HangZhou - the weekend warrior

Well, we left off as I was in a rush to get to the train station in order to get to HangZhou. I know the suspense is killing you, so I'll let you know right away, we made it to the train on time. But before we get there, I'm gonna add a little more about the shopping on Friday.

We went to the Chi Fu market or something that sounds quite like that. Autumn calls it the cheapo market. They sell all the knockoffs there. The first shopping mall we went in was really bad. People were hounding us, following us, and even yelling at us to go to their shops. When we decided to leave and go across the street, they didn't like that and told us that it would be even worse, that we'd have twenty or more people following our every move. We went across the street anyways. What a difference. People there were sitting in their shop, and if they saw us walk by they would say "Hello! Come looky looky" or "Come in my shop" and then, they might add "need a bag?" or "rolex" or "shopping". I'm not convinced they knew what they were saying. But in any case, once their sales pitch was done, they'd leave us alone unless we were looking at their merchandise. When we were in their shop, they would suggest random things, sometimes they would even suggest items in the same style. One guy even told me that the wallet I was looking at was cheap and that I wanted to buy the good ones. Which were also cheap imitations... oh well. On the way out, after all the shopping I ate octopus on a stick, and that was yummy!

Anyways, back to the train... We hop on a taxi and we speed off towards the train station. By speed off, I mean, we get stuck in massive traffic. I took some pictures of crazy road signs, the signs have lights in them to change the colour of the roads to show where traffic is (I think). When we get to the train station, it's a zoo. People push and shove, they cut in line, bitch at each other, mumble under their breath, all in all a fun time. we get to the train waiting area, and we grab a few beers to kill the time. These beers are small cans, and cost 5 rmb, where regular beers in China as twice to three times the size for 8 rmb, 12 rmb in a fancy restaurant. This leads me to believe that the train station has the same beer prices as fancy restaurants.

We get on the train, we have reserved seats, many people have standing room only. It's a two hour ride... standing would suck. Our tickets cost 54 rmb each, standing room is probably 20-30 rmb. We watch the countryside go by and we try to take some pictures, HangZhou is the fourth and last stop on the train. The little towns we stop in seem very rustic and small, except for the large factories. One town seemed to be processing coal. On the train they gave us a free bottle of water during the ride, so that was pretty cool. Sitting next to me was another white guy, I don't know if he spoke English but he never said a word, even when I said hi to him when I first sat down, he just kinda ignored me.

We get to HangZhou, and we get out of the train station, grab a taxi and head for a hotel. George had checked out some hotel reviews, and he said there was a five star hotel for 300 rmb a night. We get to the hotel, and not having booked any rooms in advance, lo and behold, nothing is available. Well, there are some rooms for 560 rmb a night. No thanks. George seems to be misinformed a lot. He said we would have no problem finding a room...

We leave the hotel and this guy walks up to us, he starts talking to George in Chinese... this looks very fishy to me. George then says the guy knows a good hotel that's pretty cheap. He'll drive us there as it just turns out that he's a taxi driver. Very fishy. The guy drives us to a hotel as promised, but we walk in and the sign on the wall with electronic numbers says that their cheapest rooms are 480 rmb a night. As George is already talking to the hotel girl, I point our the sign to Jorge, he says not to worry about it, that's just white people prices. George informs us that there's rooms available for 300 rmb a night. It's only a three star hotel, but whatever. So we book some rooms, I notice that there's almost nothing filled out on the page that they want me to sign. I make sure the price is there 298 rmb, that's cool, but then there's no check out date. I ask George, he says "Don't worry about it just sign" so I figure they've already discussed this and it'll just be filled out later. They were using George's card for all the deposits anyways, so whatever, it's his card. I sign the thing.

The cab driver is still hanging out, so I ask George about it, and he tells me that the cabby has agreed to drive us to supper. Odd, and slightly reminiscent of Morocco "My cousin has a shop" but whatever. We go drop our stuff off in our rooms. The rooms are HUGE for China standards, 2 single beds, 2 chairs, a desk, big washroom, it makes the Manhattan look bad. Though the fancy stuff is missing. No free water, no marble floors, no air conditioning, the place is a little grungy, but it'll do just fine for two nights.

