Statue of Guanyin at sunrise
And a few minutes later
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Fall Break!
This past week was fall break, meaning that we had a whole 9 days to relax and travel around China. I decided to try some indie travel while keeping myself on a budget . My planned itinerary was to go to Suzhou on Saturday, spend 4 days there enjoying the famous gardens and visiting some outlying towns, then go to Putuoshan, a sacred Buddhist island, on Thursday and spend the night before going back to Ningbo on Friday, and finally back to Hangzhou on Saturday. Overall the trip went remarkably smoothly (which is nice because it meant I actually got to relax on my break!), and even when I hit challenges they never caused me to get off-schedule. And even though I was travelling alone I was never really by myself because there was no shortage of people along the way more than willing to offer help and conversation.
Here's the detailed account (warning - it's crazy long):
Saturday
I left campus around 6:30 in the morning so I'd have plenty of time for making mistakes, getting lost, etc. before my 8:55 train left for Suzhou. I actually found my gate by about 7:30, so I had plenty of time to sit and watch people in the train station, read train schedules, and generally get excited for my adventure. The train ride took a little longer than expected, and we arrived in Suzhou around 1:00. I pushed my way past the touts for taxi and tour service and found my way to the bus stop. I bought a map of Suzhou, and found the street on the hostel's address, but I was unsure of the best way to get there because there didn't seem to be any bus stops along it (I would find out later that it's a pedestrian road). One of the ladies selling maps saw me glancing back and forth between my map and the bus route signs and asked me where I wanted to go. I told her Pingjiang Lu (Peaceful River Street) and she said bus 178 was a good choice. It sounded as good as any of my other options, so I hopped on the next 178 bus and got off on a road close to Pingjiang Lu and started walking in its general direction. It was kind of a stab in the dark because Suzhou is not overly generous with its street signs, but happily I found it fairly quickly.
The hostel I stayed in was honestly one of the best parts of the trip. Pingjiang Lu turned out to be this completely adorable pedestrian road along a canal (Suzhou is famous in China for being a canal city) in the historic district. There were lots of cute little cafes and teahouses all along the cobbled road and boats lazily floating down the willow-lined canal - it was quite a nice spot to come home to each day. Being in the historic district, the street branched off into all these old alleyways that I took the opportunity to walk through as much as possible. I loved getting the chance to see little glimpses of people's lives as they went about their day on these quiet little streets. The hostel itself was also very nice - the furniture in the room and the little courtyard around back all very much fit into the mood of the area, and my bed was comfy and the bathrooms were clean, so I was very happy with my situation.
I was staying in a six-bed dorm, and soon after I moved in I met a Ukranian girl staying there too. She didn't speak very much Chinese at all, so I decided to go ahead and use English. What else was I going to do, refuse to talk to her? Actually this was another advantage of traveling on my own - the boundaries of the language pledge were much less complicated. Anyway we had some really interesting conversations about traveling around Suzhou, living in China (she's teaching English for a year), and other random stuff. There were also some Chinese girls staying in our room, and I chatted with a couple of them a little bit.
After settling in, I went out and walked around Suzhou a little bit, got familiar with some bus routes, and walked along some very trendy shopping district streets. I also found Suzhou University completely by accident, and ended up just chilling by a canal watching the sun set for awhile. I got some street food on my way back to the hostel and basically went straight to bed.
Sunday
I decided to take a bus out to the little town of Luzhi, about a 45 minute bus ride away. It was a pretty typical canal town, but it didn't have an entrance fee, so that was a big plus. I wandered around the narrow streets, skipping over the many, many booths of souvenirs, and chatted with some people in both English and Chinese, and got stopped 3 or 4 times to have my picture taken. I didn't see any other foreigners there (maybe because the entrance to the district wasn't exactly obvious). At this point I don't really care about getting my picture taken like I'm a Disneyland character, especially because it sort of gives me the ability to be as curious and touristy as I want, because I'm just returning the favor.
Suzhou is famous for its classical gardens, which are a designated UN world heritage site. I spent the afternoon in the Master of the Nets Garden (built by an official-turned-fisherman), which is one of the smaller gardens in Hangzhou. It actually was the garden that reminded me the most of the one we visited in Portland because it did such a good job of tricking you into thinking you were in a much larger space. I really loved just walking around taking pictures, then finding a perch and just reading my travel guide or people watching (there were a lot of French tours while I was there).
