Zhujiajian

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5th Jul: Time to leave the city and head to the beach for some r&r. Off the coast of Ningbo, there are lots of islands varying in size. Putuoshan is the most famous one, and is visited by lots of Chinese people. The owner of the guesthouse I stayed at in Qingdao had driven down to Putuoshan to watch the sunrise. I do hope I get there one day, but for this trip we were heading to one of the smaller islands nearby. We had hired a small coach to take us, so the trip should have only taken a couple of hours, however some of our party were very late to the meeting point, meaning we sat around waiting for over an hour. This caused the coach driver to get very mad. When they eventually turned up, we were off. The drive took a couple of hours, maybe a bit longer and even though we were going to an island, we didn't need to take a ferry to get there. The bigger island of Zhoushan is connected by a longer bridge to the mainland and then the smaller island of Zhujiajian, which we were heading to, is connected to Zhoushan by a bridge, too. I didn't really look out of the window much as we travelled as I was too engrossed in my book or napping.

When we arrived at the island, we were dropped off at what appeared to be the main strip. The street was lined with restaurants on one side and there was a huge, pretty empty, car park on the other side and beyond that a village of guesthouses. We had booked some kind of package that included the rooms in the guesthouse and meals at one of the restaurants on the strip. We were shown to a table and given loads of food to eat. In typical Chinese style dishes kept appearing and it was all really tasty. I was stuffed by the time we left the restaurant. We headed over to the guesthouses to find ours. I had seen some pictures of it online and it looked really nice. I hoped that the pictures hadn't been photo-shopped too heavily, as was often the case in Korea. All the guesthouses in the area looked very new, I was surprised by that. It looked like the little village had just been built (or heavily renovated). We found our guesthouse and I was happily surprised to see that the place did pretty much live up to the photos. I got the room at the top of the house, the penthouse. I had thought it was a good choice as it looked nice and big, but when I got to the open of the stairs and opened the door, a wave of heat hit me. The room had a glass roof causing it to be unbearably hot. It was like a giant greenhouse. I turned on the air con to cool it down, but it made little difference. I lay completely still on the bed and the sweat was still pouring off me, vile!

After a bit of a rest, a few of u ventured out to the beach. It was about a ten to fifteen minute walk from our guesthouse and we stopped off at one of the little shops on the way to get some hats as it was really hot and the sun was beating down on us. We also got some cold drinks to make the walk more pleasant. We had to pay an entrance fee to go to the beach, not something I am used to, but I hoped this meant that the beach was better cared for. There was a set of turnstile gates at the beach so that you couldn't enter without paying. It was a shortish walk from the entrance gate to the beach. The area was well looked after with lots of greenery and a small stream with lotus flowers growing in it, very pretty. The beach was very flat, I was surprised that there were so many people there considering it was a week day, I do forget that China has a huge population and that there are people everywhere. We hired some tables, chairs and shades to relax under. There were lots of staff working on the beach collecting rubbish and keeping the place clean. I headed down to the water and I loved the view, even though it was a little bit hazy. There were mountains just across the water from the beach and they looked really pretty. I also loved the low lying cloud that was obscuring them, it made the scene look really cool. My pictures do not do it justice. We headed into the water for a bit, but it was pretty gross. Some of the others swam in it, but I just wanted to wade a bit. While the beach was clean, nobody was collecting the rubbish from the water. There were also a few jellyfish floating about, but we couldn't tell if they were dead or alive. I spent the rest of my time at the beach in the shade, reading and eating ice cream. We also checked out some of the impressive sand sculptures at the beach's entrance.

That evening we went back to the same restaurant for dinner. We were given a private room, but it was a bit cramped and the air con wasn't working to its full potential. The food was good, but it was a bit repetitive. Since the night was still young, we wanted to go and do some KTV (karaoke), but there were apparently none on the island we were staying on. So we ordered few cabs on Didi and headed to the bigger island of Zhoushan. THe drive took about twenty minutes and it was hard to believe that we were on an island when we reached our destination. The KTV was located inside a huge shopping mall. We bought a packages for a few hours that included snacks and some alcohol. It was a fun few hours. Then we headed back to Zhujiajian. Some of us weren't ready to go to bed when we got back, so we headed to an outdoor restaurant close to where we were staying and ordered more food and booze. We spent a couple of hours there drinking and playing games. It was a nice way to finish off the night.

6th Jul: I woke up not too early, but not too late. When I headed downstairs, it looked like no one else had surfaced so I made my way out to explore. I had seen a big golden Buddha from the window of my room, so set off to find that. I took a small bottle of water with m, but it didn't last long in the heat. The walk to the temple only took about ten to fifteen minutes and I came across one of my friend's on the way. He was also out exploring and up for coming to the temple with me. We headed off the main road and followed the signs for the temple. I have forgotten the name of the temple now, and due to the terrible internet in China am unlikely to be able to find it out. We walk along the quite road to the temple, there were no other people about. There was some kind of reservoir/small lake, which looked an unnatural shade of bluey green. We continued to the temple, where we had a good look around. It was quite small so didn't take us too long to walk around it. There was no one else about, which I found quite surprising as there was a big building attached to the temple that looked like it would be the monk/nuns' home. We climbed up the step and at the top of the temple complex we reached the big golden Buddha that I had seen from my room at the guesthouse. We also got a nice view over the surrounding area. On the way out, we saw the temple's vegetable garden, that was cute.

Back at the guesthouse, we got all our stuff together and checked out. We headed back to the same restaurant for an early lunch. We had hoped that the coffee shop we had seen earlier would be open but it was closed and inquiries in the attached hotel proved fruitless. We had a good final meal at the restaurant. The food was good, but I think we were all a bit sick of eating at the same place. Since we had a couple of hours to kill until our coach turned up and we were all wanting a coffee, we decided to head back to Zhoushan and get a coffee there. The mall we had been to the night before had a Starbucks in it, so we headed there for a caffeine hit and also got the coach to come and pick us up there.

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Photos

Funny Sign
Washing or cleaning feet would have been better