I boarded the train to Hangzhou, the slow train and guess what, the beds had sold out so I had to sit up for 12 hours with very bright lights. No sleep. When I was waiting for the gate to open, I saw that a few people had their own stools with them, I panicked and thought that there weren't going to be seats but thankfully when I got on, there was. Phew! After around one hour, a group of students asked if I wanted to play a card game with them, they were really lovely! We played for a couple of hours and I learnt some Chinese words, two of their names were Lava and Kathy. I asked if she knew what Lava was and she said yes, I wish I had a crazy name like that, would make things so much more interesting.I think I may have dozed of for no longer than 30 minutes. When the sun began to rise, it was so beautiful. I went to the "bathroom" (two blocked sinks), and washed my face before I arrived in Hangzhou, the train arrived just before 7am and met Beth in the arrivals hall. She had bought me some water and dried fruit, definitely needed. We saw a lady being violently sick and then on the subway there was a child being sick, at that point I thought it might have been a good idea to get back on the train and go home hahaha. When we were on the subway, Beth thought that we had missed our stop so we got off and went to find the line that was going the opposite way but it turned out we hadn't missed it, she was just looking at the wrong map. So we laughed and got back onto the subway line that we had just got off. I got overly excited about the fact that there was hand soap in the station toilets too... Hangzhou seemed so luxurious to me by this point, easily pleased hey. After the subway journey, we had to take a "Rapid transit" bus, we also don't have these in Changsha, very posh! Beth had used this bus many times before, but after about 20 minutes everyone got off the bus and when we asked what was going on we were directed to a bus station, we asked someone again and were put on a random bus that Beth had never been on before. The driver was really helpful though and told us where to get off, then we realised that the bus we needed came to this stop. Finally it made sense. Buses really don't like following a route here in China. After a dramatic journey and zero sleep. We arrived at Beth and Nathan's apartment. It was lovely, she said it was sparse but I didn't think so. She took me to her favourite "Boatze" shop for breakfast, they were reallly good! After I had showered and made myself look slightly more presentable, we went for a walk around the complex, it was so relaxed, lots of places to just sit and chill out, lots of trees! It was so family orientated too, there were lots of places that held activities for families, very arty! The weather was so niiiice, it was really hot but not uncomfortable and humid like Changsha so I wasn't dripping in sweat. Although I needed some more "flowy" clothes, there was a stall outside of the complex and I saw a dress that I liked so I got my bargaining phrases out of the bag and ended up getting 20 kuai off, not the best but I did try. It's one of those dresses were you feel like you have no clothes on, but you still have the reassurance that you are wearing clothes. Always a good thing!!
Next, it was time to try some Hangzhou noodles, and I sure did try them, I tried so hard to finish them but it didn't happen, after eating them I felt like a waddling pregnant lady, not a good feeling. They were so different to Changsha, not spicy at all and more of a creamy/sweet sauce. In Changsha, it's all about the spice, with each country I go to, my spice tolerance is always pushed further. After the mammoth about of food we had consumed, we sat down to digest and figure out our plans for the rest of the weekend, we went through the guide/map and starred a few places we thought looked good and then narrowed them down and hit Google with our final choices. I also drank some coffee, I think I needed it to be fair but I don't want to start drinking it all of the time, I never thought I would like drinking coffee but I do like it now, mum will be proud hahaha.
In the afternoon, we took a bus ride to West Lake, a famous lake in China, it would take about 7 hours to walk around it. Beth shown me an app that she has been using to learn Chinese, its really good. Brainscape is what it's called so if any of you are interested, have a look! So we had a mini Chinese lesson, on the next bus, I then tried out my new Chinese on a lady who decided to take photos of me, not so subtly. I didn't get everything right and she found it quite funny but practise makes perfect right! When we arrived, there were sooo many people, never seen anything like it, I guess it was the holidays though. We wanted to take a boat ride so we began our search. This ended up with me shouting some average Chinese to a family that were having a chilled time on their boat, someone heard my desperate plea and told us where we could rent a boat, worth all of the stares! The place we were directed to was allllll the way around the other side, but the walk was beautiful so it was OK. We finally found a boat, it wad very typical, what you expect a boat to be like in China, there was an old man "paddling" the boat at the back. It was 150 kuai for an hour, so worth it. A Chinese lady joined us and we got on, she was really nice. The "Shifu" started singing, felt so cultural. I started trying to speak to him in Chinese, asking him to keep singing, he thought it was hilarious and asked us to sing so of course, me and Beth belted out a tune to the best of our ability... We had a blast on the boat, really relaxing yet entertaining. When we got off, we were about to pay and the Chinese lady wouldn't let us, she insisted on paying, she would have lost face if we continued to insist so we thanked her and took some photos with her, that seemed to be pleasing enough.