When I went back to the dorm in the evening I met a woman named Katie from the UK who had been traveling around China for a month (Suzhou was her last stop). I talked with her a little bit about her trip before collapsing in bed.
Monday
Started off with another trip to a little canal town scenic area, this time Mudu. It was cute enough, but the main thing I liked about it was that it was considerably sleepier than some other canal towns I'd been to. It wasn't necessarily the prettiest, but the sides of the canal and bridges were overgrown with shrubs and willows, giving the whole place a kind of lazy feel. And it was quiet, so I took my cue from the old guys fishing off the banks and spent some quality time watching the boats and doing nothing. Back in Suzhou I went to the biggest garden, the Humble Administrator's Garden, and it was really impressive. There were also a lot of Western tourists there, so I made myself feel superior by buying a bottle of water with no gesturing at all. Would I like that chilled? Why yes I would, thank you.
As I said, the garden was really beautiful and one of my favorite parts was the bonsai garden. There were hundreds and hundreds of bonsai trees and they were all so pretty! I stayed in the garden for a long time, and about 1/2 an hour before closing most of the tour groups had gone, so it was really quiet and peaceful. I went back to the hostel and hung out a little bit with Katie from London. We went to the cafe next door and played a game of pool (well, I "played" - I am truly awful at that game), and then went out in search of some good street snacks. My favorite thing we found were these little pumpkin sesame cakes, yum!
Talking to Katie was really interesting, because she had been traveling around China with basically no Chinese language skills at all. And she'd been totally having a blast; she kept raving about how easy it was to travel in China, and how willing Chinese people were to help her along. I found this really interesting because it quickly became apparent to me how much having language skills really helped me. For example, when I was on the train to Suzhou, I understood the announcements saying we were delayed a little bit, and what the new estimated time of arrival was. This wasn't essential information, certainly, but little bits of info like that really bolster my confidence. Most of all I really value being able to read characters on maps and bus signs. I felt very comfortable in Suzhou very quickly because I could read and remember the names of streets and bus stops. Anyway, I found Katie to be really brave and unafraid of making mistakes, so I decided to make note of that as another important tool.
Tuesday
I slept in a little bit and decided to just stay in the city for the day. I visited the Couple's Garden and stuck to my trusty photograph/read/relax routine. In the afternoon I went to the Suzhou Museum, mostly because it was free, but it turned out to be a great change of pace. The exhibits of jade and ceramics and silk were fine, but I really just loved soaking up the building - it was so sleek and open and contemporary, with a big indoor waterfall and pools with koi. It was really soothing and the perfect remedy for old world overload. Topped off the day with a fabulous bowl of pork & noodles for supper.
Wednesday
I thought about going to Tongli, another little town outside Suzhou, but when I got to the bus station the only ticket I found was way too expensive, and I was already getting a little anxious about making sure I had enough cash for Putuoshan. It's true I probably could have been persistent and really hunted for a different way there, but since I'd already been to Luzhi and Mudu I just wasn't that motivated. Instead I decided to go for a low-budget day. In the morning I went to the Suzhou Silk Museum, the coolest part of which was the silkworm display. When I walked into silkworm room (I basically had the whole museum to myself) the worms were in a big flat basket filled with mulberry leaves, and you could totally hear them munching away. You know the sound rice krispies make when you pour milk on them? That's what it sounded like; it was totally gross and awesome. The silk looms were also pretty cool and looked impossibly complicated.
After lunch I went to a supermarket and loaded up on snacks for my trips for the next day. Then I decided to check out one of the city parks, which turned out to be a great idea. It was pretty expansive, and almost as pretty as the classical gardens, and twice as relaxing because the few people there were just chilling out, as opposed to the hordes of tour groups that visited the famous sites. There were some interesting bridges and statues and even a pagoda with what appeared to be an imitation of the old city wall. The whole thing was on the corner of the moat surrounding the city. I eventually just plopped down by a willow with a book and watched the boats and people walking by with kites flying in the distance until the sun set.
