Day trip to Hangzhou, China
9:32 AM
Hi all
On Saturday, I took a road trip along with three other Australians to Hangzhou, which is about 3 hours by car out of Shanghai. We hired a minivan driver for $300 AUD for the day to take us around.
A lot of people go to Hangzhou as it’s quite a pretty area, with a significant lake area called the West Lake as well as temples, carvings and places of worship to see. We spent a bit of time walking around before boarding multiple ferries while we island hopped across the lake. It was very nice and quite pleasant to get out of the hustle and bustle of Shanghai but gee it was hot. Sitting out in the sun while we island hopped and walking around the area in the sun had most of us feeling like we were literally going to melt away until there was nothing left of us. We later found out it was 37 degrees with about 80% humidity. Not nice.
Anyway, we continued on exploring having conquered a small part of the West lake area and headed to lunch at a near by restaurant. After lunch we headed to a couple of temples and observed some of the local religious practices. We visited one place which had some cool stone carvings of people etched into rocks found on the side of a hill and in a cave. We took some path that led up the hill and got ¾ of the way up only to find out from someone that the path didn’t go anywhere. I couldn’t believe this so went the rest of the way up only to find it really went nowhere and headed back down to meet the others. Remembering that it was uncomfortably hot, by the time we all got down, most of us were wet through. Very attractive I can assure you…NOT
Anyway, we ultimately found the temple we had started out to find and went in and had a look at the giant golden buddha inside (not made of gold but physically painted gold). We checked out a final temple before departing back to Shanghai for our three hour drive home, most of us physically exhausted from the heat.
Sunday was fairly quiet back in Shanghai with more preparations for the lawyer visits. We are planning a bigger trip outside of China so stay tuned.
Cheerio
Dave
On Saturday, I took a road trip along with three other Australians to Hangzhou, which is about 3 hours by car out of Shanghai. We hired a minivan driver for $300 AUD for the day to take us around.
A lot of people go to Hangzhou as it’s quite a pretty area, with a significant lake area called the West Lake as well as temples, carvings and places of worship to see. We spent a bit of time walking around before boarding multiple ferries while we island hopped across the lake. It was very nice and quite pleasant to get out of the hustle and bustle of Shanghai but gee it was hot. Sitting out in the sun while we island hopped and walking around the area in the sun had most of us feeling like we were literally going to melt away until there was nothing left of us. We later found out it was 37 degrees with about 80% humidity. Not nice.
Anyway, we continued on exploring having conquered a small part of the West lake area and headed to lunch at a near by restaurant. After lunch we headed to a couple of temples and observed some of the local religious practices. We visited one place which had some cool stone carvings of people etched into rocks found on the side of a hill and in a cave. We took some path that led up the hill and got ¾ of the way up only to find out from someone that the path didn’t go anywhere. I couldn’t believe this so went the rest of the way up only to find it really went nowhere and headed back down to meet the others. Remembering that it was uncomfortably hot, by the time we all got down, most of us were wet through. Very attractive I can assure you…NOT
Anyway, we ultimately found the temple we had started out to find and went in and had a look at the giant golden buddha inside (not made of gold but physically painted gold). We checked out a final temple before departing back to Shanghai for our three hour drive home, most of us physically exhausted from the heat.
Sunday was fairly quiet back in Shanghai with more preparations for the lawyer visits. We are planning a bigger trip outside of China so stay tuned.
Cheerio
Dave
