A National Lampoon Chinese Vacation

I'm back from yet another adventure. This time my travels have taken me to Shanghai, Hangzhou and Suzhou. All of these cities are located along the central part of China's east coast. We arrived in Shanghai Saturday morning and I was absolutely ready to go exploring around town. Shanghai has over 15 million residents living in this sprawled out, skyscraper ridden maze of streets. The buildings are tall, spaced out and everywhere. The people crowd the sidewalks and the cars make crossing the street a headache, constantly turning left to right watching for turning cars, swerving vehicles and other pedestrians. It reminded me so much of New York City and that is probably my favorite part of Shanghai. Our hostel was located near the Bund. The Bund is a European district across the river from the Pudong Financial District. From the Bund, I enjoyed looking at the European style architecture while at the same time looking across the river at the Jin Mao tower, Pearl of the Orient TV Tower, and Shanghai International Finance Centre. These buildings are well over 70 stories tall. It was a beautiful skyline. After hanging out in the Bund, we walked down Nanjing Road, famous for market shopping and other stores. We ate dinner at the French Concession, which is an expat neighborhood in Shanghai that was originally a French colonization. The area was pretty cool but very expensive. We enjoyed some Thai food and headed to an Irish pub afterwards.

Sunday morning was the official start of the National Holiday. The Bund was closed because there are too many people and the government takes precaution to make sure people don't fall over the wall into the river. We headed to Yu Garden, just south of the Bund. The Yu Garden was amazing. We found a lot better markets around there and found some cool gifts. After hanging around the gardens and eating lunch, we took a ferry over to the Pudong Financial District. From here, we walked down to the Pearl of the Orient TV Tower and went to the top. By the time we arrived, the sun was beginning to set and reflect off the glass skyscrapers. From the top, we couldn't even see the end of Shanghai, the horizon was dotted with far away apartment buildings and the rest faded away in the haze. It was amazing to see such a great city. We were surprised by how much the wealth gap effected Shanghai. The juxtaposition of old Hutongs and soaring skyscrapers was incredible. We wandered through a hutong and were awed when we looked up and could see 50 story office buildings just a few blocks away.
After the TV tower, we met up with our friend Serena, who studies at a university in Shanghai. She took us out to a great dinner for authentic Shanghainese cuisine. It was so delicious. Apparently, Shanghainese and other southern provinces do not serve as large of portions as Northern provinces, so we ended up having to order a few extra dishes to fill our American sized appetites. Afterwards, Serena showed us a Roman Catholic Church nearby. It was a beautiful church and unfortunately it was closed but it was the first I've seen in China.

Monday we left for Hangzhou, which is a great city. Located in a small mountain range, the main attraction here is the lake. Hangzhou is the number one tourist spot in China and I could definitely see why. You know how you are always looking for the perfect place to have a great family reunion, or to take your family for a relaxing weekend? This is definitely the place. The lake offers peaceful views and refreshing breezes perfect for flying a colorful kite or walking around. There are a couple pedestrian bridges crossing the lake that make it perfect to walk across or even ride your bike. We rented bikes for our two day stay and had a blast riding in traffic. We got to see tons of the city and the city reminded me so much of home. The mountains were really cool and the mixture of city life and outdoors was balanced just right. Getting to Hangzhou was a fiasco however. While in shanghai, we took a cab to the train station. Before we arrived at the train station the cab driver offered to take us to Hangzhou, to avoid all the crowded trains, slow busses, and long lines. After our experience with the Qingdao train, we were all loving the idea of taking a car to Hangzhou. We settled on a price and it was great. We loved the cab driver, the cab driver loved us, he even stopped to get some breakfast (we were starving)! It was clear we were on the same page and it was a lot more convenient to be dropped off right at our hostel in Hangzhou. Well, we were wrong. We arrived in Hangzhou and the driver tells us to get out and take another cab because he doesn't know the streets. Well, we weren't going to pay him in full for dropping us off on the outskirts of Hangzhou, so we gave him what we thought was a good price and walked away. Then, we have a crowd of Chinese around us, people spitting out Chinese at us and a whole scene going on. To cut it short, we ended up having some random guy take the front seat, we crammed in the back, and he told the driver how to get to our hostel and we paid him in full. Huge ordeal, not worth the hassle, we should have taken a bus.

Our hostel booked our room, so we ended up having to share a room with four random people. They woke us up at 6 am by talking loudly, smoking a cigarette, and banging all the doors multiple times. We did have a great restaurant across the street though and our other friends from Beijing had arrived in Hangzhou the same day. We met them that night for dinner and drinks and we enjoyed meeting up with our classmates in a different city. We left on Wednesday, October 1st to Suzhou. We only spent the day in this "Little Venice" which is quite an overstatement. Venice is far more beautiful and spectacular, but Suzhou had some great things about it. It was very small town feel, but because of the National Holiday, there were about 1.5 million tourists there that shouldn't have been there. Too crowded but great to visit. We took a boat ride down the canals with a couple of Chinese students that were travelling for the holiday. It was a lot of fun and we caught a bus back to Shanghai. The traffic to Shanghai was outrageous but we arrived in 2.5 hours (should have been 40 minutes). We missed the fireworks for National Holiday and again, our hostel booked our room so we had to stay at a different hostel. Sometimes, unfortunate things happen for a reason. Our new hostel was 100% nicer than any other hostel we stayed at. For $7 usd a night, we had our own room, great facilities, clean bathrooms and ping pong and pool. Not to mention a great location and a movie room with internet.

For our last day in Shanghai, we went to People's Square near our old hostel. We spent the day in and around the area, buying some souvenirs and enjoying the weather. We ended up staying in the Park for a long time. It reminded me of going to Central Park, looking at all the buildings around me, laying down and taking an afternoon nap in the warm weather. It was great. We ate at a Japanese restaurant and went down to the Bund to see the skyline at night. It was amazing and beautiful. We spent the night on a rooftop bar at our hostel and invited our other friends from Beijing over for drinks.

The trip went by incredibly fast and I had a great time. I hate giving these abbreviated stories but I'll post pictures soon. I'm back in Beijing trying to catch up on all the mountains of homework I've left for myself. Cheers.