Thursday
This was quite a whirlwind day. I checked out of my room at 6:00 am and went to the bus station and bought a ticket for the 7:00 train to Ningbo. I boarded a spacious tour bus and got all excited because there were less than 10 other people on the bus, so I picked out a window seat and settled down for a 4-5 hour ride. Then I realized we were going to the south bus station first, where we picked up considerably more people. As people shuffled with their luggage and found seats I also noticed that the headrests had numbers on them, and I was sitting in seat 8 rather than seat 17. But no one said anything to me... so I stayed put. The trip was quite pleasant and also shorter than expected; we arrived in Ningbo by 10:30 or so. We went through a bunch of really pretty mountains and also across this insanely long bridge - it took us about 15 minutes to cross and I'd say we were going at least 45 mph. I'm still not sure what body of water it was.
Anyway, since Suzhou is north of Ningbo I assumed we'd arrive at the north bus station, which is fairly close to the ferry terminal. From the ferry terminal I could take a bus to the boat wharf, where I could take a boat to Putuoshan. That was the plan anyway. However, when I got off the bus there were barely any bus stops around, and when I found a bus stop with a bunch of signs indicating the beginnings of bus routes, I couldn't find any that had the characters for ferry terminal. I was beginning to suspect that I was not at the north bus station. Also, I had apparently scratched myself on my collarbone as I was putting on my backpack or something, so as I was wandering around reading signs I got a lot of "whoa, hey you're bleeding" which didn't really help matters. I asked several people, and this one guy kept telling me to take the 501 bus, and I figured I wasn't making any progress where I was, so I hopped on the bus and hoped it would take me into town, where I could get better oriented. So I basically sat on the edge of my seat, staring out the window and grying to get as much information as I could.
After a little while we stopped at a place with lots of buses and maps and people with luggage milling about, so I decided this was a good spot for me to jump out. (The next day I would figure out that I had been dropped off at the central bus station, which oddly enough is 3 km out of town, and I took the bus to the train/south bus station.) I was scanning a sign with bus routes for no more than a couple minutes when a guy asked me where I wanted to go and I said the ferry terminal, and he said "oh, you want to go to Putuoshan?" and I was like "YES!" He said I needed to get on the 756 bus and go to the very last stop, and he sounded like he knew what he was talking about so I went with it. Now, I was expecting to go to the ferry terminal in the north part of town, and I was a little confused because we seemed to be going east for quite a ways. And it slowly dawned on me that we were leaving town and going deeper and deeper into random countryside, and my only plan was to get off at a stop whose name I didn't even recognize.
So the 2-3 hours after I got off the bus in Ningbo were probably the most stressful of the week because I was slowly getting more and more disoriented. However one of the things I really love about taking the bus is that if I did end up in completely the wrong spot, I could always turn around and get right back on and go back to the last place I was. I kept this in the back of my mind, but as the bus ride stretched on past an hour, past and hour and a half, I was really hoping I wouldn't have to resort to that, or I'd be staying in Ningbo for the night. Anyway, we got to the last stop and I found myself at a mostly deserted bus stop in some place called the "Ningbo Development Area." I had an inkling at this point that I had taken a bus to the actual boat wharf. However, it wasn't obvious where I should go next, so when taxi driver (which are always plentiful at bus and train stations) yelled out "ma tou, putuoshan" (boat wharf, putuoshan), I was like yeah, sure, and he said he'd take me there for 10 kuai.
So I got in the car, and I swear he drove like 200 meters down the road and I felt like 10 kuai was a bit steep for a distance I couldn't walked in less than five minutes, so before I left I asked a couple times if he was sure this was exactly where I needed to be. He said it was, so I paid him and went around to the front of the building he was gesturing to. Sure enough, there was a ticket office with boats to Putuoshan leaving every 1/2 hour or so. I got on the 1:45 boat and finally relaxed a little bit, enjoying the comfort fo knowing exactly where I was and where I was going.
When I got to the island things went remarkably smoothly. When I bought my admission ticket I noticed a sign that said Chinese university students get a 50% discount. I wasn't sure if I qualified since I wasn't exactly "Chinese", but I showed the lady at the window my student id and she looked at me a little skeptically and asked if it was mine. So I showed her the page with my picture on it and said I was studying abroad and it worked! My ticket was 80 kuai instead of 160 kuai, which is a pretty great deal. I then went straight for the Haitong Hotel, which is literally right next to the boat wharf, and Lonely Planet had told me they gave significant discounts on weekdays. I was expecting to pay at least 350 kuai, but I figured I could go up around 400 since I had saved money on the admission ticket. But when I got there they said they had a single for 300, so I took a quick peak at the room and took it!
