The great loop of China - April 2018 - Page 8

Yes, its raining. I sat and drank two expensive coffees at the expensive cafe thinking it would stop. It didnt.

Instead I scrolled the map and found the furthest mall on the subway line, because what else can I do in the rain? As it turns out, this is the mall I went to last time I was here, only that time I had to go on a long dark bus trip through the remote ghost town suburbs which were all under contruction back then.

There is an ice skating rink, and small Chinese babies are very good at ice skating, I saw a quintuple lutz to double axel.

As you can see, this area is no longer a ghost town, it is the new modern city centre.

The mall has a very nice roof garden area to get wet in while taking photos of the view. The cleaners who rake leaves all day were standing under shelter making fun of me for getting wet.

Once I had walked around indoors enough, I descended back to the subway and found a food stand selling 5 mystery balls of mystery meat for $2. They were quite nice, each one had a different mysterious filling of grey boiled flesh. Fittingly grey and moist.

I wanted to get up there to where that tower is, I assumed I would be able to approach the hill from the pointy bit nearest the city. I was wrong, I made 3 attempts that resulted in retreats.

Instead I found myself walking back along the west lake, lots of people were setting off on their lap now that the rain had stopped.

I found my path, here we have a gate, fog, steps, bundles of electrical wires.

Yes, the photo everyone takes, enjoy the modern recreation of the ancient pagoda.

The lesser causeway in the lake.

There are numerous slippery rock paths to choose from, I tried them all and never slippd over once.

I was really enjoying the late afternoon view of the rain clouds leaving the city.

Have a bit more lake, and fog leaving the forest.

Here we have the other side of Hangzhou, the non lake side, rarely seen!

I have not taken one of these for a few days. I was so happy (cant you tell?) that the rain had left and I could run up a hill today. I originally intended to run up lots more hills a lot further away, but any hill will do.

There are lots of things to do here on the hill. There were some Chinese kids camping here, you can see their rolled up space blanket things on the bottom of this ancient shrine. I told them a ghost story about a weird white guy who collects Chinese childrens teeth, they descended immediately.

I decided to keep heading in this direction, through the fog, down the far side of the hill.

There was a chance for one last view of the sun hitting parts of the tourist side of Hangzhou.

I was surprised at what I found on the far side of the hill, here we have a tea plantation, thats it, no more just this little bit in this hidden valley.

Thats when I stumbled into these dogs guarding the gates of hell! Quite surreal.

Then in an amazing twilight I descended through the sacred bamboo forest, with kung fu warriors flying over head.

I exited the hill area by skirting around a pay to enter temple garden, without paying.

This part of Hangzhou is the government building area, it now has a brand new (opened last month) subway line. Here we have the olympic stadium. Can you remember the Hangzhou olympics? So many wonderful memories, China won every single medal and they also came 4th in every event so invented a new kind of medal made of silk.

This is the local power companies building.

And from what I could work out, this is the police headquarters. It is a new building.

I returned to the area near my hotel for dinner, descended underground and found a place claiming to sell Hangzhou specialty noodles. OK then. It was noodles, not sure what was special, they were nice and spicy, but just noodles. Hangzhou specialty - plain noodles.

This is a small part of the Hangzhou east station, according to some wikipedia articles, the largest high speed rail station in China. I cant fit it all in even though this is the narrower side.

You can walk all the way around the outside, I tried to capture a bit more of its majestic grandeur.

The inside of it is quite similar to other stations, except 2 levels under here is a lot more restaurants and shopping than other Chinese stations, more like a Japanese station.

My mother keeps telling me I dont show photos of trains, even though I do, so heres the trains.

And here is the inside of the train. I took an identical photo already on an earlier page, I am sure of it.

My hotel room this time is getting closer to Japanese levels of size and amenity. Although you can still walk on both sides of a full queen size bed.

Finally, bonus bathroom shot due to not many photos today. Not a lot to see here, very modern and clean.

Bund #1, everyone has seen it before. Since I was last here there is a much much higher building, in fact the worlds second tallest seen here on the right.

More bund, I walked a long way beyond where the tourists get their photos taken.

A small amount of barely noticeable rain meant I had the place to myself. I took my pants off and screamed nonsense at the top of my lungs to celebrate, then collapsed into a coughing fit. Yes my cough is still terrible.

The rain stopped as I was back at the busy bit, but its really not as busy as I would expect at this time on a Sunday.

Now I walked a long way beyond the other end of the tourist photo area, over the small bridge. Still not dark.

