The west lake is the #1 tourist attraction in all of China if you believe the signs. I kind of struggle to accept more people come here than say, the forbidden city, but there you go.
It certainly is impressive, and very well set up, with lots of things to see and do all the way around.
I walked the full circuit, apparently about 12 miles (18 kilometres). Plus the kilometre or so each way from the lake to my hotel. This sounds about right as it took me just on 5 hours stopping twice for coffee.
Theres picture overload, the fog makes the pictures pretty crap, but I dont see this mist lifting anytime soon! I was kind of glad its cooler though, in the heat I would have struggled.
Before I hit the lake, I warmed up by punching this bull square in the head. Check out my calves, im a super hero.
When I got to the lake, this was the view. Very inspiring. Inspiring if you like a sea of grey nothingness, which I do!
There are certain places you are encouraged to appreciate the view, all with poetic names like 'the autumn moon descends slowly through the everlasting infinity unto its aqueous slumber'
I dont remember any of the actual names, so I am just going to go right ahead and make them up.
There would have to be 1000 or more wooden boats available, in all shapes and sizes.
Most of the walk is a good distance from any road, and scooters and cars are banned. When you do get close to the road you can see theres a lot of upmarket retail around. Including this. Chinese people love wine from my home town it seems.
'A floating symbol of virility springs forth eternally from whence upon a dream it beheld motionless'
'The bovine whilst inept in pursuits most buyoant is forever triumphant as the everlasting force of nourishment'
This is the path. Theres trees all the way around and generally a couple of hundred metres of park. On the far side of the lake there are mountains, which I may investigate further, you cant see them today due to the fog.
There are also man made causeways across the lake, kilometres long, and maybe 50 metres wide, with many arched bridges.
'Rising embers of a time yet to be reach ever upwards towards the stars that bind us all'
There are 3 proper pagodas, as can be seen in the background here. I think they have all been rebuilt though.
2/3 of the global goldfish population amassed in one pond.
One of the more impressive boats. apparently at night they are lit up in ridiculous amounts of neon.
Things only I would notice. You can walk all around here at night. Pretty much every tree has these vines growing up them, until you look closely. They are clevery disguised electrical cables for the lights.
I am not afraid to photograph someone elses wedding. If you are going to have your photo taken in one of the worlds most photographed locations, you should expect this to occur.
Without a doubt the nicest location for a starbucks ever. I had a second coffee just because of it. This is a fine example of how Hangzhou has done a great job of not making the West lake area a tourist hell. There are no vendors selling plastic crap with loud speakers blaring, all the buildings look like this one.
There are also a number of temples around the lake, and tombs. This one is a temple and a tomb. I decided to visit, perhaps to use the bathroom after my second enormous coffee.
Looks like fabric but is actually carved stone thats been painted.
A real tomb. The two mounds here are genuinely old.
OK, this is a different wedding. But they have decided to have their photos taken in a bus stop. I can only hope the reason is this is where they met, otherwise, perhaps they like busses.
My lunch, it wouldnt be right if I didnt photograph it. It turned out to be very rich and fatty pork belly under fried onions. It was nice and I was hungry from my long walk.
Ordering was interesting, there was no menu, just Chinese characters on a wall. They had photos out the front so I took the girl outside and pointed. It seems they dont update their photos often because most of what I pointed at was 'mei yo' which is cant have.
Eventually I asked 'Wo curyi shemme ma?'. Which may be wrong grammatically, but worked as she pointed at 3 things, and I just said yes, not knowing exactly which I would get. It turned out ok, no dried bear penis that I know of.
And now 2 bonus panoramas. If you click them they are quite large. My camera does these in the camera automatically, you just hold the button down and sweep in the direction you choose. The original image was over 8000 pixels wide.
The second panorama.
Not sure what I will do tonight, legs are sore!
Hangzhou is huge.
Like many Chinese cities there is a new city area, which is far away from the old city area.
