Monday 28 April, 2014
¥25.00 Necessities (@ Huangshan, everything is more expensive)¥80.00 Cablecar
¥115.00 Huangshan Park Entry
¥22.00 Bus
¥10.00 Lunch (3x Bao's)
¥8.00 Water
¥8.00 Eggs
¥12.00 Drink
¥16.00 Dinner
(¥296.00)
<In Huangshan>
So today was the day we were meant to return back to Hangzhou, and 3 of our friends did that. But me and Z were disappointed with what we saw yesterday, and made an impromptu decision to go back up to the mountain again today.
The only problem was, we didn't have accomodation booked up on the mountain, and every hotel up there (like maybe the 5 up there) were full already. Some had free rooms but there were $600 per night.
So the first thing we did was go up and go around and ask if they had any tents left (some said they were full, some were obviously not bothered to set up a tent for foreigners for so little money). We also only spoke in English to make us seem more desperate and lost.
Finally, we found a hotel with a wonderful reception lady, who said it was possible for us to sleep in the lobby... as long as we did not make it very obvious. Score! Free accomodation! We were so happy, and so grateful to have her help us. She initially called all the other hotels for us to find a spare room too!
So with accomodation secured under our belt, we set out on our adventure to see everything we had missed the day before. We walked pretty much everywhere, it was a massive day - walking from 9am to 7pm!
If you look at the map, the worst part is that its arranged in a starfish formation, which means you must always walk back up the highest peak to get back to the middle, before going to another viewpoint. I guess it's because we didn't plan it very well.
My favourite places were definitely the ones with the least amount of tourists. At around 4pm, we decided to walk to Fairy Walking Bridge, which is a place that I had mentioned to Z earlier. It's a bit out of the usual walking trail, and not exactly a famous location. Not only that, since it was already getting late, no one was walking there, so we were pretty much alone. It was perfect! Also the sun came out for us when we were there, so that just topped it all off.
<DYI!> Past 4pm, most shops on Huangshan stop selling instant noodles. This is so they force people to eat at the overpriced restaurants.. but if you ask them quietly.. they can make a secret transaction for you.
<POI!> My friend ZZ was so hungry yesterday on the mountain he made instant noodles with cold water. It was the funniest and perhaps saddest thing I've ever seen.
So we stayed outside at night, in front of this convenience store, eating snacks (buns, corn, eggs.. that's all the hot food available on the top of the mountain) well until 9pm. We started brushing our teeth, all while the shop owners were watching us. Eventually they asked us - why don't you go to your hotel?
That's when we told them we had no place to sleep! It was quite funny.
Eventually the other guy with us said he was feeling cold so we went into the hotel lobby and found a place to sit in the cafe. We ended up sleeping in the cafe, and it was nice because security turned off the lights without kicking us out.
It was a pretty bad sleep though, since it was freezing inside, and we didn't bring enough warm clothes. I wore all my clothes, and even used my plastic raincoat as a cover "for extra warmth" (Apparently ZZ could hear me all night, but he had a good laugh about it). I woke up every hour pretty much, and by 5am we had to wake up and set out to see the sunrise.
Tuesday 29 April, 2014
¥22.00 Breakfast ¥5.00 Bao
¥5.00 Ice cream
¥15.00 Lunch
¥129.00 Bus (Return ticket to Hangzhou)
¥2.00 Bus to Dorm
¥10.00 Dinner
¥40.00 Drink (Vineyard)
¥8.00 Groceries
(¥236.00)
We went to Purple Cloud Peak (This is from memory) to see the sunrise, and it was pretty disappointing. Think tiny red blob, hidden behind a treet, and heaps of tourists taking millions of photos around you. I got over it all pretty quickly, and we just decided to leave and get a start on exploring the rest of the places we hadn't seen on the mountain yet.
We returned back to Hangzhou mid afternoon. It was a really good trip with Z because we realised we work pretty well as travel companions, and we think very alike.. I can't even count the amount of times we said the same thing (jinx!) but the thing that really summed it all up was when we just returned back to our campus. We waved goodbye to K (who lived in a closer building to the main gate) and just as we were in sight of our building we both instinctively covered up - I put my hoodie on and hid my face, he used his hands to hide his, and when we saw what we both did we couldn't help but laugh!
(We both hadn't showered the night before obviously, and coming back from nature always makes you look a bit dirtier..)
Wednesday 30 April, 2014
¥14.00 Lunch¥40.00 Dinner
¥6.00 Banana + Water
¥2.00 Pineapple
(¥62.00)
I had one day of class. I had missed so much class already I really wasn't feeling it, and struggled to concentrate.
Thursday 1 May, 2014
¥2.40 Banana ¥3.00 Bun
¥12.50 Coffee
¥80.00 Beijing Hostel Deposit
¥20.00 Lunch
¥36.00 Dinner
(¥153.90)
Today was the start of the May 1st holidays, so I had no class! Yippee!
