Sunday: 06/02/2011

I am officially Buddhist Templed-out… This was my first experience on a guided tour, and it was definitely intense! Vivi, our guide had us bouncing around the country side checking out all kinds of awesome temples, gardens, restaurants, and old-towns for three days. We started out in Suzhou, which is about an hour and a half straight west of Shanghai, and then went on to Hanzhou, which is around 4 hours southwest of the city.

Forced to choose between the two, Hanzhou is definitely better, but they’re both pretty awesome. Hanzhou had more natural beauty, but the temples in Suzhou were architecturally impressive. It’s hard to keep them all straight, but there was one temple with a building that I’m pretty sure was attempting to copy The Leaning Tower of Pisa, another with a huge bell that you can ring for 5 kuai and a blessing, and an awesome one that was carved out of a cave with more Buddha than you can count with all the fingers in China. There were a few gardens… one where Tori paid enough for a painting that our tour guide got really angry at her, another one where I used peacock mating calls to get an albino peacock to come over and spread its feathers… and a town where I got two souvenir gifts for my family!

All told, it was a great trip, extremely exhausting and well worth the effort. (especially considering everything was paid for) One last thing can’t be overlooked. The last night in Hanzhou, we decided to go find a place to go out at night. Alek, ran into this club called “G+” that used to be KTV, but has since been converted to an all-out club. I have never been anywhere this awesome. When we eventually made it (the initial address was wrong and took us to the 6th floor of a sketch building with no lights and escalators that weren’t moving… not to mention the lavishly decorated room with no patrons and about ten very attractive men in tailored suits ushering everyone into a dark back room…), the entire block seemed to be bumping from the speakers in this place. The entryway was very futuristic with a huge white cube filled with flat mirrors and minimalist furniture and a huge G+ on the building in ever-changing Technicolor. The club itself branched off from this room. I’m not sure how to describe it fully. The entire place was a maze of bars and chairs and hallways but with a few relatively open areas for dancing and singing. The actual ceiling was probably 10 ft., but appeared to be like 6.5 feet since the entire thing was packed with hanging disco balls, moving lights, modern-looking hanging lights, projectors shining random music videos onto squares of Plexiglas, etc. There were a lot of plush booths and stand-up tables and drinks were brought to your table by an endless supply of waiters and waitresses. (fuyuan/mei nu… fuyuan is a way to say waiter/waitress and mei nu literally means “beautiful lady” but is the modern way of beckoning a waitress.) Every once in a while, the music would switch from great dubstep to mediocre karaoke music, but by around 2am it was all good stuff. The staff brought out 2 foot Styrofoam sticks with LEDs inside, and we had fun dancing and waving/fighting the rest of the night.

And just for good measure: