China: The climax of our trip?

Hi there once again!

Tonight, we don't feel like doing too much so we found it the right time to update you guys once more about our travel adventures. As you could have already deducted from the title of this blog, we are on the area of China right now. Before the start of our trip, we already had agreed together that we would definitely be visiting China. Because it is such a large country with a lot of different cultural and natural aspects, we will stay in China for about ten days, which is longer than any other counry we will visit.

To make things clear, now we are finding ourselves in our room of a little hotel in the city centre of Hangzhou, a well-known city in China. We had quite a nice day so we provide you of a little summary below.

Hangzhou

At first, our idea was to travel by bus from Laos to China but someone told us that we could experience some troubles at the border so we decided to, once again, travel by plane. Because Laos is located southward of China and because China's major cities are located in the eastern part of the country, we decided to start our trip in Hanghzou. After visiting hangzhou we will march on northward to reach other cities. We have found a nice train route so we will not have to pay plane-tickets anymore in China. After our arrival Hangzhou Xiaoshan International Airport early this morning, we took a taxi very quickly to our hotel in the city centre. After we were installed, it became clear that we would definitely need a guide for today. The combination of a big city in a country that we had never been in before with an unintelligible language made it impossible to travel alone. The receptionist at our hotel told us where to find a tourist centre where we could fix a guide. We asked the guide to visit some of the most special places in Hangzhou today and we ended up with two activities. In the forenoon, we would visit the 'Immaculate Conception Cathedral', one of the oldest catholic churches in China. In the afternoon our activity was to take a look at the 'West Lake', the most attractive touristical spot in Hangzhou.

The Cathedral

It seemed really interesting to us to compare a Chinese catholic cathedral to the cathedrals we know in Belgium and Ghent, specifically. From outside the building looked completely different from what we know. It was quite a low building with two colors: blue and white. The inside of the cathedral was rather comparable with the cathedrals we know so that's at least something that catholicism has in common all over the world. Our lovely guide gave us a lot of explanation about the birth and the history of that cathedral but that's secret information that we will not be sharing here.

When we completed our visit to the cathedral, we took a bus to move to our next destination but on our way, we would hold on for a minute to eat something. During the bus trip, I was personally surprised about the fact that Hangzhou seemed to be a pretty prosperous city. I didn't see any signs of poverty. Moreover, the city was a maginificent mixture of modern skyscrapers and typical old Chinese buildings. As we had planned, we stopped at a restaurant to provide ourselves of some energy to complete the day. Surprisingly, the food was not spicy but it had a very soft and sweet taste. We also got some tea to drink. It was not just a random drink since it was 'Longjing Tea', a local speciallity that worked refreshing and relaxing.

West Lake

This lake was announced as the major touristical attraction of Hangzhou so we were quite curious about what to expect. The most awesome thing about this lake is that it is surrounded with breathtaking nature and rest. Alongside the lake, there are numerous authentical Chinese buildings refering to old Chinese leaders and things like that. The fact that the lake is not one of the largest with its 6.2 square kilometres gets completely compensated by the beauty of the sightseeing on the boat. This lake delivered us a nice variation between wide, open spaces with nice panoramas and small, cosy passages through Jungles etc. We can conclude that visiting West Lake was a very nice way to finish our day in Hangzhou, despite the fact that it was not how we had expected it to be.

It was a beautiful day for us but we have yet to discover what China really is about because we have only been here one day, in one city. We plan to move on to our next destination tomorrow or the day after tomorrow so make sure you keep your eyes focused on the screen to miss nothing of the action!

Greetings,

The Travelling Team