Jailbreak 1: HangZhou Summer 2020

West Lake

After getting through months of quarantine, online teaching, health checks and being told I wasn't allowed to leave the city, my chance finally came. The summer holidays! As international travel, and domestic travel to some of the more high risk areas was off limits, I decided to tackle my still somehow very extensive China bucket list.

I finished up at school, collected all the paperwork needed for my trip and jumped on a plane to HangZhou. I was expecting traveling, especially as a foreigner, to be complicated and unpleasant, but it really wasn't bad. A lot of scanning codes and filling in forms and that was about it.

My hostel was somewhere in one of the "old streets" of HangZhou which actually turned out to be a nice area. It was mostly quiet and deserted throughout the day, I suspect as it was about a million degrees in the sun and very humid. The place was a little busier and the shops had opened. It had a very staged feel, similar to all other "old streets" I've visited in China but it was still pretty.

The old area was about a fifteen minute walk from the West Lake for which HangZhou is famous. It's a very pretty and very large lake in the middle of the city. As I was only in town for the one night I was determined to make the most of my time in town and set off in search of the best spot on the lake. A plan that was soon dashed by the crazy heat and adapted to a rent a bike to a bar. Still I found what I was looking for and so had everyone else.

Although it was a very fast trip, I do feel HangZhou made up for its disastrous first impression from a few years ago.

The next morning I jumped on the fast train to HuangShan (Yellow Mountain) which was the first of my bucket list objectives of the summer.

It was a very fast hour and a half trip on an almost deserted train.

I got to HuangShan "town" and found my hotel. As its a purpose built area for access to the tourist favourite mountain I was expecting to pay a little more. What I wasn't expecting was a stay in one of the poshest hotels I have ever stayed in. I was so out of place that the door man tried to give me directions in an attempt to remove the very sweaty backpacker from outside his hotel. Many apologies later, I caught him trying to teach the other staff my name. Yet another place where I was known as "Chair" for the weekend. Lovely people in a beautiful luxurious (and cheap) hotel.

I got an early night as the next day I was to take on the mountain and hopefully win.

Love a good sunset pic.