1st day in china:
台北(桃園) 澳門 深圳 杭州
THE FLIGHT
Left TW at 8:45am, had a bit of a difficulty getting up at 6am (the drive from where I was staying to the airport was around an hour), didn’t help as I somehow couldn’t sleep the night before until 2am. Strangely, I wasn’t excited or looking forward or bored or anything, these days I don’t feel anything anymore, it’s quite weird, must have been coz it’s after my birthday.
Coz we’re Taiwanese, we can’t directly arrive in China, therefore we had to transfer in Macau after 1 1/2 hours flight, with barely 20 min for transferring. It wasn’t pleasant, I must say, I wasn’t feeling particularly well, probably coz I was underslept, almost vomited a few times on the plane and could barely eat any of those not-that-good-anyway plane food.
After arriving in Seng-Zhen after 20 min flight (apparently the most hi-tech city in China with buildings taller than each other), father bought our tickets to Hang-Zhou, and we had lunch at Maccers in the mean time. Yes, Maccers, stop boo-ing, they had different stuff, they had like trangle pockets, and they had peppered chicken fillet burger (it says ”chicken filet” on the wrapper) and spicy chicken wings, so I thought I could try the chicken wings coz it’s different. That was a little too hot for my taste actually, 4 wings and I almost couldn’t take it by the 2nd one, squeezed in the 3rd one and father finished the 4th one off.
THEIR POLICE
We managed to get online in Maccers (they have free wireless internet on the ground floor of the airport) and used it to contact mother to let her know we’re all good, while I looked around at all the policemen (they’re all men) standing around within my view, probably around 5 in Maccers alone. They were interesting to watch, as they really have nothing much to do but to make sure no one does anything bad, they clean tables for you as soon as you get off your seat, suppose that’s their part-time job.
ARRIVAL
After getting on the plane, we arrived in Hang-Zhou 1 1/2 hours later (around 5pm). Hang-zhou is apparently among the most beautiful city in China. There’s a saying, that ”It’s heaven up there and Su (Su-Zhou) Hang (Hang-Zhou) on Earth”. Hang-Zhou is mostly famous for it’s lake, called Xi-Hu, or ”West Lake”. Our uncle-in-law came to pick us up from the airport. After a 40 min drive, we arrived at our first hotel, which was booked by my parents’ friend’s friend (he’s our Chinese neighbour’s friend in China, apparently he could pull some good discount for us). The hotel is 5 stars, international hotel, Hyatt Hotel, and it costs $1000 RMB a night. (Chinese $ in case you don’t know, NZD:RMB = 1:6) This is quite expensive since we’d usually go for something around $250 - $450 RMB for a 4-star) We thought since this ”friend” booked it for us, it’s rude not to stay for at least a night, and it is just by the side of West Lake, which is probably the best scenic, so we lived it a little. Unfortunately, as we found out when we got in there, it didn’t have a view, it’s the one facing the other side, and it’s pretty much blocked anyway. The room was quite small, and since we have 2 ppl (they don’t seem to have 3-bed rooms), we plan to combine 2 single beds and all sleep horizontally - somehow that fits 3 quite nicely. After we dropped off our gears, our uncle-in-law took us to a restaurant that’s owned by his friend. After a long search, we arrived there, with pretty xmas lights decorating everything, the entire town within our eyes’ reach is as bright as day. It’s cold here, as we arrived it’s around 3 - 4 degrees, by night it’s around -2 - 2 degrees.
FOOD AND SMOKE
We didn’t manage eating until 9pm, but I still wasn’t feeling too well, my stomach felt a little sickened, so after looking at this ”Australian schemed restaurant”, I was convinced that even if I order a peppered steak and can’t finish, they can finish it off for me. By this time, I have learnt that you’re allowed to smoke anywhere inside, all restaurants and hotels and train stations etc, and it smells absolutely disgusting. I personally get short of breath when I can smell cig smoke, so it didn’t help when I discovered my uncle-in-law smokes 3 packs a day, and he was smoking hard-out before the food even arrived. The food arrived, oh it was so good, we had a good plate of salad, a bowl of tomato and beef soup which I absolutely loved, then came the steak. As you all know how cold it’s there, as soon as the steak came out, when I cut it pretty much immediately, it’s around 50-degrees - not that hot. Oh did I mention how small that piece of steak was? It’s probably like 120g, and it was thin-as. It tasted really really good, just wished there’s more. It was pretty expensive for their standard too, for $80 RMB per person.
THE FIRST NIGHT
We returned to the hotel by around 10:30pm, wanted to go to the indoor swimming pool to relax just to find out that it was closed for maintenance and will be for another week. The only big thing about this room is the bathroom. The tub is bigger than most normal-sized tub, and the shower is walled with marbles and it’s really pretty. Now I wish I had taken a photo :)
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