Asia Holiday 2014, August 13 (Top Of The Lake)

After one day in Shanghai I was off for a day trip to Hangzhou, due to the very condensed schedule of this holiday. The travel took about 90 minutes this time, where I just caught up on sleep again. The station at Hangzhou was a combination of bus and train so it was a bit of a mess, but I just made sure I was heading roughly west after exiting, so that I'd eventually reach the West Lake area.

As I was heading towards Hefang Street there was a big street cleaner vehicle doing laps of the street while playing the "It's A Small World" tune, that seemed a little weird. Hefang Street was another kind of market area, various souvenirs and a small food street, but no magnets again - I guess these smaller cities just don't have enough demand for magnets.

Hefang Street.

When Hefang Street ended I was in Wushan Square and at the bottom of a small mountain, possibly it was Mt Ziyang. I didn't have it marked on my map for the day but took a short detour and started up the hill. There was a small bird sanctuary of some sort where there was hundreds of pigeons hanging out, I kept going a bit further but there was just a temple entrance at the top. I thought I might be able to get a good perspective of the West Lake and surrounding area from up above, but the view was mostly obstructed by trees so I hurried back down to the bottom to continue on with the day.

Wushan Square.

On my way out of Wushan Square I almost didn't notice the Best Bite Donuts store, which would have been a disaster. They had a whole range of interesting flavours of donuts, similar to a Dunkin' Donuts, and I purchased a Coconut and an Oreo for about 6 RMB each. They were a little bit small, but really good quality and taste, and cheap too.

Too many donuts for just one day.

Soon after I did make it to West Lake, it's a huge lake just beyond the western fringe of the city, so it's pretty impossible not to find it. I walked north along the east coast to the end of Hubin Road, but there wasn't really a lot of sights to see along the way - a little disappointing so far. The lake had a lot of boats going in various directions across it, and I could see a couple of temples and pagodas far in the distance. I was already starting to get a little bit worried about the amount of walking that would be required to complete a lap though.

West Lake.

Once again it was nearly lunch time already, and I had found a special place for today. I had to walk a good fifteen minutes away from the lake, but eventually tucked away in an alley I found...Triple O's by White Spot. They actually had a veggie burger on the menu ! I ordered the same as my previous visit in Hong Kong - the veggie burger meal with blueberry milkshake upgrade. It was a little expensive with the extra 29 RMB for the milkshake - since milk seems to be very expensive in China - the whole meal was 94 RMB but definitely worth it. Once again, no foreign credit cards were being accepted...

Triple O's !!!

After lunch was done I only had about three hours before I had to start getting back to the train station. I started off on a lap around West Lake - I could have hired a bike from one of the public bike stands, but you needed to pay a 300 RMB deposit to get a smart card, then you could hand in the card at the end and get your deposit back, but it all sounded a bit too complicated as there were only certain places you could buy and return these cards on the same day.

I started off along Bai Causeway, which is a bit of a shortcut along the north side of the lake. I turned on my Garmin GPS watch to keep track of how I was going for time and distance, and it was already 2km and 20 minutes by the time I reached the end of the causeway, a lot longer than I estimated it would be.

Bai Causeway.

I had reached the west side of the lake by now, but the biggest stretch was yet to come, the north to south path called Su Causeway was about twice as long as the previous section. I decided to speed up to a slow jog, passing Mid Lake Pavillion out on a small island, but I missed another supposed sight called "Three Pools Reflecting The Moon". It sounds like it should be good, but I have no idea what it was or what it was meant to look like. I was quite surprised by the number of people out on foot attempting a lap of the lake as well, particularly given that it was a very hot day.

Mid Lake Pavillion (left) and Liefeng Pagoda (right).

After finally reaching the bottom of the lake I could see Liefeng Pagoda which had just been a small mark on the horizon for most of the day. I didn't really have time to stop and enter the grounds, but you could still get a reasonable view of the pagoda just from passing by. By the time I had continued back around to near where I first reached the lake at the start of the day the GPS had passed 7km, and that wasn't even a full lap.

I took a different route back to the train station and found all of the good shops hidden away in a different part of the city - lots of bakeries and fresh fruit at last ! That fun didn't last long as the wait for the train wasn't so great, the station was a bit run down, crowded and stuffy with no air-conditioning, so it was a relief when the train showed up - despite all of the apparent chaos everything has been run efficiently and on time so far, which is quite an achievement.

• Hangzhou Summary
• 6 out of 10
• Good
• Lots to explore
• Some canals running through the city
• Triple O's by White Spot
• Bad
• Old town was pretty disappointing
• Too far to see on foot, really need a bike and probably a good map
• Missed Out
• Baochu Pagoda
• Grand Canal
• Xixi Wetland Park

Back in Shanghai I dropped off all of my belongings at the hotel and hurried down to Shanghai Stadium on the subway. Unlike Beijing there was quite a few people trying to sell tickets for the match. I wasn't exactly sure but I think the retail price of a ticket is 30-40 RMB, although I wasn't certain if it was possible to buy tickets at the stadium for this game either. After checking out the scalpers routine for a few minutes I started negotiations with one of them, he started at 100 RMB and I offered 60 instead. He came down to 80 and I went to 70, he still wanted 80 so I started to walk off and then he was quick to settle for 70.

I got to the game a little early and it was pretty deserted. No doubt I could have purchased a ticket from the stadium if there was such a thing and I could find it, but really it would have saved me $5 at best so I didn't really care. The night's match was between the home team Shanghai East Asia (also knows as Shanghai SIPG) and Henan Jianye - no idea what or where Henan is. A little bit more of a crowd turned up before kick off, but there was still large sections of the stadium, particularly the upper deck, that were closed off due to low attendance numbers. According to Wikipedia their average attendance is 12,000 - which is up 20% !

The home fans, outnumbered by flags.

I was quite curious to find out if the China Super League was any good and how it compared to the A-League. The players were largely locals, but there was also a few foreigners - mostly Brazilian - on each team. The pitch was in pretty good condition and the weather was alright for football, so I think that helped things along too. Shanghai were the better team but wasted a perfect chance on goal after 15 minutes so it was still 0-0 at half time.

Game time.

The night had remained pretty humid so the second half seemed to be played a lot slower than the first. After about 80 minutes Shanghai finally had a breakthrough and held on for a 1-0 victory. It's hard to judge on just one game but the quality was somewhat comparable to the A-League. The A-League does seem to have improved a bit in the last year or two so perhaps I would still have them slightly ahead. Still, it was a good, cheap way to spend an evening out.