Our cabby drives us to a noodle shop, apparently it's the best noodles in town. They have shark fin soup at a reasonable price, so that's what I get. It's not that great, shark fin is like tofu, mostly tasteless. Well, now that I've had it I can honestly say that the sharks can keep their fins.

Once we finish supper, the cabby picks us up once more and drives us to a silk shop. I had been told that this was the place to buy silk, so I wanted to buy some. He drove us to a silk shop, not at all what I expected. When I was told that it was a government store, I expected a small boutique with crates filled with raw and patterned silk. Not so, it's more like a high end clothing store that only stocks silk. The also have a section for beddings and silk duvets. The silk isn't really that cheap, so I'm not really pleased with it,plus the sales people are pushy.

We walk out of the store, having finally abandoned our cabby we decide to walk along west lake (XiHu) and see what it's like. On our little travels we come across a tea house. So we go in. It's like high tea at a fancy hotel... so we have to try it. Turns out that the tea wasn't that great, it was ok, but not my favorite. But the snacks... oh the snacks. Tons of nuts, some fruit and some weirdness. My favorites were, mandarins/clementines with green skin, like a lime, except the inside was a bright orange. They were really sweet and not at all sour, they had lots of flavour. Peanut stuffed dried dates. The dates were hard and crunchy, and inside was a peanut or two. Once you chewed them they exploded with flavour, so yummy. And then my favorite, cookie nuts. I'm sure they're not really called cookie nuts, they're long, somewhat like a tamarind, but inside is like a walnut. And they taste like cookies, a mix of graham cracker and oreo cookie. Thus cookie nut.

So we make our way back to the hotel and the guys decide that we should get on the road at 6am the next morning. Who in their right mind is ready to go at 6am on a Saturday?!? The guys were so set on leaving at 6am that they even offered to come back for me at 9... well I'm not one that enjoys being left out, so 6am it is! I wake up at 5:30, stumble into the shower, stumble out of the shower, stumble into my clothes and stumble my way to the lobby. The plan? Rental bikes!

We get to the bike rental place, there's hundreds of these bright orange bikes with a weird locking mechanism. To get a bike, you buy a card, the deposit on the card is 300 rmb. Once you have your card, you can use it to unlock a bike from one of the pillars, you swipe the card and the lock opens, kinda like the shopping carts, or airport cart systems. The bike comes with a built in lock and the key can only be removed when the lock is in it, just like airport rental lockers, except you don't need to put coins in. The bike rentals are by the hour between 1 and 2 rmb an hour! Hahaha, you even get the first hour free, that's pretty much free.

We head off on our bikes to tour west lake. navigating early Saturday traffic isn't that hard, but the guards won't let us near the lake, we have to stay on the bike paths. Cool enough. We stop at a few gardens, the lake gets busier as time goes on. We stop at one point to get some breakfast noodles, really tasty. The as we bike, there's a loud crowd counting, I call them the army, cus it sounds like they're counting steps like "left, left, left right left, by the left right left" style. It turns out that it's a bunch of flag waving walking old people, they look like a united walk walk-a-thon or something. I didn't really understand what they were doing but there had to be more than a thousand people.

After we bike through the army, we get to a temple, apparently it's really old. Well the temple is brand spanking new, but it's build on top of the ruins of an old temple. So they have the ruins in the middle of the new temple, which is not a temple but really a tourist trap, we paid 40 rmb to get in a tourist trap area... great scam. They were also hosting the biggest archaeological find of the 21st century! Lucky us! Seeing it changed our lives completely! I even quit blogging, a thing I picked up only a few days ago! Ok well, in all honesty it was a nicely build hunk of silver, they said it was pure silver, but I know enough that you can't claim that something is hundreds of years old and pure silver in the same paragraph. I'm sorry, but hundreds of years ago they didn't have the technology to make pure silver. Plus pure silver is so soft that it wouldn't have survived hundreds of years unscathed. But those things aside, it's supposed to be a box that contains Buhda's hair. Sounds like a load of BS, but they seem to believe it, so whatever.

