Stupidity in Hangzhou

Trip Start Feb 25, 2006
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Trip End Jun 24, 2009


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Flag of China  , Zhejiang,
Monday, November 3, 2008

After a big night out of barbecue and beer in Shenzhen, I got up early this morning with a bad hangover and somehow managed to drag my sorry bum on a plane to Hangzhou. I was planning on taking the Metro to the airport bus to save some money after an expensive Halloween weekend, but as soon as I walked outside I just couldn't be bothered to walk all the way to the Metro station so I just hailed a taxi in front of Matt's apartment. Sometimes convenience is just worth the extra $3 even in China. With petrol prices so high these days, I don't know taxi drivers can make any money driving people around for this kind of money.

I'm sitting in a very nice train station hotel right now playing stupid so I can sit in a place that doesn't have millions of idiots blowing smoke in my face. It's nice and comfortable and very quite here in the conference room lounge and I'm not moving without at least putting up a good fight. A girl just came to ask me what I was doing here and then told me that this floor is closed. I told her that I didn't understand and asked her if she spoke English. She promptly got very nervous, smiled and walked away. Sometimes it's good to play the ignorant foreigner. My train doesn't leave for another hour so if I can just hang out here for another 30 minutes, I can limit my exposure to my most feared places in China, the dreaded smoke filled and crowded train stations. Although it's not much further from Hangzhou to Yuyao than from Ningbo to Yuyao, the train station in Ningbo just seems less chaotic than here. There a lot more seedy characters here ready to rip off tourists as well. I can see people eying my luggage and pockets as I walk by them. It's been a long day already and it's only 3:30pm. I'm tired and can't wait to get home, take a shower and a nap.

I had planned to spend a couple/few days here in Hangzhou, but I'll just have to come back another day to see the famous West Lake. I asked several people how to get to the lake from the train station in the 2 hours I had before my train. I got as many answers as the number of times I asked. One girl seemed to know what she was talking about, but I misunderstood what she was saying. She told me that "why" "are" bus goes to the lake when I asked her what number bus goes there. She kept telling me Y R and I just couldn't believe that there was a bus with the number Y R. She sounded like she might speak a little English so I finally asked her "what is the bus number" and she said, "Oh, Y 2" and we had a big laugh at how stupid I was for not understanding that she was saying Y2 in Mandarin. Sometimes in China, I don't even have to "play" stupid.
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