were told this right after our tour guide said that we needed to dress “smart casual” for our dinner. This of course didn’t go over well as we were all in shorts and had been sweating for the past 9 hours.

The hotel was very nice, however, the rooms were lit with extremely dim lighting. Maybe 15 watt bulbs at most. That was very annoying! Not to mention the fact that all the switches were in strange places and not labeled. The AC and many of the lights were controlled by a little computer thing by the bed – which we didn’t realize for quite some time.

Our bags did arrive about 20 minutes before we had to leave for dinner, so we were able to change and freshen - although very quickly!

We went to a dinner theatre which was very nice. Probably the best food we had yet. Granted, I didn’t eat much other than the cucumbers – (yes, I ate a vegetable!) The show was great! Much better than the Opera the night before.


On our way back to the hotel we were told we had to be back on the bus in about 9 hours which was my breaking point. This is supposed to be a vacation! I have had so little sleep.

When we got back, I decided to have an OJ from the mini-bar. Before opening, I noticed it expired on 2/22/08 – which I find common in mini-bars. So I did what I would of done at any other hotel – call and ask for a new one. This turned into a 30 minute saga with 2 room attendants coming to our room who spoke no English. It was a huge scene. I just wanted a freaking orange juice! They called the front desk and had that person tell me it was not expired – it didn’t expire until January of 2009. This went on and on…. It ended with no new OJ and I didn’t risk drinking the expired one. I was not happy.