I was told by my brother who visited Shanghai recently that- look, our credit cards dont work there- so carry cash, veg food is an issue- so, carry ready to eat food, language is an issue, more importantly- Google does not work in China- so, buy a local sim there and install a VPN to get everything working. That was enough to scare me off.
I started planning the whole trip, including how to get to the hotel from airport, snapshots of maps (you cannot download offline maps in the China region!!), carry cash in multiple wallets, carry a power adapter and so on.
Of course, when we landed in Hangzhou, China, it met my expectations, in the sense, not a single person understood when I said "Bus", we were looking for the airport bus to reach the hotel. Luckily, I had a print out of the airport shuttle timings which had a photo of a bus- and that helped! Nobody could read English, and my hotel name/address was in English- nobody could guide us. To let us in to the bus stop, they did an explosive detection check!! Luckily, the airport bus stopped diagnoally opposite to our hotel; the hotel had the name in Chinese too- and there you go, we arrived. I must say that the Huachen International hotel was extremely good. It was like a 4-star hotel- a price of Rs.3500- we were on the 15th floor, they lent us travel adapters since ours did not work. And there were fake markets right behind the hotel! We were very close to West-lake and what else do you need!
Then, we started exploring the place. We figured that people smoke a lot!! My God, I must have inhaled so much smoke in the one week! And the people are so uncivilised, worse than Indians! They would just barge into you, unintentionally of course. I was in this convenient store looking for a yogurt. A girl just pushed me aside, took the thing she was looking for, and went away. Many more such instances. People were jumping lines, and the worst thing was in the railway station. Guys whose train was coming up half an hour later blocked the line of the train which was coming up in 15 minutes. And there were people arguing, shouting at each other! At another store, they were just about to close, at 8.30pm, and I was still looking for some food stuff to buy, of course, trying hard to find if there was any English word written there. The lady just shouted at us in Chinese, luckily, we could not understand. But, we figured that she wanted us to buy quickly and leave. I have not seen such a thing in India. The last experience was that the cab guy managed to cheat us at least 50 Yuan (Rs 500). The station was 25 km away from the hotel and would cost 80Yuan, we knew it. The meter showed 50km and charged us 133Yuan!! And I told him that- "Look, we know it costs only 80Y and your meter shows 130Y." He quickly pointed us to another taxi and said- "Look, that one is 80Y", and as if doing charity, he charged me just 130, and not 133 :) I did not want to get into an argument in an unknown language in that country, so we got away from the situation. Anyway, he got my point that, we know he cheated us.
Anyway, coming back to tourism, we went to a place called "West Lake"- which is a popular tourist spot- and we saw nearly 5000 people there, only to realise that they were seated there for 4 hours to watch the musical fountain!! Just too many people in this country, and too many kids! We took the Dragonboat cruise on the lake- and it was so rich inside!
We visited Lingyin temple- and it was probably one of the best tourist spots I have visited ever, We found a temple premises and thought that was it. Then we found stairs by its side- to only find that there was another temple premises above this one. Then we kept going- and found that there were 5 different levels of the Buddhist temple premises. One of them had about 100 Buddhas carved on a wall.
This temple was in a park which had rock carvings- of Laughing Buddhas etc. There was another hall which had 500 statues of Buddhist monks. We had already walked nearly 6 km and I really cannot believe I completed this visit. There were still couple more temples in the park- for which the ticket was already included, but I had no fuel left to tour. But, this is a must visit- if you are around this area.
We were to take the bullet train to Shanghai at 4pm next day and we had to collect tickets at the station. My conference was to get done at 2pm, so we thought we will take a cab, reach the station at 2.45pm, collect the tickets and leave. Then, I suddenly realised that the print out I had did not have the ticket pick up number. I then logged in to trip.com, but it sent an OTP to my gmail id which I had no access to. I had to call my brother over watsapp, give me my password which luckily I remembered, get the OTP, signin and get the pickup number. We then saw a picture of the Hangzhou railway station- it had at least 10000 people.
