My Journey Across Asia: November 2010

On the last weekend my family was here we headed out for Hangzhou on Thursday night, little did we know that we would be getting on the slowest train to Hangzhou with no seats because everyone was going back home to Hangzhou from the expo. To describe our trip to Hangzhou to you it felt like a movie. Ok let me explain, so on the train we met these girls who were about my age and I started talking to them in Chinese about different things like studying Chinese and the school I attended in Shanghai. I discovered that one of the girls was also studying at the same University, and so I'm like "oh cool". But then the girls were like oh if we're free tomorrow we'll show you around Hangzhou, but I didn't really think it was necessary. Then they were like well where are you staying, and I told them at this hostel. They of course thought being as though we were Americans we should stay somewhere nicer. But this hostel was a hotel that my friend highly recommended and so i really wanted to check it out. Well we got off the train about 11:00 p.m. and then one of the girls is like there is a hotel right next to the train station, so I'm like well i guess we can go check it out since we are so close by. Then it was really strange, because she kept bargaining with the front desk and as it was the rooms said only three people to a room so I was like ok this is going to be a huge problem. We were all exhausted, but I decided that I wanted to stick with my original plan. So we get in a cab, I call the hostel and ask them to tell the cab driver where to go. The weird thing is the cab driver definitely seems drunk and he won't talk to me and I have no idea at the point where we are going. I get a call back from the hostel, and they tell me that I should get out of the cab and find a different cab driver because he doesn't know where he is going. So then I persist to the cab driver in Chinese, let us out of the cab now. Well he refuses to listen to me and then I start getting in a full blown argument with him to let us out. Well, he finally stops the cab and says that we have arrived. I call the hostel and they tell me they will send someone to walk down and pick us up. I'm so relieved that they are so helpful at this point. I then tell the cab driver to leave and that I'm not paying him because he didn't take us where we wanted to go. Well he left angry, but he was drunk to begin with so I guess what did I expect. We were so happy to arrive at the hostel. The hostel was absolutely wonderful and so quaint. The room was huge and tastefully decorated. After arriving, Claire was still hungry so we walked to this restaurant right near the hostel that was still hopping at 12:30 at night. We ended up having a little snack and then heading back and sleeping like princes and princesses out of pure exhaustion.

Next morning we woke up fairly early wanting to get a head start on our day. We started out by having a lovely breakfast prepared by the hostel. We then set out on the cobblestone streets. Walked into a traditional Chinese medicine shop, got my favorite coffee at Café 85, and then got to see a parade going on in the street with all of these people in wonderful costumes. It was so serendipitous that the festival was going on just as we walked through the streets. After browsing the street vendors and little shops, we set out to test the city’s free bike rentals. Well it took us a while to get the system figured out, but we got on the bikes and went to the famous lake called the West Lake in Hangzhou. It was absolutely beautiful, however by the time we got down there, mom, Jesse, and me had to get going to the train station to purchase tickets back to Shanghai. That was another ordeal because we had to wait in line for over an hour just to get the tickets again. By the time we headed back it was already 3 in the afternoon. We met up with Claire and dad and then we had to head back towards the hotel and turn in our bikes at the original place. Well when we went to go and get bikes for Mom, Jesse, and me that was a bit problematic because the rental place had said that we hadn't returned our bikes from when we had gone to the train station. However, that was not the case and so I had to try to explain to this manager that we had already turned the bikes in at a different location. Well he made some calls and we were finally on our way with bikes and all back to the original bike location where we put our money deposit down. After that stressful fiasco, I decided that I would never go through that type of rental service again. In Xi'an we had no problems, because we just rented it through one place and there weren't several other factors involved. However, I felt this bike service was much more stressful than they say it was in the book, even though it is a "free rental service" I would never recommend doing it again, especially if you are with five other people who don't speak Chinese.

When we got back to the neighborhood of our hotel. Everyone wanted to do some last minute shopping but I was quite concerned about time and getting to the train station. We quickly got in our last minute shopping. Then we got our bags and everyone was starving so we decided to go to the same restaurant that we had gone to the night before. It was good because there was like no one in the restaurant at 6. We ordered some dishes and then quickly headed out to the streets to find a taxi. However, little did my family know that finding a taxi at 6 o'clock in a city in Hangzhou is nearly impossible. We were running up and down the streets like madmen, but all of the cabs were taken. Finally we found one cab, but by this time it was already 6:15 our train was leaving by 6:35. We all tried to pile in the cab, but because there were five of us and the cab driver only allows four people by law to be in a cab, one of us had to get out and so I said ok I'll get out and the rest of you stay in, but my mom of course decided to get out too. As they left, I was thinking oh gosh I have no idea how we're going to get to this train station on time. As my mom and me are running up and down the street trying to find a cab, I spot a police car. I run up to the police car, knock on his window and ask if he can help us. He pulls over to the side of the street, and I tell him in Chinese how urgent it is that we get to the train station. He is very helpful and agrees to take me and my mom there. While in the back of the police car me and my mom are so relieved and grateful, just thanking the officer over and over. We arrive at the train station before Jesse, Claire, and dad do. We call them on their cell because the station is huge. They are shocked at how quickly we arrived, oh one more plug in my mom freaked out when we got out of the police car, because she thought she had left her purse in the restaurant. Luckily it was in the cab with the rest of the family. Once we all met up we ran to the train platform and got on the train about two minutes before the train left. Luckily we had seats( well actually they were beds) and after all of the commotion I crashed and fell asleep on the train ride back to Shanghai.

When we arrived back in Shanghai, we were all hungry again. I was craving some American food, Claire wanted to explore a bar... so we went to this classy bar called Cottons. Mom unfortunately didn't join us because she was tiered and we had that problem with the cab situation of fitting us all into one cab. I'm telling you it is not easy if you have a family of five living in China, you can't take a cab all together anywhere. It was fun to go this bar, but I was definitely exhausted by the end of the night. The worse part is that by the time we got back I thought that I could get in the back gate entrance of my school, but I couldn't because they close it at midnight, so I had to walk all the way around to the front gate and then all the way to my dorm, so I got in about a 25 minute walk all the way back. Luckily I got to sleep in the next morning.

Overall our one day in Hangzhou was a lot of fun, however not enough time. It would have been nice to stay longer, but because the hotel we were staying at back in Shanghai was very busy we had to keep our reservations.