Friday 2 May, 2014
¥4.00 Breakfast (Uni Restaurant)¥10.00 Laundry
¥3.00 Fruit
¥12.50 Coffee
¥10.00 Lunch
¥250.00 Backpack (travel)
¥10.60 Groceries
¥40.00 Dinner
¥20.00 Dessert
(¥360.10)
Since I was leaving to Beijing next weekend, I had to start planning my Beijing trip. I also had a Literature Review that was due in 2 days, but due to travel and exams, I decided to apply for an extension.
I went to a mall a bit further away to go to Decathlon, a giant sports store, to buy a travel backpack. It was pretty cheap, only 250 kuai for a 60-70L backpack (I forget).
I was feeling a bit frugal and the food in the mall was expensive, so I didn't want to buy lunch. Instead I wandered into Sam's Club (like Costco) and found all these free samples on offer! So I became full pretty quickly... (Hey I'm in China, I'm not the only one doing this!)
Saturday 3 May, 2014
¥2.00 Water¥15.00 Almonds (Carrefour)
¥6.00 Lunch
¥300.00 Bike Deposit
¥20.00 Tea (In Longjing Village)
¥15.00 Mulberries
¥20.00 Entry to Longjing Garden
¥116.00 Dinner
¥5.50 Pineapple and Milk
(¥499.50)
Today my friend from Italy came to Hangzhou. I took him around to see the city, and we borrowed city bikes (part of the city bike network) and cycled around Hangzhou. We went up to LongJing Village, which is where China's most famous tea leaves are grown, but we just missed the tea leaf picking season. My friend's bike chain snapped off just as we were on the top of the mountain, and the next bike stations were at the bottom of the mountain... we asked some locals if they could help but because we were pretty much in country area, the only option we had was to roll down. Luckily we were at the top of the mountain so we could still roll! Otherwise it would've been difficult to get back. (No taxis up there, it's pretty rural)
I also took him to a nice HZ restaurant, and ordered real stinky tofu (not the fried one) and man it's really bad. It's so bad I felt bad that we didn't eat it, but I still had to ask the waiter to take it away from our table because the smell was just revolting and ruining the rest of the food.
Sunday 4 May, 2014
¥3.00 Bun¥12.00 Dessert
¥12.00 Chicken
¥2.90 Coconut Juice
¥.80 Banana
¥8.00 Dinner
¥4.00 Milk
(¥42.70)
Today I went with a lot of classmates to the first annual international students studying Chinese competition. It's nation wide, and there are a few rounds, uni level, then district, then state, etc. My friend was in the uni level round so we all went to cheer her on. My other friend was also dancing in the opening act, so we got to see that as well.
The comp was really difficult, and I guess it wasn't very fair as the level of Chinese really differed - from people who had native parents but lived abroad, to people with absolutely no Chinese background and only studied Chinese. The first round was a talent round (lots of singing, my friend did paper cutting, some did dancing..). Second was a question and answer about Chinese culture (questions could be preprepared from a list of 80), third was a "use this vocab to construct a story" part. Lastly each participant had to watch a video and answer questions. This was really hard.. and by then a lot of the crowd was feeling restless.
One funny thing that did happen was - they were giving out lucky door prizes (?). As in, we got a number when we went in, and they were calling out numbers as winners of some prize. A lot of the numbers corresponded to no one, but my friend on my left did get called out! Eventually they extended it so that the person with the number and the people directly next to them got the prize. My friend on my right got her number called out, and I jumped in excitement too! But perhaps my reaction was bigger than hers, because the organisers thought I had won!! It was pretty funny for my other friends who were sitting in a different row.
In the end we didn't get the prize (the people who won by association). It was pretty crappy anyway, a t-shirt, and some weird keychain. Trying to declutter my life and omit pointless crap so I wasn't too bummed about it.
PHOTODUMP (It's taken half an hour to upload these and now I'm late for class!)
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| Brushing our teeth in front of the convenience store in Huangshan. |
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| My favourite place in Huangshan.. Fairy Walking Bridge (Sorry this is not the pic of the bridge!) |
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| So glad we stayed the extra days up there because the views were amazing! When there's no fog of course.. |
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| Our free accomodation |
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| Back in Hangzhou, spotted! Timtams.. from Indonesia! (Apparently they taste different) |
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| 20 kuai for a cup of tea in Long Jing Village |
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| The tea fields, all the bushes have been pruned for the next season. |
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| My friend doing a traditional dance in the competition. |
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| Starting to get healthy, by making the first step: making overnight oats for breakfast! I found out that the breakfast downstairs (noodles, wontons) has MSG added at the bottom of each bowl, and I need to feel like I'm giving myself a good start to the day each morning so.. voila. |
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| Been going to the cafe, there's a cat here with a cone of shame. |
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| My friend's pic at Longjing Village. |
Total: ¥1650.00 ($296.25)
Weekly Total: ¥1650.00 ($296.25)
Total Spend: ¥22952.65 ($4372.00 AUD)
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