China Travels: Blonde Royalty Edition

So the train began to take us away.  There we sat on the two top bunks with slightly stained sheets...chugging towards Hangzhou. The train ride was about 4 hours and pretty uneventful for the most part, except for the angry train man who came into our room and kept speaking to me in Chinese, even when I cleary did not know what he was saying.  THANK GOODNESS the man in the bunk below Bettie was able to attempt to say some form of "passport" and use his fingers to draw one in the air so I knew that the angry yelling man wanted to see our passports.  I thought he was going to hurt us.

oh and here's the sweet bathroom on the train...

 

delightful. 

so then our train arrived in Hangzhou.  We got off and were greeted by THOUSANDS of people walking every direction, it kind of look like the Aggie Band on thanksgiving day... if they hadn't practiced....ever.  We were meeting a guy who Bettie had never met before so we didn't know what he looked like.  I just began praying to St. Anthony that we would find Chinny Chin Chen and be safe.  Within a few seconds, we did! St. Anthony with the win.

We hopped in his car and were off.  It was night time and the city was BEAUTIFUL. It was clean and modern.  It was the first city that resembled anything that I associated with "city." It made sense to me, unlike everywhere else in china.

At this point Bettie and I hadn't eaten in about 14 hours and were STARVING. Enter KFC.  Fried chicken has never tasted so good! mmm...

then Chinny Chin Chen took us to our hotel.  It was called "Lotus Glade" and its kind of in the middle of the woods.  Its on the park grounds of Westlake which is a GIANT, beautiful park in the middle of the city.  SO there were no signs on the road of where it was, the driver just kind of had to know.  So we pulled up and wheeled our bag across the sidewalks through the forest.  The hotel was made of 13 individual bungalow rooms.  Also no one spoke english. Like none.

We went to bed that night and the next morning I was on my own to walk around for a few hours while Bettie went to a meeting.  May the pictures tell the story...

SCHOOL CHILDREN!! everytime i walked by they would speak to me in english!

ah, welcome to Legends of the Hidden Temple: China

Our hotel in the woods!!

a restaurant right by our hotel in the park.  it was a really old brewery!

So I had the whole day alone.  Walking around Hangzhou was so beautiful and relaxing.  Its also a tourist city for the Chinese so there were tourists EVERYWHERE!! And they aren't so shy about hiding the fact that they're taking pictures of the blonde chick walking around.  I would stare at them while they took my picture... or took a VIDEO and they would just keep on clicking and filming. Ha ha.... so the closest I'll ever get to feeling like royalty is being a blond girl, alone, in China. 

Lost in Translation :

China Travels: Beware of Buses Edition

So our next adventure would take us on a four hour bus ride the ghetto country.  Just Jack dropped us off at the bus station and told us how to get on and the whole shabang. We had the first two aisle seats on the bus.  It was greyhound-esque in style.  That is, if the greyhound bus was built in 1974 and had been attacked by landfills 15 times in the last month.  Other than that... it was great.

Since I was sitting in the aisle seat, right behind the driver, I had a completely unobstructed view of the terror that is chinese driving.  I nearly screamed out loud on multiple occasions.

You see, in the U.S. giant buses tend to not PASS others on two lane roads.  We played chicken with 18- wheeler container trucks more than I'd like to say.  And then one time our bus driver took a phone call... and yelled... a lot....

 classic.   I seriously thought that I was going to meet my Creator via chinese bus crash- alas, we did no such thing.  I'll see you later, Creator.

Fancy Lancy (factory gimp) and Mama Wong (owner) picked us up from the bus station. Mama Wong (named so because she is the cutest little grandma business owner B.A. you ever did see! ) was dressed to the nines, so much more fashionable than many of her American counterparts!   She didn't speak a lick of english, but she loved to smile!

It was around lunch time so they took us to an ITALIAN restaurant for lunch.  You cannot imagine how excited I was for this ! The owner came over and talked to us, all was grand.  He told us that they used to send their chefs to Italy to learn how to cook, but then the chef's wouldn't come back to china so now they send them to Shanghai ! 

We asked Fancy Lancy and Mama Wong if they like Italian food, they both answered NO but said they bring their customers there because its what Americans tend to like !

Factory tour, ya da ya da ya da... business meetings.... Bettie driving hard bargains.  The standard.

After the business was done, they took us to the train station for our train to Hangzhou.  We had stopped by earlier for Fancy Lancy to help buy us tickets for a train.  Bettie told her we wanted to best tickets there were.  This translated into two top bunk sleeper car tickets.

Mama Wong and Fancy Lancy sat with us at the train station while we waited for our chariot to arrive.  Mama Wong just couldn't stand not buying us something so she got us so giant bottles of water, to remember her by.  Our train was about to arrive so the four of us went outside to find our spot on the platform.  When it pulled up, Mama Wong and Fancy Lancy got on with us to help us find our car.  They opened up the door to our "room" to find a woman sleeping in one bottom bunk and a man reading a magazine in the other. Neither spoke ANY english.  Side note: there is circa de NO ROOM in train cars for big luggage.  There is usually a luggage rack, UP IN THE AIR.  So it was a really special bonding moment with the Chinese man while we tried to hike our luggage up there.   The train whistle blew waay before we were settled in and Mama Wong and Fancy Lancy had to run off the train so they wouldn't get swept away with us.  I looked out the train window to see the waving good-bye, laughing .  Mama Wong knew we were in for a treat !

to be continued...