We head back to the hotel to take a nap, now we're riding our bikes in heavy traffic, but we manage just fine. This reinforces the idea that I never want to drive in China. Back at the hotel, Jorge gets into his room and George and I are stuck there, trying to get into our rooms. Keys aren't working. We head downstairs and ask the lady. Apparently they assumed we only wanted to stay one night. And apparently George assumed that they knew we wanted to stay two nights. Uh... about that "how come there's no departure date George?" "Don't worry, just sign". I would like to get back into my room now please. After some talking, we get the problem fixed, they have to take another deposit, because the old one was expiring or something. They just scan the card and put a hold. So we take a quick nap and head for lunch. We eat some good food, nothing too crazy, but it was really good. I can't remember exactly what we had, maybe I took some pictures, I'll check that out later.

Anyways, after lunch we find our friendly neighborhood cabby. George had told him that we wanted to go to the tea village, ling something, and it just so happens that this cabby's sister works there... Morocco part two this time for sure. We get to the tea village, and well, it's pretty much still in HangZhou, not in the middle of the countryside as you would expect. It's more like a suburb. And so it begins, they have us get water from a lucky well and wash our hands in it. Then we go in a special sitting room and the lady shows us three qualities of tea. Cheap at 400 rmb/500g, good at 800rmb/500g, super good at 1600rmb/500g... after a bit of talking she lets us in on a secret, there' s even better tea at 2200rmb/500g. Here I say /500g because a Chinese pound is 500g instead of a US pound at 454g.

Anyways, she serves us the 1600rmb tea, and we start tasting, I ask to try the 400rmb tea and she seems insulted. I get George to explain that it's just to compare, then she's happy to oblige. Well, we've seen a lot of tea in stores, and I have to say 1600rmb is hella expensive, I was expecting savings of like 75%, instead it seems more expensive. This tea was better than what was served in the tea house though, and that was 180rmb for one cup! George says he can haggle her down to 1000rmb/500g for the good stuff. So the haggling begins but it's all in Chinese, when George stops and tells us what the price is at, I make some comments, but I don't think George translated for her. I bet you I could have gotten a better price if the lady spoke English, but she didn't. She told George that she pays her farmers 50rmb per day, and it takes 20 farmers 1 day to make a pound of tea. Well, if she can afford to pay 20 farmers 50rmb per day, then she's filthy rich! I didn't buy it, but George accepted it and didn't call her on it. I'm pretty sure he translated my "I thought that buying direct from the farm would be cheaper than buying from the stores" but she countered with "The stores sell the cheap tea". To cut a long story (at least an hour long) short, we ended up with 2 pounds of tea for 2300rmb. Plus a small package of the really good tea, and a small package of the cheap tea. I got the cheap tea for free, after the deal was done. George got the fancy tea for his wife. I took 1/4 pound, Jorge took 1/2 pound and George took the rest. This very much reminded me of buying carpets. It was so Morocco feeling even before we go to the tea place that I had told the guys the Moroccan story.

The taxi driver had some tea with us and then hop back in the cab, off to more silk places. I like the prices and the atmosphere way better at this shop, so I buy some stuff. I won't disclose what I bought because Trish is reading this blog, and I don't want to spoil the surprise. In any case, this shop didn't have any raw silk either. So off we go to a third shop, this time I hit pay dirt. Lots of raw silk, I buy a bunch for Trish, so she can paint it. They only have one style of raw silk though, it'll have to do. After that we head back to the hotel.

We paid the cabby 100rmb for the afternoon. All in all I think everyone including the cab driver was very happy about this price. He probably got a cut of our purchases at the tea house, and maybe at the silk stores. In any case, we were getting ready for supper at Lo Wei Lo, but I'm so tired that that story and all of Sunday will have to wait until tomorrow... Now I'm going to bed.