Hangzhou and beyond

It's been a few days between posts and we've changed cities twice, and are moving on again tomorrow.

On our last night in Chengdu we went to a restaurant in the ancient street. Many of the restaurants here also include shows - so we were able to see some live music, dancing and more traditional face changing. I have a video of the face changing to post later.

The next day we flew from Chengdu to Hangzhou (a city a couple of hours south west of Shanghai). We also made a transition from nice hotel to terrifying hostel. We spent a lot of time executing bugs. Needless to say we didn't spend too much time in the room.

Hangzhou is another big city, but what it is really famous for is the massive "west lake" right next to the city. There is tons to do both on the lake, and around it - many restaurants and bars. In particular there is a famous chain of restaurants called 外婆家 (The Grandmas). I'd heard about it through work before leaving and figured it was something we had to try. The first night there we got out front and found hundreds of people waiting. We got a number for a table for 2 and the ticket said over 87 people waiting for 2 person tables ahead of you. After an hour there were still over 50 ahead of us. We gave up and went for Thai food which was mediocre.

We hadn't been totally defeated, and tried again for lunch. We figured we would go early and get in no problem. Well at 11:20 there were already 30 groups ahead of us. We wandered around for a while and came back and a few numbers had passed. We repeated this a few times until somehow it had moved 30 past our number and we lost our table. Amy yelled at them and we were seated right away.

The place didn't disappoint. It was good food at very low prices. We had a mapo dofu (tofu in spicy sauce with pork) for 3 yuan (less than 50 cents). We also ordered a spicy green pepper dish which ended up being a plate full of fried peppers similar to jalapeños. This was very spicy. Overall good food for good value.

After lunch we took a boat to the center of the lake. There is an island there with 4 mini lakes inside it. It was quite amazing and I'll have pictures later that can do it justice. We spent the rest of the day exploring here and walking down a several kilometer long causeway through the lake.

At one point a group of younger people were staring at me and then tried to take a picture of the crazy foreigner. I wasn't too impressed and yelled back at them. Amy kicked the girl in the back of the leg and we both felt better. I guess I do standout a bit but I didn't think it was photo worthy.

At night we saw "Impression West Lake" which is a big performance on one section of the lake. It was compared to cirque de soleil but I think it was more artsy and the not a lot in terms of acrobatics. There was a very large number of performers on the lake, sometimes hundreds coordinated very well. As you can see in the photo parts of the water stage rise up for effect. The show was great but it was a little short - only one hour.

Now we've moved on to Suzhou - a city sometimes called the Venice of Asia, famous for the canals and magnificent gardens. We are staying at the Pan Pacific here and it's a very nice place to relax for a couple of days. We even had a nice western dinner here last night which was a nice temporary change of pace.

I'll update more on Suzhou later - for now we are off to see the canals before moving on to Shanghai tomorrow.