Please try to understand how much of a victory it felt to have a giant bed and private bathroom all to myself after a rather long and hectic day. It was glorious. At this point it was about 3:30, so I relaxed in my room for a little bit, then dumped most of the stuff out of my bursting backpack, and set off to poke around the island before sunset. Unfortunately it was pretty cloudy so there wasn't muc sunset to speak of, so after walking around a little bit I went back to my room, ate some snacks, watched some swimming on my flat screen TV, and went to bed.
Friday
I got up around 5:00, packed up all my things so I wouldn't have to worry about going back to the room before checking out, and set off to catch the sunrise. Hiking around the island all morning was absolutely beautiful. I watched the sun rise from "Southern Heaven Gate" where I could look towards the giant 33-m gold statue of Guanyin (Buddhist goddess and resident of the island). I mostly followed the scenic views and skipped the temples since you usually can't take pictures inside anyway. I walked past Gold Beach and through the Purple Bamboo Forest to the Unwilling-to-Leave Guanyin Shrine, which pretty accurately describes my feelings about the gorgeous views. I continued along to the 100-Step Beach (more beautiful views!). Then I walked past Puji temple and its lotus filled pools to the Western Heaven scenic area, where I saw the giant rock with the Chinese character for "heart" written on it. It was apparently a bit of a couples' destination, because all along the fence there were heart-shaped locks with couples' names carved on them and locked to the chain for all eternity. I puffed my way up the stairs on the mountain for some sweeping views of the island.
I easily could have spent another night there and kept exploring the island (I would have especially like to have climbed to the peak of the island and checked out some of the caves). But when the sun started heating things up and the weekend tour groups started taking over the paths I decided it was time to go. So I bought a ticket back around noon. The trip back to Ningbo was much more relaxed than the one coming out, of course, because I actually knew what I was doing. I went back to the train station and bought a map of Ningbo and made the quick bus hop over to the hostel. The hostel in Ningbo is run by the same 'Mingtown' outfit as in Suzhou, and this one was less picturesque than the one in Suzhou, but it was still very pleasant and very cheap. And I had the whole 4-bed dorm all to myself! The hostel was right next to Moon Lake Park, so strolled around a bit in the evening and when down Ningbo's busy shopping streets to find some excellent street food. But other than that Ningbo was really just an overnight city. The next morning I grabbed a train to Hangzhou and was very glad to be back home.
Overall the trip cost me less than $200, which I think is pretty good. Pictures are coming very soon!
Here's the detailed account (warning - it's crazy long):
Saturday
I left campus around 6:30 in the morning so I'd have plenty of time for making mistakes, getting lost, etc. before my 8:55 train left for Suzhou. I actually found my gate by about 7:30, so I had plenty of time to sit and watch people in the train station, read train schedules, and generally get excited for my adventure. The train ride took a little longer than expected, and we arrived in Suzhou around 1:00. I pushed my way past the touts for taxi and tour service and found my way to the bus stop. I bought a map of Suzhou, and found the street on the hostel's address, but I was unsure of the best way to get there because there didn't seem to be any bus stops along it (I would find out later that it's a pedestrian road). One of the ladies selling maps saw me glancing back and forth between my map and the bus route signs and asked me where I wanted to go. I told her Pingjiang Lu (Peaceful River Street) and she said bus 178 was a good choice. It sounded as good as any of my other options, so I hopped on the next 178 bus and got off on a road close to Pingjiang Lu and started walking in its general direction. It was kind of a stab in the dark because Suzhou is not overly generous with its street signs, but happily I found it fairly quickly.
The hostel I stayed in was honestly one of the best parts of the trip. Pingjiang Lu turned out to be this completely adorable pedestrian road along a canal (Suzhou is famous in China for being a canal city) in the historic district. There were lots of cute little cafes and teahouses all along the cobbled road and boats lazily floating down the willow-lined canal - it was quite a nice spot to come home to each day. Being in the historic district, the street branched off into all these old alleyways that I took the opportunity to walk through as much as possible. I loved getting the chance to see little glimpses of people's lives as they went about their day on these quiet little streets. The hostel itself was also very nice - the furniture in the room and the little courtyard around back all very much fit into the mood of the area, and my bed was comfy and the bathrooms were clean, so I was very happy with my situation.
