Hangzhou

I had to travel to Hangzhou for a meeting last night. After my meeting was over Jen came and met me here. Hangzhou is about a 90 min train ride from Shanghai. It is supposedly a big tourist area. When Jen got here we quickly put here things in the hotel and then went outside to grab some lunch, about nine hours later we got back to the hotel. Today was blast. We spent a lot of time walking around the West Lake. This is one of the most famous lakes in China and is featured in many movies such as Croutching Tiger Hiden Dragon.

Today's adventures could fill many blog postings. It seemed like everywhere we turned there was another thing happening that was definitely 'blog material'. Things like the bikes that we rented for two hours for 15 cents. We were both way too big for these bikes but that didn't stop us from putting a bunch of Cokes and goodies in the front basket and cruising all over town. Somehow I ended up driving down a bunch of one way streets, the problem was that I was going to wrong way! My bike was equipped with a baby seat attached on the back and a seat post that would probably fit a 5 year old.

Other blog worthy scences included a dad pulling his kids pants down and holding him over a garbadge can to go to the bathroom. This wouldn't have been so weird if it wasn't in the middle of one of the most crowded sections of the city. It got better when a random lady saw this and stopped, then proceeded to pull out some tissues to help wipe the kid and then she was on her way. This was then topped by my own experience in the public bathroom. Let me paint the picture. We are right next to the West Lake, thousands of people everywhere. The bathroom has open windows that are about chest level. All of the windows are wide open so all the thousands of people walking by can see all of the men standing next to the wall, from the chest up, taking care of business. I went in and took the last one all the wall. As I'm taking care of business I look out the window at all these people outside just a few feet away. I give a kind smile and nod of the head to some of them. Just as I've decided that I've been in this situation enough times now to not think it's too weird, things change. Next to me another guy starts crowding in on the guy who is already going, he's trying to share the toilet! The guy starts yelling at him but it was too late, they were in the middle of a sword fight for the rights of the toilet. The guy eventually stopped yelling and the both did their thing and then went their seperate ways. Classic China experience.

We don't mean to bring so much bathroom talk into our blog but when you see things like this the stories just have to be told!