Hangzhou - June 9, 2010

At 3:45 in the morning, a taxi is slowly driving beside me as I am walking down a normally bustling but now deserted street with a backpack on and a carry-on in tow.  Dawn won't come for a few hours; the eerie streetlights wash the surrounding area in a bluish-gray glow.  The taxi driver is correct in assuming I needed a ride to the airport, wondering why I haven't noticed his presence.  I do notice, but I'm heading to meet my parents six blocks away, and then getting into one.  He drives off after a couple of blocks.  Oh well...we shouldn't have much trouble finding another.  I meet my parents earlier than planned.  4am was the appointed time, but it only took me 8 minutes to walk to our designated meeting place.  After a few minutes, we were able to hail a taxi to take us to an Airbus stop that operated the "overnight" schedule.  During normal operating hours, we would've been able to catch an Airbus where we hailed the taxi.  But since our flight to Hangzhou was very early in the morning, we had no choice but take a taxi to another neighborhood where the Airbus ran in the wee hours, as taking a taxi straight to the airport would have been much more expensive.  We were fortunate that we took the taxi earlier than planned as the Airbus arrived earlier than printed on schedule, and it didn't wait!  If we missed this bus, we would have had to wait another 30-40 minutes! 

The Airbus had an area where luggage was stowed.  The bus was double-decker, and most of the seats were upstairs.  (When heading up the stairs, make sure you grasp onto any handholds to keep from falling as the bus just takes off!)  There was a security camera pointing at the stowage area and it showed on a monitor upstairs.  I didn't think it mattered this early in the morning as most of the passengers were asleep.

We arrived at the airport and meet up with our tour guide Tammy from Sunflower Travel.  There were about 10 total parties on the tour, ranging from young couples, adult families, and retirees.  My mom's best friend Lisa and her husband Michael also joined us on the tour, which was a 5-day tour that was focused on the Shanghai World Expo but included a little bit of sightseeing around the Shanghai area plus Hangzhou, which was our first stop.  The flight was on Dragonair, and I had never flown them before, so had no good or bad expectations.  I was totally impressed with the level of service and we even got served food on a 2 hour flight!  Good food!  It was breakfast and we had a choice of a Western breakfast (eggs/sausage), dim sum, or congee.  By the time they made it to us, the eggs and dim sum were left.  I had my heart set on the congee, but I'll take the dim sum please!  It was amazingly good for airplane food, even had a piece of dragon fruit.  I can't believe they served us a full meal including pre-meal beverages and after-meal tea all in 2 hours gate-to-gate, on a full flight.  There were 4 flight attendants working quickly and efficiently, with a smile too.  I would fly Dragonair again.  (not that I had a choice coming back!)  One thing I noticed is that if there was slight to moderate turbulence (when I'm holding my cup down thinking it'll spill), the fasten seat belt sign did not come on, and the flight attendants still moved about the cabins serving meals.  If we were flying in US airspace, the seat belt sign would have come on in the slightest turbulence.

We arrive in Hangzhou and board our tour bus headed towards famous West Lake.  We even get a local guide on board to explain the history.  West Lake is so beautiful.  The surroundings are so picturesque: willow trees gracing the shores, magnolia-like trees with larger-than-large flowers adorning them, waterlilies, historic buildings, huge koi pond.  There was a peace that blanketed the area.  We also rode a boat around a section of the lake area.  I'll just include some pictures from there and not disturb your appreciation of them with text:

We got back on the bus and stopped at the Qiantang River, famous for its "tidal bore".  Around every mid-Autumn Day, the gravitational pull of the earth and moon cause a 30-foot "tide" to rush in from the bay, sounding like thunder.  Every year, there are people who try to challenge Mother Nature and attempt to "run" from it, like the running of the bulls in Pamploma, Spain.  Of course there are fatalities.  The government finally got tired of the stupidity and erected barriers around the riverbank to keep people from killing themselves.  Thus, the best picture I could get from the fences was this one, showing the breakwaters to slow the force of the tide.  The Qiantang River Bridge is in the background, built in 1937.

After dinner, we went to watch a  show.  We had seats with a good view of the stage and included a cup of chrysanthemum tea and candies.  The prices of the seats were posted in the row itself, perhaps to discourage seat jumping; I believe it was around 180 yuan.  That's expensive for there; people don't make a ton of money.  The show was okay; it was like "Cirque du Soleil meets Miss Hangzhou".  There were acrobatics and singing going on, but at the same time, beautiful women would be walking around right in front of them, so it was hard to concentrate on one thing.  Maybe the director was trying to entertain everyone.  What was really funny was that when the audience clapped, they didn't use their hands...they used these plastic clappers, like multiple flexible plastic hands connected together such that when you shake it, it "claps"!  So all through the show, I kept hearing plastic being slapped around and was quite irritating, and I don't usually get irritated so easily.  I along with a few other patrons continued to clap like normal; I wonder if people thought I was a party pooper.

We were so tired from traveling all day and were looking forward to getting some sleep, but the bus driver got us lost!  Turns out he is from a city called Shangdong, which is around 800 miles north of Shanghai, definitely not a local.  We had been driving for 45 minutes looking for the Sofitel Xanadu Resort, situated far away from West Lake.  The local tour guide claimed to have stayed there before, but did not remember the location, even though he is originally from Hangzhou.  Our tour group was grumbling and restless.  He eventually did an "Amazing Race" maneuver and hailed a taxi cab to guide the bus to the hotel.  Finally!  The hotel lobby is beautiful (as shown in these pictures I took the morning after) with grand flower arrangements and a sculpture that took 3 years to carve from a single piece of stone.  Sofitel Xanadu is considered 5-star, but the accommodations could have been much better.  The shower had a very slow drain where I was worried that the water was going to overflow onto the bathroom floor, and the slippers were in unsealed cloth bags and seemed "used" (you could see the bottoms of them dirty from use, in fact, either Lisa's toes got itchy after wearing them a while, yuck!).  Maybe we got the "budget" accommodations as reviews on TripAdvisor were generally favorable.

Note, I didn't take any pictures of lunch or dinner.  Surprising, isn't it?  I didn't find the food very good.  An example can be found in this link.  It may have been my picky palate, but I thought everything was greasy and the flavors were too strong and salty.  I know, I said something was too salty?!?  It may also have been because we were on a tour, and the restaurants selected cater to tour groups.  There was one interesting soup, which featured a leafy vegetable called "water shield", found only in this region of China.  The leaves, when cooked in the soup, curl up and are about an inch wide.  It was hard to get one onto my soup spoon since it was very slimy (warning, warning!).  I bit into one, and it felt like I was eating a worm; gelatinous texture on the outside, the rubbery leaf like a spine; how I would imagine a worm to be, not that I have ever eaten a worm!  I'm glad I got to try new foods, but I don't think I would jump up and down at the opportunity to eat it again.

Tomorrow will be another early start as my parents like to enjoy a leisurely breakfast, meaning "eat at 7am".  It will take three hours to drive to Shanghai, but with sightseeing sprinkled in between.  A long day ahead.