China Travels: Smile and Nature Edition

We are now on day 3 (ish ) of our Chinese journey.  This morning Goofy picked us up at the hotel to take us to the Shenzen airport.  He walked us to the check in counter and took care of everything for us because, we are after all, completely incompetent white women.

The Goofster departed and we shopped around for a bit (shocking).

On the way to security line a ton of people we just walking up to trash cans and dumping out their water bottles in them.  I've never seen that in the states haha.  Once in line for security, I looked up and saw 4 flat screen, 3-D televisions!  You have to realize that we are in a super crappy airport in the armpit of China and there are 4 brand new, glasses free, beautiful 3-D flat screen televisions. China with the win. And also... I HATE 3-D tvs... they hurt me eyes, (that was supposed to say "my" but I mistyped and thought it was funny in a " don't touch me Lucky Charms" kind of way) you have to wear funky glasses (except in super trendy chinese airports) and they generally freak me out.  I don't like mind games. BUT THESE were kind of awesome.

Moving on... Bettie's passport got bomb tested on every page in security.  She definately looks like a terrorist.  Point China.

We met some people in the airport who were from Dallas. Duh. Had a nice chat about missing good ole texas food.  They told us they had done to a restaurant with a factory that had cages of chickens (easy), squirrels (what!?) and SKUNKS ( oh no they didn't) for you to pick from for them to cook it up for you.  I think its safe to assume they all went for the chickens.  Lets just say I would have DIED if we had walked in somewhere like that. I mean dead on the floor kind of dead.  You know the kind.

We boarded the airplane early (Point China) and it was gorgeous.  Clean, spacious, trendy.  (Again, point China... are you seeing a trend here?) And we were off.

I don't know how long the flight was... but eventually we arrived in Ningbo.  Just Jack, factory gimp, picked us up at baggage claim.  Then ensued the usual routine, drop by hotel... check in... freshen up... our hotel name was Hotel SMILE AND NATURE!!!!! (S&N for short)  While we were checking in, a GIANT tourist bus full of chinese tourist pulled up... they don't understand personal space, as I was nearly stood on top of at the check in counter (point America, whew... we were due).

The hotel's thing must have been having really cool chair everywhere... because they had AMAZING high back chairs all over the place... hence this photo shoot....

 then I decided to join the fun... I'm trying to act out the personality of each chair... which I'm sure is really obvious... ha.

End Scene.


and then I thought the hallway by our room was really gorge...

  and Bettie liked this guy...

Ningbo isn't exactly what you would call a pretty city. There was construction EVERYWHERE! And also shantys.  That was really hard to see. This was one place where they were obvious extremes right next to each other.  EXTREME wealth and oppulence, then EXTREME poverty... They were building new highways but along side and in the esplanades were gorgeous flower beds, unlike anything I've seen in the states.  There were workers gardening for MILES and MILES.  I cannot exaggerate this.  It was definately another 'there are 2 billion people in China' kind of moment.

So this night we stayed in at the hotel and hung out... ate dinner at the super "not western friendly" buffet.  There was "boiled bull frog" and and all time classic "steamed yellow croacker clinical" (Point America).  Lets just say we ate a lot of rice and bread the next few days.

The next morning Just Jack picked us up from the hotel to take us to the factory.  We met with him and the owner, Mac Daddy for a while then took a tour of the show room.  This mostly meant Bettie doing serious work, and me playing with all the fun gadgets they had just waiting for me to mess up!


Mac Daddy and Just Jack took us back to the hotel for lunch.  Instead of eating at the wicked scary buffet they took us to the seafood restaurant.  I was terrified.  Now, I normally LOVE seafood...but chinese seafood is a little different.  First, its all in tanks when you walk in and second, if could still be a little alive when they bring it to you (AAH).  Fortunately, Bettie has been playing this game circa de 10 years and knew what to tell Mac so that our food would be white people friendly.  Anytime we were offered seafood, she would first tell them we didn't like it... then tell them we would eat it if was was fried and very well cooked.  (The fried part would ensure that it was DEAD!)


So Mac Daddy did an incredible job of ordering and we had a delightful meal in a private dining room (which is pretty much what you do in China).   The waitress had on long skirts with almost longer slits, up the their bums in fact, I might have caught a glimspe of panty here and there. classy.  

Back to work.  Somehow we got started talking about cars.  In china, cars cost about 2x what they do in the states because of all sorts of taxes thrown on top.  Mac Daddy was asking me about my car and what I would get if I were to get a new car.  The conversation turned to Porsche's and he told me how Porsche Cayennes aren't expensive and that I should go for something better (not that I'm trying to get a Porsche.)  Point China.

After a few more hours of being business-y it was back to the hotel to hunker down for the night and pack for our morning departure.

ah, correctitude.