Headaches in Hangzhou

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Never before have I relied so heavily on sign language as the day I had to get myself between two Chinese cities by bus and train without knowing a word of Mandarin. Actually that's a lie, I know how to say "who farted?" in Chinese thanks to Carl Barron. For those interested, it's "Fom paaaah?". That said, at no point today did I need to interrogate anybody for alleged crimes of flatulence.

We landed in China at about 1pm today on our awesomely cheap budget airline flight. Kate and I saved ourselves about $400 each by choosing to fly not into our destination of Shanghai but a neighbouring town about 200km south west of it called Hangzhou. From what we saw of Hangzhou from the aeroplane and footpaths, it looks beautiful and spacious. It's actually quite famous in China and recently ranked as one of the top 10 most liveable cities. The Chinese even have this really tacky ancient saying which goes "In the sky, God made heaven. On Earth, he made Hangzhou." Super cheesy I know but I suppose it shows that it must be a pretty nice neighbourhood to be so revered.

That sums up all of the nice things I'm going to say about Hangzhou. Our experience there was pretty crap. All of my previous travelling experience in Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand did not prepare me for the huge language barrier that exists throughout China. Hardly ANYONE can speak anything more than "Hello" here and it was a nightmare for us both who had grown fairly used to the residents of our previous destinations having a good grasp of English.

Buying a coffee in a caf?was our first encounter. For the Chinese, it's quite important to "save face" so people here often tend to nod at you even though they're completely lost in what you're attempting to convey to them. For Kate to order a mocha, we did a lot of pointing and sign language and eventually our initial waitress found a friend who spoke mildly good English.

Next we caught a bus. The entire ticket was written in Chinese except for the prices and there were several different buses to board. The ticket seller lady was an absolutely vile woman who couldn't be bothered with us, probably as she couldn't understand what we were trying to ask. It sucked, we lugged our heavy luggage around between buses for a while before we located the correct one.

Once we got off the bus, the real fun began. The train station could not be seen from where we got off and nobody we asked could understand us when we said "where is train station?". Eventually, through use of sign language and some weird "choo chooo" noises, a nice man on a bicycle pointed us down a ramp and alley that led us to the pandemonium that was our future train station.

All in all, we did get to Shanghai. And we'd bought first class train tickets without knowing. This meant the complimentary bottles of water, tea and coffee that the train stewardess's offered us came as a cool surprise.

I'm so relieved that for the next 12 days we'll be travelling China with the help of one of Intrepid's guides. I seriously think China would be very challenging without knowing some Mandarin or having a helper to ensure you don't get ripped off or end up on a train destined for Urumqi. We met the other people on our group tonight and all had a drink on Shanghai's river. Our guide's name is Suzy and she's pretty fun, young and cool from what I can tell so far. She was also quite impressed that we managed to get ourselves to Shanghai without any Mandarin.

All in all, even though my shoulders now ache like heck from dragging our backpacks between Hangzhou and Shanghai, I'm glad we didn't take the easier option and fly directly here. We saved a chunk of change and I think I'm gonna properly appreciate travelling with Suzy and the others from now on.

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Photos

Hangzhou from above
The only pic take was whilst we were in Hangzhou, was this one from the plane. Photos aren't such a priority when you're lost in China and can't speak Chinese ;)