Hangzhou

Some weekends ago the Yunnan gang (and my roommate Chico) went on one more trip. This time we went to Hangzhou, a nice “little” city (with only 6.4 million inhabitants) in Zhejiang province, only 3 hours away from Shanghai.

We left Shanghai on a Friday. The bus trip was kind of funny and annoying at the same time once the driver kept pulling a really loud horn that seemed to be under our seats. On top of that he had huge amounts of saliva that he insisted in throwing out of the window every two minutes in a way every single person in the bus could hear. Amazing, huh?

We arrived around 10 and it was time to find our hostel. After the trip to Yunnan and sleeping in really nice hostels we opted to stay in another hostel. It was by the West lake one of Hangzhou’s biggest attractions. Once again we did not regret our decision. The hostel was really nice but there was a problem for the first night; we were 5 and there were only 4 people bedrooms! One of us would have to share the room with some other people. We thrown a dice and, as usual, I lost so I had to move to a room where one Chinese guy and two Chinese girls were already getting ready to sleep (while the guys were still laughing out loud).

We hadn’t had dinner so it was time to search for something. Alves and Chico had already been in the city so we headed to Reggae Bar fo, their recommendation, for some pizzas. The bar was pretty full and everyone was really enjoying themselves, great vibe! After that, the usual… Partying! :) We went to 2 different clubs and ended up home around 5!

Friday night partially spoiled our sightseeing plans for Saturday. We woke up quite late but, despite the high temperature, we still rented some bikes to go for a tour around the lake. The place is really amazing. Many trees and a big lake. Unfortunately the place is quite touristic so we ended up riding our bikes in the middle of huge crowds!

After a junk food lunch (they are becoming a habit after a night out) we went shopping for shoes. They have a very traditional Chinese neighborhood where they hide illegal shops that sell any and every kind of fake merchandise. I ended up buying new football shoes which suck despite the fact that they look good and not fake.

On Saturday evening we did an “encore” of Friday’s evening (this time our good friend Paulo came all the way from Shaoxing to be with us) and on Sunday it was time to head back to Shanghai (Nuno the poor guy from Beijing still had to take a flight back home). The weekend was a lot of fun but there were a lot of sights we missed. A place to return…