Monday, July 9, 2012

Day 2 (Zhengzhou)


Wednesday 4th July: Zhengzhou  L
We arrived at Zhengzhou around 8am. As usual, we knew we had to try and I mean try and get tickets for our next destination, Suzhou, straight away. We were welcome by a slight drizzle and a grey sky. Not the best of omens.
No sleepers, just hard seats for Suzhou. Fine. As for the following stop which was going to be Chengdu, no sleepers and this time, no way, not for a 27-hour journey. I was going to try and book flights.

Lunch in the rain...
We got to our hotel- a Jinjian Inn (clinical but clean and cheap). The city didn’t seem particularly nice-a modern Chinese city with no character- and the weather was less than appealing. Got settled, decided to stay in town for the day, have lunch in a street food then go to the museum. As we left the hotel, it started to rain, within minutes it was pouring down, torrential rain. However, we weren’t deterred. Had a lovely and extremely cheap lunch of noodles in a street food under awnings that had seen better days. It was drizzling on our table as we were eating. Next, off to the museum. There isn’t much culture here but the provincial museum as it’s called is actually worth a visit. Later in the day, we thought we might go to the Yellow River Scenic spot (took a taxi back to the station for the 5th time that day…) but the rain was so bad, we headed back to the hotel and chilled there. I booked some flights but had to change the itinerary- no more going to Chengdu: a longer stay in Suzhou and surroundings instead. Had a nice dinner in a Chinese restaurant- not many foreign restaurants here at all. Reminded us of Huangdao, just bigger. And definitely not many foreigners or let’s say not many westerners. I don’t recall having been looked at and pointed out so much in a long time: stares and gaping looks from the children… we must have heard the word “laowai” a hundred times and I’m not exaggerating!

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