I was staying in a six-bed dorm, and soon after I moved in I met a Ukranian girl staying there too. She didn't speak very much Chinese at all, so I decided to go ahead and use English. What else was I going to do, refuse to talk to her? Actually this was another advantage of traveling on my own - the boundaries of the language pledge were much less complicated. Anyway we had some really interesting conversations about traveling around Suzhou, living in China (she's teaching English for a year), and other random stuff. There were also some Chinese girls staying in our room, and I chatted with a couple of them a little bit.
After settling in, I went out and walked around Suzhou a little bit, got familiar with some bus routes, and walked along some very trendy shopping district streets. I also found Suzhou University completely by accident, and ended up just chilling by a canal watching the sun set for awhile. I got some street food on my way back to the hostel and basically went straight to bed.
Sunday
I decided to take a bus out to the little town of Luzhi, about a 45 minute bus ride away. It was a pretty typical canal town, but it didn't have an entrance fee, so that was a big plus. I wandered around the narrow streets, skipping over the many, many booths of souvenirs, and chatted with some people in both English and Chinese, and got stopped 3 or 4 times to have my picture taken. I didn't see any other foreigners there (maybe because the entrance to the district wasn't exactly obvious). At this point I don't really care about getting my picture taken like I'm a Disneyland character, especially because it sort of gives me the ability to be as curious and touristy as I want, because I'm just returning the favor.
Suzhou is famous for its classical gardens, which are a designated UN world heritage site. I spent the afternoon in the Master of the Nets Garden (built by an official-turned-fisherman), which is one of the smaller gardens in Hangzhou. It actually was the garden that reminded me the most of the one we visited in Portland because it did such a good job of tricking you into thinking you were in a much larger space. I really loved just walking around taking pictures, then finding a perch and just reading my travel guide or people watching (there were a lot of French tours while I was there).
When I went back to the dorm in the evening I met a woman named Katie from the UK who had been traveling around China for a month (Suzhou was her last stop). I talked with her a little bit about her trip before collapsing in bed.
Monday
Started off with another trip to a little canal town scenic area, this time Mudu. It was cute enough, but the main thing I liked about it was that it was considerably sleepier than some other canal towns I'd been to. It wasn't necessarily the prettiest, but the sides of the canal and bridges were overgrown with shrubs and willows, giving the whole place a kind of lazy feel. And it was quiet, so I took my cue from the old guys fishing off the banks and spent some quality time watching the boats and doing nothing. Back in Suzhou I went to the biggest garden, the Humble Administrator's Garden, and it was really impressive. There were also a lot of Western tourists there, so I made myself feel superior by buying a bottle of water with no gesturing at all. Would I like that chilled? Why yes I would, thank you.
As I said, the garden was really beautiful and one of my favorite parts was the bonsai garden. There were hundreds and hundreds of bonsai trees and they were all so pretty! I stayed in the garden for a long time, and about 1/2 an hour before closing most of the tour groups had gone, so it was really quiet and peaceful. I went back to the hostel and hung out a little bit with Katie from London. We went to the cafe next door and played a game of pool (well, I "played" - I am truly awful at that game), and then went out in search of some good street snacks. My favorite thing we found were these little pumpkin sesame cakes, yum!
Talking to Katie was really interesting, because she had been traveling around China with basically no Chinese language skills at all. And she'd been totally having a blast; she kept raving about how easy it was to travel in China, and how willing Chinese people were to help her along. I found this really interesting because it quickly became apparent to me how much having language skills really helped me. For example, when I was on the train to Suzhou, I understood the announcements saying we were delayed a little bit, and what the new estimated time of arrival was. This wasn't essential information, certainly, but little bits of info like that really bolster my confidence. Most of all I really value being able to read characters on maps and bus signs. I felt very comfortable in Suzhou very quickly because I could read and remember the names of streets and bus stops. Anyway, I found Katie to be really brave and unafraid of making mistakes, so I decided to make note of that as another important tool.
Tuesday
I slept in a little bit and decided to just stay in the city for the day. I visited the Couple's Garden and stuck to my trusty photograph/read/relax routine. In the afternoon I went to the Suzhou Museum, mostly because it was free, but it turned out to be a great change of pace. The exhibits of jade and ceramics and silk were fine, but I really just loved soaking up the building - it was so sleek and open and contemporary, with a big indoor waterfall and pools with koi. It was really soothing and the perfect remedy for old world overload. Topped off the day with a fabulous bowl of pork & noodles for supper.