Then we felt, there might be huge lines for ticket pickup, so we better wake up early, get the tickets and then go to the conference. This really saved the day for us. It took an hour in the line for us to get tickets- esp because were were "aliens" (thats what they call the international passengers), and our passports had to be verified. And and, the station was atleast twice the size of Bangalore airport. The north going and south going trains were in different station terminals!! The station itself was so easy- you get through security and arrive at waiting halls on ground floor. This floor has entry to all 30 platforms. The gates open 15mins before departure and close 3 mins before. You can only enter your platform, not any other one. You go through the escalator to the -1 floor- and wait for the train, The train arrived at 4pm, people got out in a minute, and it departed at 4.03pm!! A train carried a max of 500 passengers!! The bullet train experience was cool- we traveled in first class- for about Rs.1000 at a top speed of 306 km/hr. It did not really feel like 300+.
Shanghai, no wonder, had many more people. We went well prepared, got the hotel name and address translated to Chinese, showed it to the cab guy- and yes, we had learnt the trick- how to survive and communicate in China. We went on the Huangpu river cruise- what a sight at the Bund! The Pearl tower, Financial center and there was an ICBC bank- which had 30 floors.
Then there were these fake markets outside the Science and technology museum metro stop. The museum building was so huge- with a central globe. There were at least 2000 shops at that metro- fully air conditioned- I couldnt believe it. And we had so much bargaining. I looked for a handbag- the price she quoted was 300Yuan (3000Rs). I said 30- she was shell-shocked. She said- are talking about 30 dollars? I said 30 Yuan- no kidding. And I finally got it at 35Yuan.. Ridiculous.. I bought some 2Yuan, 10 Yuan stuff, some really nice handcraftef souvenirs.
And the metro is so so phenomenol. They had 17 Lines- I could not print it out! The central People's square stop had 20 exits!! That single stop was as big as our Bangalore airport with so many facilities. On the inside of the metro, they had a good plan for showing the route- a red light would blink at the stop we were going to arrive. Green lights were blinking at the stops we have already travelled. Names of the streets, exits, metro stops were written in Chinese and English- thank god!
Lastly, we went to Zhujiajiao water town- called the Venice of the east, about 40km away from Shanghai. We traveled by metro line 17- for atleast 20 stops- cost us just 8 Yuan!! It had a Tibetan cultural museum, an old post office, a park and so on- easily you can spend the whole day there. You can wear the Chinese traditional wear for 10Y, click photos!!
I started planning the whole trip, including how to get to the hotel from airport, snapshots of maps (you cannot download offline maps in the China region!!), carry cash in multiple wallets, carry a power adapter and so on.
Of course, when we landed in Hangzhou, China, it met my expectations, in the sense, not a single person understood when I said "Bus", we were looking for the airport bus to reach the hotel. Luckily, I had a print out of the airport shuttle timings which had a photo of a bus- and that helped! Nobody could read English, and my hotel name/address was in English- nobody could guide us. To let us in to the bus stop, they did an explosive detection check!! Luckily, the airport bus stopped diagnoally opposite to our hotel; the hotel had the name in Chinese too- and there you go, we arrived. I must say that the Huachen International hotel was extremely good. It was like a 4-star hotel- a price of Rs.3500- we were on the 15th floor, they lent us travel adapters since ours did not work. And there were fake markets right behind the hotel! We were very close to West-lake and what else do you need!
