One of the stands in Old Town Again, I am real bad at staying on top of this blog. Last week, Martha and I went to the old town again and it wasn't quite as busy so it was better. Got a couple cool things. Its weird to me to have to haggle for prices. The people selling always start at a ridiculously high price, but normally you can get them down to less than half price. I don't like haggling that much, especially since I have no idea what a normal price would be for things. But I guess I am getting a little better at it. People sell things on the streets everywhere. Clothing, bags, dishes, watches, jewelry and anything else you can think of is sold on the side walks. They lay out blankets on the ground and spread out all their stuff but I guess its illegal because when ever the cops come around they quickly bundle up their blankets and move. Same with the street food people. When ever the cops come, they pack in their cart and move about a 100 feet down the road and set up shop again.
At some point last week, we went to Century park with our More stuff being sold on the street
new German friend, Flo. He is here doing an internship at some chemistry company and just got to China. The park was real nice and quiet. They had the electric boats you could rent for like 30 RMB an hour. We got one and took it up and down this little river in park.
Last weekend, Chen and his classmate took us to Hangzhou (West Lake) which was cool. Had to get up real early and catch a train. Took about 2 hours to get there by train. Then from the train station we took this really sketchy van/taxi to the west lake. It was an empty work van with a bench in it. It was odd. We got lunch at a Chinese fast food restaurant and it was not good at all. After that we headed for the lake which is huge. We walked around most of it and it took us like 4 hours. It was terribly cold too. We were freezing the entire walk. Then we had to find a hotel to stay in and it turns out that alot of hotels will not take foreigners and many of those that do, charge foreigners 2 or 3
Side Street
times the price per night that a Chinese resident would pay. So we had a real hard time finding a hotel that would take us and not charge us a ton. I thought that was really strange that hotels wouldn't take us even though we had proof that we were here legally. Once we finally found a hotel we headed out to this street that was full of bars. The first one we went to was what appeared to be a country-ish themed Chinese bar. It was nice. But then about an hour after we got there they turned off the music and put a DVD of Irish step dancing on the projector screen. Suddenly this country-ish themed Chinese bar was blasting traditional Irish music and playing irish dancing. This bar was by no means an Irish bar. Every one there except us was Chinese. It was so strange. So many conflicting themes. After that we checked out the reggae bar, but that was lame so we left. Then we found a bar that seemed like a Jewish bar because of its giant star of David on the front of it, but it was just another Chinese bar. But it
Century Park
was fun. We stayed there the remainder of the night. The next day was much warmer. We walked up this big hill that had all of these Buddhas carvings in the rocks and caves. Many of the Chinese people we talked to at school told us we should go to West lake because it is very beautiful. And it was. I bet its real nice in the spring.