China Day 11

Today is Zach's birthday. I think he had a part in the mess last night for that reason. Many people wanted to go out and celebrate with him because it's Saturday, but it's not really possible when people have to be rested enough to go go go all day long starting at 6am.

There was also more drama (but unintentional this time) this morning when Rhonda and I were getting ready to go when we heard a crash next door. About 5-10 mins later, Polly walked in to our room in shock because her bathroom door had fallen off the hinge and shattered all over her (the bathrooms in our rooms last night were entirely glass). We had to make her take another shower because she had glass all over her. It was pretty scary for her. Luckily it was safety glass and there were no dangerous pieces. It did make us very late for the bus (not the last one's though) on a day where everyone was hoping to make up for our crazy mess last night.


Last night we had met (and frightened) our assistant guide, Ling Ling, who will be showing us around her home town of Hangzhou (Hang-joe, a like aha not apple). She is much nicer seeming
than either of the other guides we have had and luckily for us Hangzhou is beautiful! It's clean and modern looking with lots of flowers and tons of trees.

Ling Ling told us that if they were all pooled, the ratio of trees to people in Hangshou is 10:1 (there's roughly 4 million people in Hangzhou).


The first place we went was to the West Lake park. Very pretty. The lighting was kind of bad, but it was still pretty. I had missed this yesterday, but apparently Shifu grew up in Suzhou and spent a lot of time in Hangzhou playing around in that lake. It was fun to hear her stories. We took a boat ride and then walked (at a ridiculous pace since we were late this morning) through the park to meet the bus.

Unfortunately, to make an unfonfotable day even worse, Chris got separated from the group and we had to wait for an hour at least while Jessica and Tracy went back to try and find him. He was finally found in last place he had known we were and the group moved on to the tea village (not the 6 harmonious pagodas since there's not as much to buy).

The Tea Villlage was interesting because we learned all about green tea from "Dr. Tea" the government tea inspector. He was a pretty funny guy, but that didn't save us from further embarrassment when someone asked whether or not the Chinese do research on green tea enemas. He handled it well though, and of course
sold a lot of tea. I learned that green, black, and red tea all comes from the camellia (sp?) bush - green is fresh and black is fermented. I didn't really understand where red tea fit in.


After the tea house we drove by the 6 harmonious pagoda on our way to Lingyin Temple where they have the laughing buddah. This was another fiasco since we were so late getting there. People were really excited about how cool the place was and when we were only allotted 20 minutes to look around there was some uncooperative kids who didn't show up for over an hour. It was extremely inconsiderate and only served to further agitate an already bad situation. It's now even more out of hand than I ever thought it would be. As a group, we are ridiculous. Nothing happens without a whiny drama like a bunch of 12 year olds instead of adults. gross.

After the temple we had a LOOONG ride back to Shanghai and no dinner because of the people who were late. There were a lot of angry people in the bus that night. We lubricated our irritation with some wine and vodka and soon were giggling in the back of the bus about who knows what anymore. We even had one more tour of the Bund in Shanghai before they would let us into the hotel. It was ridiculous, and under different circumstances probably even interesting, but now it was just one last straw. We couldn't wait to get out of there.


When we got back to the hotel Zach, Polly, Rhonda, Val, Drew, Charles, Chris, Bowen, and I congregated in the hotel bar and decided to go out and find a place to get some good food (not Chinese, but more like pizza) in Shanghai. We spoke to Jessica (don't know if we should trust her) and the people behind the desk and got a recommendation of where to go. We hopped in 3 different cabs and sped off in 2 different directions. I wasn't amused by this at all as I watched our cab fare skyrocket. Finally after many lucky phone calls Me, Charles, and Drew finally found the rest of the group at a Brazilian restaurant.

I ordered tomato, oregano, and mozzarella pizza (which came without sauce or oregano) but ate it gladly with my papaya smoothie. I can't wait to get back and have some real (american) Italian food.

Tomorrow we take the train to Shenzhen and we're all going to be soooo happy to be done with touring. No more US Tours! Although it did make for lots of good Chinny-Chin theatre!