Day 2 - Shell China Trip
Day 2
Groaning at the bright light that filled the room as my dad(whom I was sharing the room with) opened the curtains, his way of saying "Wake Up". Apparently in China, the sun rises very very very very very early. FUCK.
Our destination today was Huangzhou and a long bus ride was ahead of us.
So after doing all the customary "Morning Business", I headed down to the breakfast area.
The food was terrible. The only dishes of remote quality were the fried rice and the bread-crumbs coated fish. The soya bean tasted very watery, the orange juice tasted like those vitamin C drinks where you pop a pill into a glass of water where it fizzes until the whole thing turns orange. It was very unappetising.
After breakfast and admiring the surroundings(We were in a metropolitan area with dense old buildings and dirty roads, KTVs right next door, and dilapidated hotels elsewhere.), we went to the bus.
That's when we saw this police officer standing in front of "our" bus. Talking with a bunch of other people and "our" driver. At first we thought that the policeman was looking for some money.
Later though, we found out that the bus' spare tire had been stolen. I don't know if it's bad that I felt relieved, but I did because I was afraid that we might have been having a situation. I was glad to know that corruption wasn't all that widespread. At least not where we were at. One place among many, but still, "one down".
After a bit of commotion, we were on our way to Hangzhou, our second stop.
The roads were jammed pack and we saw a number of accidents on a number of the crossed 2 lane elevated roads.
According to our guide, elevated roads were introduced because there was no more space to build wider roads. So most of these elevated roads(not unlike the way the MRT is elevated) were built over existing roads as a form of highway.
Our tour guide was explaining that China is no longer a pure Communist country. China started introducing mild forms of capitalism in the early 1980s. According to him, China was not advancing fast enough with relation to the rest of the world and even regressed 10 years during the Cultural Revolution so shortly after Mao Zedong died, the government of China slowly began to introduce more and more capitalist elements into their country. China began to grow significantly after that. Not withstanding that China started out from zero, a growth rate of 20% is still quite interesting. Not to mention the fact that China was unaffected by the Asian Financial Crisis. Capitalism was formally introduced(sort of) into China albeit under a different name. The Socialist Market Economy.
Apparently, in Shanghai, the city is divided into rings, with the Inner Ring being an invisible cirle surrounding the city's center, and so on. Property in the inner ring is apparently quite high. And so it is for the other rings too. An exorbitant 10000Yuan(Another name for Renminbi[RMB]) or something like S$2000 PSF for the inner ring. And considering that these people's wages are along the S$1000-1500 area, the costs are extremely expensive.
Pretty soon however, everyone in the bus was starting to sleep. Not because it was boring or anything, but because many of them didn't get enough sleep, especially those that were eating steak up till 3am.
I stayed awake though and I managed to see some familiar sights like buildings for Carrefour and CapitaLand.
We finally reached Huangzhou. We navigated through the city to reach our first stop. Xihu Lake (West Lake).
Soon we were off the bus and walking to the lake. It was a bit chilly but not unbearable for me... Not till the wind started to blow. Based on my experience of being able to tahan(sic) cold weather, I had decided not to bring my coat.When it got too chilly, I did what I usually did to overcome cold and steel myself up. I tensed my muscles and tried to control any trembling. Then I forced myself not to shiver when the wind blew. I kept this up till I didn't feel the cold anymore, usually about ten minutes later. In this case, the cold never really went away , but it was enough for me to tahan. (I did the same thing before in Malaysia's Genting Highlands during rainy weather and it worked rather well. Albeit, when I got back to Singapore, I felt postively on fire. lol)
According to Chinese Law, when entering touring a province, you must have at least one tour guide from that province to follow you around. So in our case, when not in Shanghai(where our Chinese Guide was from), we had our Chinese Guide and the Singapore Guide and a local Guide.
However, at the lake, the tour guide was no where to be seen and it was beginning to rain so we headed to the restaurant, but not before making a quick stop at the loo(You'll find we made a lot of toilet stops in this trip).
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After a lunch that included many fatty and near tasteless dishes, we went for boat ride across the lake. To be honest, it was one of the most boring things I've ever done on a trip. It made me very doubtful that the rest of the trip would be any fun at all.
The boat was very slow and the attractions were non existant. The fog was incredible so that any view of pagodas and hills were obscured. It was raining too so staying out in the rain with a camera at the ready wasn't really a good idea(But I did it anyway).
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The boat took us to the opposite side of the lake where we where our bus was waiting for us. But first we had to walk through another mini park that had this pond full of Kois (or something).
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Our next spot on the itenary was the school of the based-on-truth legend of the Wansong Academy a.k.a Taihe Academy a.k.a Fuwen Academy where the lovers Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yintai were said to have studied together for three academic years.
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At the time, girls were not allowed to study. But this lady(dunnoe which one of them is the lady) was said to have sneaked herself in. When the guy found out she was a girl... Well u can guess the rest of this typical romance story. No brokeback action here though.
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Our next stop was this tea place. I decided to stay in the bus and sit that one out because I wasn't really interested someone telling me about the history of tea and how I should buy their tea, all in a foreign language, both literally and figuratively.
About an hour and a half later though, some of the tour participants began trickling out of the place to board the bus. By now, I needed to pee really bad so I decided to go to the toilet. Well duh! I left the bus to go to the chinese styled building and realised how friggin cold it was. It was only 22°C but it was raining and very breezy.
Now you know these Chinese Chinese(sic) are real crafty people right, so they made it such that to go out again you had to pass by a special path that passed every bit of the shop that this people had for selling tea. People who play Warcraft's Tower Defense will know what I'm talking about. So I spent a good 5 minutes walking thru this maze of sales.
Then there was this sales lady who gave me a hard shove to reach an Ang Moh(Red Hair i.e. European) who was about to buy something. Fucker.
Nevertheless I made it out in one piece and was greeted again by the cold weather which made me want to pee again but I held it in and made my way to the bus where Johnathan(A fellow tourist and son of a Shell guy) was praising them for their excellent sales tactics. Something about how they sell you a product and once you're keen on it, they offer you another product which they say is a much better buy, and because you're already keen on the product, you'd be more willing to upgrade to a better quality one.
Anywayz, we went for dinner after that at another Chinese restaurant which served duck as an appetiser and had fatty pork as part of it's 10 courses, not forgetting of course the all important watermelon finale. Most of the places we had been too looked the part(or nearly) but none lived up to expectations.I also learnt the difference between Chrysanthemum Tea and Chinese Tea and had my first sip of rice wine. It smelt and tasted absolutely horrible. No. Actually, it smelt worse than horrible.
When back on the bus, our guide told us about this optional package plan that allowed some of the guests to view some more stuff about China's History over 3 nights. Because we were so tired, some of us decided to skip this plan.
That's when the guide dropped a bombshell. He said because the hotel was about an hour's drive away, and the show would only be an hour, we had to wait for the show to finish so we could all go back together. At first, everyone was passive about this. But then James, one of the higher-ups' in Shell and one who was going for the show, spoke up saying it was "not right". In the end they sent us back first, and from what we heard, those at the show browsed around while waiting for the bus to come back and pick them up.
The rooms in the hotel were friggin huge. I did manage to sneak a glance at the prices before we actually saw the room and saw that the "standard" rooms were 400RMB per night, roughly around S$80 per night. I presume we got the standard rooms of course.And that was the end of the second day.
Part 2 of 7
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