Beautiful Hangzhou
China knows how to celebrate a national holiday! One whole week off! So what does one do with such time after a very stressful start to the school year? Head to Hangzhou!
It was an amazing place, see ye ole Facebook for photos. The West Lake was amazing, not the quaint little lake I was imagining but an enormous lake with restaurants, art galleries, museums etc…think Southbank and botanical gardens put together.
The only problem was the taxis…pretty much the entire population of Shanghai descended on Hangzhou…traffic was a nightmare and taxis extremely hard to get. So, after my experience on Nanjing Road, stuck in the rain with no way to get a taxi…I took matters into my own hands. I saw a free cab and dived on it! Literally! My Chinese friend Judy said “wow! You’re really Chinese now!” Funny what we will do out of necessity!
The second day we hired a driver (much more civilized), sounds posh but only cost 400 quai for the day. He knew all the little back streets and good places to get silk, fans, green tea etc…We went to this cute little street (He Fang Lu). Again, lots of people but great little shops and heaps of tea houses. Katryna and I found a weapon shop! We started taking photos, posing as if we were ninjas…then a shop assistant tapped me on the shoulder and basically told me to get the hell out of her shop…oops!
The rest of the holiday was a blur of nice cocktails and funny Chinese arts students thinking they can swing dance to jazz music (think ballroom meets irish dancing).
Well worth a visit if anyone gets the opportunity!
Hope everyone is well in Australia, have been missing decent coffee and long lazy brunches!
Zaijian
xx
