Posts Tagged “Oceanarium”
A Chinese friend once asked why when foreigners come to China, they would always and most often only wanted to see the Great Wall in Beijing. My response and explanation was rather simple – because when you’re outside China, you’re only aware of The Great Wall because it’s dubbed as one among the Seven Wonders of the World. Inside China however, critics place Hangzhou’s West Lake in the number one slot for tourist destinations.
Our decision to visit Hangzhou (as opposed to visiting Beijing) has been a rewarding experience. Of course, there were a lot of things that we may have missed in Beijing (the Great Wall, the Great Pandas, et. al.) however, the beauty of Hangzhou, the West Lake and the so many sites around it are more than enough to compensate for what the China’s capital may have in store for us.
Due to the fact that railway tickets are usually being released to the public as early as ten days prior to the actual departure and the fact that May 1 is one of the major holidays in China, the tickets were almost depleted when we went to buy our tickets at Shanghai railway stations a the weekend before the Labor Day. Fortunately though, the supposedly smiling but already frowning English speaking ticketing staff has managed to find us seated tickets bound for Hangzhou at 3:00 in the afternoon of May 1.
Since our train tickets were issued in Shanghai, it only follows that we should board the trains in Shanghai. So Wednesday afternoon, I went to buy our Shanghai-bound tickets from the Kunshan Railway Station. I managed to secure us tickets scheduled at 7:30 in the morning of May 1. Perhaps there has been a little misunderstanding between me and the ticketing staff since I asked for 10:00 AM tickets (pronounced as SHI in Chinese) but maybe the lady heard my words as CHI (which means seven). Anyway, I thought it would be alright. At least we could avoid the holiday rush by leaving the place earlier.