Henfag Street was insanely busy, as I expected it to be. I got some amazing souvenirs. I won't tell you about some because they're for people at home, don't want to ruin the surprise and all that. I will tell you about the one I got for me and Beth though, Beth spotted a stall, a guy was there and he had painted beautiful pictures into the inside of beads (if that makes sense). He was such a chilled person, it felt refreshing actually, the fact that he could sit quietly and concentrate on something so delicate in the middle of all of the crazy tourists. Just shows that whatever is going on around you, if there is something you want/need to do then you can put yourself into a state so that you are able to achieve your goal. I was looking through all of the beads for so long, they were incredible, then I spotted one with two footprints on, I automatically thought about how me and Beth had been sitting by the Lake with our feet in the water. There was only one that I could find so I took a chance and asked the guy if he could do another one and two minutes later it was done, we also got the date on them. Keeping hold of memories.Over the course of this weekend, I felt so much more confident using Chinese, clearly because of how much I was practising and me and Beth spoke to each other in Chinese too which helped, oww I miss Beth, why is Hangzhou so far away... Dammmmn. There was also a famous pharmacy on Hefang Street, we went in and there was so much traditional Chinese medicine, it dated back to the 1600's I think, don't quote me. It was really interesting to see and great to see that the building is still being used for it's original purpose.
Afterwards, we went to find the subway station but couldn't find it so we asked someone and ended up with some escorts, everyone is so helpful. As my family say, "as long as you have a tongue in your head, you'll be OK"- it's so true, my Chinese isn't great but it got us to where we wanted to go, and Chinese people really like it when they hear you speaking Chinese, just have to try :)
We then got the night bus from Wulin Square, it was so packed so we ended up standing, we quickly got into a pretty deep conversation. We were supposed to be counting the stops, I thought it was going pretty well until we got to the stop which should have been the one to get off at but it wasn't, Beth didn't recognise it so I asked a lady and she told us it was the next one. Must have messed up the counting somewhere, ooops! We then went to "rice man", a guy who makes rice outside of Beth's apartment, we spoke to him and his friends for a while, they mostly laughed at us but it was OK and then we ate our rice on the balcony on a blanket, what an ending to a great day. It was definitely time to sleep after being awake for 41 hours.
I woke up and found out that Beth had been awake for hours figuring out how to get to the mountain that we wanted to go and climb. After a little drama with Beth's bank card we got ready and went out and I wore Beth's clothes, just like Beijing times but not with socks because I actually packed some for Hangzhou, I'm getting better. We had an interesting conversation over breakfast actually, we got onto birthdays and Beth told me how one year she actually bought her mum presents on her birthday. I guess it doesn't actually make sense for us to be showered with gifts on our birthdays because we didn't actually do anything. It's our mums that went through all of the pain and sacrifice for us. Bringing a life into the world is a pretty big thing to do so why aren't they praised and appreciated on the day that they did it? The mountain we wanted to climb, was called "Two peaks piercing the clouds", we left and we finally got there after having yet more escorts show/take us to the bus stop we needed. We definitely got off at the correct stop and it stated on TravelChina that it was only 50m from the bus stop. Turns out it was only the sign, it took us so long to figure out where it was, it was so far from the sign which makes no sense whatsoever right? It was at least an hours walk. It was definitely worth the trouble of actually getting there anyway. We got there and began to climb. We realised that what they meant by rope way was a cable car. It wasn't so hard to climb, more fun. The views from the top were stunning, I don't think I've seen anything like it before. The clouds were swirling around the peaks, hence the name. On the way up we saw so many dead centipedes or millipedes, I'm not 100% which one. Me and Beth stopped to look at them which the Chinese people thought was really weird and then one guy picked one up and started chasing me with it, pretty weird. It was just over 3,000m that we climbed apparently, it took us around 2 hours and there was a big bell at the top that you could ring with a bamboo barge pole. So Beth did but then of course we heard "er shi kuai" (20 yuan). I bought a red ribbon and we wrote some messages on it, along with our names and the date. We tied amongst some others. Then to get down, I took my first ever real cable car ride, it was so cool, we went through all of the lush, green surroundings.
In the morning, we went to the clothing market, it was huge but we were limited for time as I had to get to the station to catch my train back to Changsha. I was trying on some things and found myself with an audience but most of it was all too small, Chinese girls are tiny! We left to try and find the subway station and again had to ask but had no luck. One of the motorbike taxis told us he would take us, I persuaded Beth and off we went, clutching onto each other. At one point he tried to go up a curb but couldn't do it with us, all we could do was laugh, everyone was staring anyway but even more so. It was a pretty hilarious ride and he got us to the right place.
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