Wednesday
I thought about going to Tongli, another little town outside Suzhou, but when I got to the bus station the only ticket I found was way too expensive, and I was already getting a little anxious about making sure I had enough cash for Putuoshan. It's true I probably could have been persistent and really hunted for a different way there, but since I'd already been to Luzhi and Mudu I just wasn't that motivated. Instead I decided to go for a low-budget day. In the morning I went to the Suzhou Silk Museum, the coolest part of which was the silkworm display. When I walked into silkworm room (I basically had the whole museum to myself) the worms were in a big flat basket filled with mulberry leaves, and you could totally hear them munching away. You know the sound rice krispies make when you pour milk on them? That's what it sounded like; it was totally gross and awesome. The silk looms were also pretty cool and looked impossibly complicated.
After lunch I went to a supermarket and loaded up on snacks for my trips for the next day. Then I decided to check out one of the city parks, which turned out to be a great idea. It was pretty expansive, and almost as pretty as the classical gardens, and twice as relaxing because the few people there were just chilling out, as opposed to the hordes of tour groups that visited the famous sites. There were some interesting bridges and statues and even a pagoda with what appeared to be an imitation of the old city wall. The whole thing was on the corner of the moat surrounding the city. I eventually just plopped down by a willow with a book and watched the boats and people walking by with kites flying in the distance until the sun set.
Thursday
This was quite a whirlwind day. I checked out of my room at 6:00 am and went to the bus station and bought a ticket for the 7:00 train to Ningbo. I boarded a spacious tour bus and got all excited because there were less than 10 other people on the bus, so I picked out a window seat and settled down for a 4-5 hour ride. Then I realized we were going to the south bus station first, where we picked up considerably more people. As people shuffled with their luggage and found seats I also noticed that the headrests had numbers on them, and I was sitting in seat 8 rather than seat 17. But no one said anything to me... so I stayed put. The trip was quite pleasant and also shorter than expected; we arrived in Ningbo by 10:30 or so. We went through a bunch of really pretty mountains and also across this insanely long bridge - it took us about 15 minutes to cross and I'd say we were going at least 45 mph. I'm still not sure what body of water it was.
Anyway, since Suzhou is north of Ningbo I assumed we'd arrive at the north bus station, which is fairly close to the ferry terminal. From the ferry terminal I could take a bus to the boat wharf, where I could take a boat to Putuoshan. That was the plan anyway. However, when I got off the bus there were barely any bus stops around, and when I found a bus stop with a bunch of signs indicating the beginnings of bus routes, I couldn't find any that had the characters for ferry terminal. I was beginning to suspect that I was not at the north bus station. Also, I had apparently scratched myself on my collarbone as I was putting on my backpack or something, so as I was wandering around reading signs I got a lot of "whoa, hey you're bleeding" which didn't really help matters. I asked several people, and this one guy kept telling me to take the 501 bus, and I figured I wasn't making any progress where I was, so I hopped on the bus and hoped it would take me into town, where I could get better oriented. So I basically sat on the edge of my seat, staring out the window and grying to get as much information as I could.
After a little while we stopped at a place with lots of buses and maps and people with luggage milling about, so I decided this was a good spot for me to jump out. (The next day I would figure out that I had been dropped off at the central bus station, which oddly enough is 3 km out of town, and I took the bus to the train/south bus station.) I was scanning a sign with bus routes for no more than a couple minutes when a guy asked me where I wanted to go and I said the ferry terminal, and he said "oh, you want to go to Putuoshan?" and I was like "YES!" He said I needed to get on the 756 bus and go to the very last stop, and he sounded like he knew what he was talking about so I went with it. Now, I was expecting to go to the ferry terminal in the north part of town, and I was a little confused because we seemed to be going east for quite a ways. And it slowly dawned on me that we were leaving town and going deeper and deeper into random countryside, and my only plan was to get off at a stop whose name I didn't even recognize.