Then, we started exploring the place. We figured that people smoke a lot!! My God, I must have inhaled so much smoke in the one week! And the people are so uncivilised, worse than Indians! They would just barge into you, unintentionally of course. I was in this convenient store looking for a yogurt. A girl just pushed me aside, took the thing she was looking for, and went away. Many more such instances. People were jumping lines, and the worst thing was in the railway station. Guys whose train was coming up half an hour later blocked the line of the train which was coming up in 15 minutes. And there were people arguing, shouting at each other! At another store, they were just about to close, at 8.30pm, and I was still looking for some food stuff to buy, of course, trying hard to find if there was any English word written there. The lady just shouted at us in Chinese, luckily, we could not understand. But, we figured that she wanted us to buy quickly and leave. I have not seen such a thing in India. The last experience was that the cab guy managed to cheat us at least 50 Yuan (Rs 500). The station was 25 km away from the hotel and would cost 80Yuan, we knew it. The meter showed 50km and charged us 133Yuan!! And I told him that- "Look, we know it costs only 80Y and your meter shows 130Y." He quickly pointed us to another taxi and said- "Look, that one is 80Y", and as if doing charity, he charged me just 130, and not 133 :) I did not want to get into an argument in an unknown language in that country, so we got away from the situation. Anyway, he got my point that, we know he cheated us.Anyway, coming back to tourism, we went to a place called "West Lake"- which is a popular tourist spot- and we saw nearly 5000 people there, only to realise that they were seated there for 4 hours to watch the musical fountain!! Just too many people in this country, and too many kids! We took the Dragonboat cruise on the lake- and it was so rich inside!
We were to take the bullet train to Shanghai at 4pm next day and we had to collect tickets at the station. My conference was to get done at 2pm, so we thought we will take a cab, reach the station at 2.45pm, collect the tickets and leave. Then, I suddenly realised that the print out I had did not have the ticket pick up number. I then logged in to trip.com, but it sent an OTP to my gmail id which I had no access to. I had to call my brother over watsapp, give me my password which luckily I remembered, get the OTP, signin and get the pickup number. We then saw a picture of the Hangzhou railway station- it had at least 10000 people.
Then we felt, there might be huge lines for ticket pickup, so we better wake up early, get the tickets and then go to the conference. This really saved the day for us. It took an hour in the line for us to get tickets- esp because were were "aliens" (thats what they call the international passengers), and our passports had to be verified. And and, the station was atleast twice the size of Bangalore airport. The north going and south going trains were in different station terminals!! The station itself was so easy- you get through security and arrive at waiting halls on ground floor. This floor has entry to all 30 platforms. The gates open 15mins before departure and close 3 mins before. You can only enter your platform, not any other one. You go through the escalator to the -1 floor- and wait for the train, The train arrived at 4pm, people got out in a minute, and it departed at 4.03pm!! A train carried a max of 500 passengers!! The bullet train experience was cool- we traveled in first class- for about Rs.1000 at a top speed of 306 km/hr. It did not really feel like 300+.
Shanghai, no wonder, had many more people. We went well prepared, got the hotel name and address translated to Chinese, showed it to the cab guy- and yes, we had learnt the trick- how to survive and communicate in China. We went on the Huangpu river cruise- what a sight at the Bund! The Pearl tower, Financial center and there was an ICBC bank- which had 30 floors.
Then there were these fake markets outside the Science and technology museum metro stop. The museum building was so huge- with a central globe. There were at least 2000 shops at that metro- fully air conditioned- I couldnt believe it. And we had so much bargaining. I looked for a handbag- the price she quoted was 300Yuan (3000Rs). I said 30- she was shell-shocked. She said- are talking about 30 dollars? I said 30 Yuan- no kidding. And I finally got it at 35Yuan.. Ridiculous.. I bought some 2Yuan, 10 Yuan stuff, some really nice handcraftef souvenirs.
And the metro is so so phenomenol. They had 17 Lines- I could not print it out! The central People's square stop had 20 exits!! That single stop was as big as our Bangalore airport with so many facilities. On the inside of the metro, they had a good plan for showing the route- a red light would blink at the stop we were going to arrive. Green lights were blinking at the stops we have already travelled. Names of the streets, exits, metro stops were written in Chinese and English- thank god!
Lastly, we went to Zhujiajiao water town- called the Venice of the east, about 40km away from Shanghai. We traveled by metro line 17- for atleast 20 stops- cost us just 8 Yuan!! It had a Tibetan cultural museum, an old post office, a park and so on- easily you can spend the whole day there. You can wear the Chinese traditional wear for 10Y, click photos!!
