Firstly the folks (B’s) came to China for a visit. They went on a Yangtze cruise then ventured our way. We optimistically headed to Hangzhou and Ningbo for a holiday and looksie. The day we hit Hangzhou topped at 36 Celcius! We sweltered to say the least. We went for a few walks and saw the air conditioned museum. The Hangzhou hostel we stayed in was great. We got 2 twin rooms that were brilliant and the location was excellent. Then on to Ningbo… Hotel was the best choice, but the location was pretty low. Taxis were way too scarce and getting one was in the art of being first and pushy. I detest being pushy (makes people nasty to each other) so this is the biggest turn-off for Ningbo. It’s a nice enough city with great shopping, but if I don’t ever need to go back, I won’t cry.

We had a short reprise to start some lesson planning and plan the next holiday down to Xiamen. We were heading back to Ningbo to have dinner with some of Barry’s old students. This was Ningbo’s chance to redeem itself. It pretty much failed. The hostel was better located, but still renovating and a little dingy. The taxi problem was way out of control as we had an entire team of Ningbo-ites working with us to no avail! And nothing else really endears one to the big city.

Next was Wenzhou… and talk about a shithole! Here I was thinking Ningbo was bad. The hotel was great when you could find it and be able to get a cab that won’t rip you off! All the cabs at the station were setting fixed prices of between 30 and 80! We finally found one outside at 20 and jumped in fairly unhappy… but as it turned out the guy took us the extra mile trying to find our hotel so it evened out. The streets were dirty and underdeveloped, malls we tried to visit were shut and very old looking. The whole place looked run-down. On the other hand, the hotel was great. 2 twin rooms with complimentary breakfast and great looking rooms too.

On the road again and the typhoon was crossing land and disturbing the weather. We jumped on a bus to Fuzhou (normally 4 hours) and started to get an idea that something was up when the bus jumped off the highway and on to back roads through small towns. The back end of Zhejiang reminded us both of Thailand - rice fields (nice) and dirty shanties and rubbish everywhere (not nice). We got stuck in some back-water place for 2 hours (and B busting for a pee with the squat onboard toilet not looking or smelling appealing). It was Shaz to the rescue though with a shop willing to loan its loo (in the dark with no electricity, but beggars not choosers and all that). Finally arriving in Fuzhou by 8pm all that was left was to crash at the guesthouse place… providing we can find it. We drove up and down the same street in the cab including phoning people to find it. Eventually we got inside and up to reception only to find they had no idea about our booking! Luckily they still had rooms and we were eventually put in to 2 suitable rooms for the 2 nights. The place wasn’t too bad. It was like a real apartment with balcony/laundry (with a washing machine and powder), small kitchen, lounge, etc. Brilliant. Only real problem was the double bed we ended up with was severely broken and difficult to sleep on, but we coped for 2 nights. Fuzhou was a much nicer city with clean streets and cabs practically begging for rides (a much better system!). There’s a nice river and great cafes and restaurants. Only slight downside was the staring as if Fuzhou has no laowai (but at least most of it was the curious variety).

One last bus to Xiamen without incident and a nice bus too. More expensive, but with 2 hostesses and water runs like the plane! Seats were nice too. Starting to like Fujian. Xiamen was OK on first impression… although the cabbie took us around in circles before taking us to the hostel which was a bit pissy. The hostel was good, but they didn’t put us in a 4 bed dorm. The showers and loos were great though and there was free filtered water to refill bottles with! It was super-close to the university and a temple. So this was our main exploring ventures. We were surrounded by very tasty vege restaurants and a favourite little Mum-n-Pop dumpling shop. Luckily we didn’t need the “take you for a ride” cabbies much as the buses were easy. As soon as we needed one (to get to the ferry) he was going to try something on until James stopped him. What it is with dodgy cabbies in this country?

Shazza talked to a Taiwanese girl in our Xiamen hostel and managed to organise a guesthouse on GuLang Island which was brilliant timing as we wanted to see the island and we were getting sick of our little area of Xiamen. So off to the island we went. Didn’t really know how to get there, but luckily they were used to collecting people from the ferry and walking them back. Talk about a hilly island! Just getting there with our bags was exhausting! We were going to be fit little bunnies after this trip. The island was a little touristy with mostly fish to eat. We don’t eat much fish as the fish most Chinese love have minuscule bones and we both hate small bones. But it was nice enough to walk around and had some great coffee. Shaz & James wanted to see Seaworld on the island so one day we went in, but the poor dolphins were restricted to one small tank with people constantly knocking and slapping the tank wall. Poor dolphins! The other cases had loads of different fish. The centre also attracted loads of screaming kids and doting grandmothers - urgh! So once that was over we vowed never to do that again.

Then we flew back to Hangzhou and more familiar territory. Unfortunately we were on the other side of the lake which had nothing close by. Terrible location and cabs a little scarce. We survived and had some great food and coffee and even bought a USB bluetooth device for the phone to talk to the computer. The tech centre wasn’t bad, and Hangzhou is much more pleasant than Shanghai, so that might be our tech shopping place in the future. The rest of Hangzhou had lost its charm after the second time around, so it became just another city. We got to know some different areas and a good restaurant. We unfortunately didn’t buy the train ticket the day before so we had to wait until 6:45 for the train to leave for Jiaxing (lesson learnt = ALWAYS get the ticket the day before).

All in all, seeing other parts of China is mostly more of the same. The food changes a little, the local language varies and down south has some great Cantonese influences… but China is still China. Not good, not bad, just is. After this trip, we have no real interest in travelling any more of the country as it’s mostly the same. Sure there’s different food, traditions and language, but it’s still the same. I guess seeing other countries and cultures has spoilt us for variety.

This winter we are looking forward to a small stint in Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore. It’ll be our first real stay in Malaysia and we are both really looking forward to it!

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 21st, 2008 at 4:54 pm and is filed under China, holidays. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.