So the 2-3 hours after I got off the bus in Ningbo were probably the most stressful of the week because I was slowly getting more and more disoriented. However one of the things I really love about taking the bus is that if I did end up in completely the wrong spot, I could always turn around and get right back on and go back to the last place I was. I kept this in the back of my mind, but as the bus ride stretched on past an hour, past and hour and a half, I was really hoping I wouldn't have to resort to that, or I'd be staying in Ningbo for the night. Anyway, we got to the last stop and I found myself at a mostly deserted bus stop in some place called the "Ningbo Development Area." I had an inkling at this point that I had taken a bus to the actual boat wharf. However, it wasn't obvious where I should go next, so when taxi driver (which are always plentiful at bus and train stations) yelled out "ma tou, putuoshan" (boat wharf, putuoshan), I was like yeah, sure, and he said he'd take me there for 10 kuai.
So I got in the car, and I swear he drove like 200 meters down the road and I felt like 10 kuai was a bit steep for a distance I couldn't walked in less than five minutes, so before I left I asked a couple times if he was sure this was exactly where I needed to be. He said it was, so I paid him and went around to the front of the building he was gesturing to. Sure enough, there was a ticket office with boats to Putuoshan leaving every 1/2 hour or so. I got on the 1:45 boat and finally relaxed a little bit, enjoying the comfort fo knowing exactly where I was and where I was going.
When I got to the island things went remarkably smoothly. When I bought my admission ticket I noticed a sign that said Chinese university students get a 50% discount. I wasn't sure if I qualified since I wasn't exactly "Chinese", but I showed the lady at the window my student id and she looked at me a little skeptically and asked if it was mine. So I showed her the page with my picture on it and said I was studying abroad and it worked! My ticket was 80 kuai instead of 160 kuai, which is a pretty great deal. I then went straight for the Haitong Hotel, which is literally right next to the boat wharf, and Lonely Planet had told me they gave significant discounts on weekdays. I was expecting to pay at least 350 kuai, but I figured I could go up around 400 since I had saved money on the admission ticket. But when I got there they said they had a single for 300, so I took a quick peak at the room and took it!
Please try to understand how much of a victory it felt to have a giant bed and private bathroom all to myself after a rather long and hectic day. It was glorious. At this point it was about 3:30, so I relaxed in my room for a little bit, then dumped most of the stuff out of my bursting backpack, and set off to poke around the island before sunset. Unfortunately it was pretty cloudy so there wasn't muc sunset to speak of, so after walking around a little bit I went back to my room, ate some snacks, watched some swimming on my flat screen TV, and went to bed.
Friday
I got up around 5:00, packed up all my things so I wouldn't have to worry about going back to the room before checking out, and set off to catch the sunrise. Hiking around the island all morning was absolutely beautiful. I watched the sun rise from "Southern Heaven Gate" where I could look towards the giant 33-m gold statue of Guanyin (Buddhist goddess and resident of the island). I mostly followed the scenic views and skipped the temples since you usually can't take pictures inside anyway. I walked past Gold Beach and through the Purple Bamboo Forest to the Unwilling-to-Leave Guanyin Shrine, which pretty accurately describes my feelings about the gorgeous views. I continued along to the 100-Step Beach (more beautiful views!). Then I walked past Puji temple and its lotus filled pools to the Western Heaven scenic area, where I saw the giant rock with the Chinese character for "heart" written on it. It was apparently a bit of a couples' destination, because all along the fence there were heart-shaped locks with couples' names carved on them and locked to the chain for all eternity. I puffed my way up the stairs on the mountain for some sweeping views of the island.
I easily could have spent another night there and kept exploring the island (I would have especially like to have climbed to the peak of the island and checked out some of the caves). But when the sun started heating things up and the weekend tour groups started taking over the paths I decided it was time to go. So I bought a ticket back around noon. The trip back to Ningbo was much more relaxed than the one coming out, of course, because I actually knew what I was doing. I went back to the train station and bought a map of Ningbo and made the quick bus hop over to the hostel. The hostel in Ningbo is run by the same 'Mingtown' outfit as in Suzhou, and this one was less picturesque than the one in Suzhou, but it was still very pleasant and very cheap. And I had the whole 4-bed dorm all to myself! The hostel was right next to Moon Lake Park, so strolled around a bit in the evening and when down Ningbo's busy shopping streets to find some excellent street food. But other than that Ningbo was really just an overnight city. The next morning I grabbed a train to Hangzhou and was very glad to be back home.
Overall the trip cost me less than $200, which I think is pretty good. Pictures are coming very soon!
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