A bit later and I was at the overseas passenger terminal. I couldnt get a decent photo, but they were filming a tv commercial on the dock for a new electric SUV. I could however photograph a passing neon pirate ship.

There are also other big colorful buildings around here, and gardens.

I am not sure what is going on here, but as far as I could tell there were no shops? This whole are was very quiet.

I thought if I followed the rainbow road I would surely find my dinner. Sydney continues to have ongoing debates about a rainbow painted on the road, meanwhile China has built a kilometre long lit up version to guide all the homosexuals to the mall.

In the mall I found Japanese curry. It is a small serve and vegetarian, but very nice. There are a lot more non Chinese food options in Shanghai.

The short walk from the subway station to the ancient water town took me through a wet market. I bought some reconstituted powdered sea urchin flavour to go with my fake eggs.

And here we are, water town, no entry fee!

There are lots of little sewers like this one to wander around and over.

Many places are cafes or bars, but also boutiques, and occasionally an art gallery, just as you might expect.

I found my cafe.

Here we have the main river running through the area, you can see a bridge going over it, guess where the next photo will be from?

Here is the photo from the bridge.

You can pay a small fortune to go on a gondola, imported directly from the factory that exports them to Venice.

Many shops have a resident bird on a chain. The chain is to protect me from the bird, because I was insulting it in Chinese and it was getting angry and trying to attack. As long as I hurled insults from just beyond the reach of the chain I was safe.

They have recently built a few temples in the area to further ancient the ancient town. The temples looked brand new to me.

One last street in tourist zone.

I walked away a bit from the tourist area and took some photos of the normal streets of a water town where people actually live. Probably fairly wealthy people judging by how well maintained the place is.

Last photo of water town, I would imagine it would be much nicer on a sunny day.

I mentioned the subway journey in my intro for today, the last bit is above ground, and goes through miles and miles of bleak nothingness to get here. They still however have built a huge station, ready to handle massive volumes of people that dont exist yet. The subway comes every 5 minutes.

Back in town now, and this is the area near my hotel which has an old neighbourhood. It is very central to Peoples Square and the bund, so its hardly going to be for poor people. Very colorful even on a grey day.

The alleyways off the alleyways get narrower and chaotic, but still quite clean.

OK, one more photo of the old streets of central Shanghai.

I am not sure what is going on here, someone has hung various pieces of polystyrene off their window where underpants would normally hang. Art / Rubbish / Both?

Last photo for today, my lunch. I went to a bakery, where I would normally browse for 5 minutes, but I was pressured into a fast decision. They had run out of tongs so a bakery girl with plastic gloves followed me around to place things on my tray. I selected charcoal walnut loaf. Not bad!

Here is the start of Nanjing road, this huge place on the corner is being completely redeveloped to become more modern.

This was not here last time I was here, there was a watsons chemist inside, but I found out watsons is not really a chemist, it is a make up and vitamins shop.

A bit more of Nanjing road, I was on the hunt for a chemist.

I found Shanghai #1 pharmacy. That was its official name, I suspect they are all numbered. Anyway, there were 3 levels and you had to go to the top level past the ginseng and other crap to get to the actual medicine. They found the young girl but her English was worse than my Chinese. Eventually I was able to tell her in Chinese I wanted western cough medicine, not Chinese traditional medicine. This meant we could stop looking at the broken spore powder and ground turtle shell.
I have no idea what I have bought, but it was $5, its tablets, and I think we agreed I take 2 tablets twice a day.
She then takes it back off you, you get a piece of paper, go and pay, and they want ID. I didnt have my passport on me, but they actually accepted a photo of my passport. Time will tell if I got placebo, poison, or something that will cause me to develop breast soreness.

It started to rain more, time to find dinner.

Pasta night! It did not look like the photo on the menu. The menu said vegetable and chilli wholegrain pasta with olives. I guess I kind of got that but also mystery meat. It was actually quite nice, once again a small serve which is good.

I found myself at the end of Nanjing road soon after, which meant I was back at the bund, in the rain and fog, time for a mysterious photo of the buildings in Pudong disappearing into the night.

The number of dark barges that go past very quickly is amazing, you really could stand here all night.

The bund is actually the old buildings on this side of the river, not the shiny new buildings on the other side. I guess I will go to the other side tomorrow and fire off some photos of the old buildings, until then, heres a preview.

And here is my cough defence pack, paper aeroplane pills and an ice cream. I also bought an apple (a day to keep the doctor away). I dont feel weird from the pills yet. They were bright blue.