In Hangzhou I estimate its about 15km away, too far to walk. This meant I had to brave the bus network!
There are a ridiculous amount of busses criss crossing every street, they have English numbers on the busses themselves, but thats where the English stops.
Theres no announcements on the bus in English, the signs at the stops only tell you where you are in Chinese, and the drivers are expectedly aggressive, hardly getting off the horn and opening the doors before the bus comes to a complete stop.
You can get an IC card, but if you dont have one (I dont), knowing how much to pay can be a bit of a guess too. Theres a rubbish bin like thing you throw coins in as you get on. The internet tells me its 1 yuan for non air conditioned, and 2 for air conditioned.
It also says all busses in Hangzhou are air conditioned and that the city has the most modern and extensive bus network in all of China.
It then says that since they dont turn the air conditioner on in spring and autumn, you only have to pay 1 Yuan regardless, confused yet?
I just threw in 2 and stood up in the crush, peering out the window trying to recognise where I was going.
This plan didnt quite pay off as hoped, I spotted a giant mall which I thought was my destination, it had a Tescos, but once I got off and found the nearest crossing road with English writing which I could recognise on my blackberry, I realised I still had about a kilometre to go.
No problem, I got to wander through an awesome skyscraper ghost town. This one was almost finished, and presumably in the next few weeks, 50,000 people will move in.
Standing up on the bus. When I first got on it was far too packed to try and take a photo, I sat against the front window.
The bus ride back was less busy and I got a seat. They show Chinas funniest home videos on the bus. The passengers are either having hysterical fits of laughter or have an unbelievable ability to fall fast asleep the instant they sit down.
The skyscraper ghost town. It was really quite surreal, there were 32 such buildings with as far as I could tell, no one living in them. Yet all the landscaping and playground equipment were completed.
You could film the best zombie movie ever here.
The mall however was great. You cant really compare Australian westfields to the concept of a Chinese mall. Since so many people eat out in asian countries, the malls are much more a collection of restaurants and entertainment than they are supermarkets and stores with cheap baby clothes.
Despite all the buildings around it being seemingly vacant, it was quite busy.
The only supermarket is on basement level 2. An Ole which is an expensive foreign food only supermarket. It is massive and fancy. I enjoy looking in these places a lot but rarely buy anything.
The varieties of pop corn were what had me amused this evening, whiskey flavoured, ham and pineapple?
On the roof of this mall there are 4 very fancy restaurants. All seem to have small private dining rooms for groups of 10 to 20 with butlers. I wasnt about to eat there on my own but I do enjoy appreciating the view from the roof. Theres no one else outside enjoying the roof garden.
I loved being up there on my own, its as if they constructed the entire garden just for me.
Next door theres what looks like an extension to the mall going on, I can stand and watch construction sites for hours.
And now for my excellent dinner. I dont know the name of the place, as it was Chinese writing only on the sign and menu, but this is part 1 of my meal. I think the closest I have had in Australia would be Dan Dan noodles, which is pork with spices, hand made noodles and no soup. This is similar but added strips of vegetables. It was awesome. The pork had a great spicy flavour with the right amount of szechuan pepper, the noodles were a perfect level of chewiness.
My drink in the background was freshly squeezed lemon soda (I watched the chef go crazy with lemons) with honey. Also excellent!
Part 2 of my meal was amazing. Bean curd with a rather unique sauce. It is hard to describe just how great the texture and flavour of it was.
It was even better when eating it with the noodles.
The cost for this meal was $7.
On the bus home I thought about this, it may be the best meal I have ever had?
Last picture, the mall also has an ice skating rink. The kids skating here are the real deal, doing proper spins and whatever despite appearing to be 10 years old.
After today, I will upgrade my opinion of Hangzhou to great. It gets the same recommendation as Nanjing - definitely worth visiting if you come to Shanghai. It may be worth waiting a year until at least the first 2 lines of the metro are running and the main street is no longer mud.