Day 30: February 2, 2013 Wuzhen Water Town

  I woke up extra early this morning to Skype my mom and tell her happy birthday but ended up having to relay the message through my dad since she was out and about. With that, I packed my bag and the group of 8 of us (Bryan, John, John, Adam, Nathan, Tyler, Jess and I) were off to the bus station to get tickets to Wuzhen. After getting some crazy stares since Tyler is 6’ 5 with red hair, we unfortunately couldn’t get tickets for the next bus but one a few hours later. We decided to burn time by getting some McDonald’s breakfast that every claims was better than in the states. After listening to Christmas music play for an hour or so we headed back to the waiting area until our bus boarded. Walking on the bus was a very pleasant surprise as it was really clean and nice. The seats were very comfortable and even laid back and slid over into the aisle to make more room. The ride there was about 2 hours including a little 10-minute break. 

     Once we arrived in Wuzhen we really had no idea where to go. Bryan had met a guy on the bus who said it was a good idea to book tickets home right when we got there so we took his advice. The group ended up splitting and half getting tickets for 10 am and the other at 4 pm. With that we hopped on a bus that somehow took us right where we needed to go and then wandered until we found our hotel. We got all checked in and then headed for the water town. The entrance was pretty cool where you walk along this pathway above the water and eventually run into this display of hanging colored sheets. We didn’t exactly know why they were there at first but we ended up going in to this building that explained how these sheets were dyed and then dried. 

     There were a lot of little things along the river including a little shop with a guy doing free calligraphy with nice sayings for the upcoming New Year. We got a few and then took pictures with the man as a thank you. We also found a cool shop selling traditional Chinese umbrellas and then this sort of foot binding museum. The displays were pretty amazing with a huge variety of foot bindings that were smaller than we could believe. 

     After that we were ready for a snack and grabbed these delicious things that I don’t even know how to describe. They were kind of like spring rolls but in patty form and absolutely delicious. After that we continued to walk around until we got down to the end where there was a temple and a lot of restaurants, cafes, and bars. We decided to forgo the typical restaurants and eat in one of the places that basically looked like a woman cooking out of her home. I got some beef and peppers and rice that were really tasty and then we all decided we would split a couple of bottles of wine. We did not know what we were getting ourselves into, but it was actually rice wine and tasted like alcoholic soy sauce. I refused to drink any but somehow a few of the guys stuck it out by buying a sprite to mix with it. 

Dinner place

    

 After dinner we decided to check out what we thought was this karaoke bar but was actually just a group of two Chinese girls and a guy singing American music. We walked in as wagon wheel was playing, which is always a crowd pleaser, and then got the pleasure of hearing everything from Kesha’s Tik Tok to the Backstreet Boys’ I Want It That Way. I found it absolutely hilarious to see the Asian guy sing the Backstreet Boys song because he hardly knew the words and reminded me exactly of that YouTube video to that song, After one extremely over priced drink (1/2 of the size and 3 times the price of our beer with dinner) we decided to just grab some beers and cards on the way back to the hotel and play some asshole, which was a really good time. The highlight was definitely when John tried to open his bag of chips by clapping his hands together and then having them explode at both ends and go everywhere. 

     

The group who was getting up early called it a night around 11 while the other four of us decided we might as well stay up late because we were going to have nothing to do all day tomorrow. We were told there was so much to do that we needed to stay the night but everything was closing for New Year’s so there was really nothing to do, which was kind of disappointing. Either way, Adam, John, Jess and I had some pretty good bonding time. 

     When Jess and I decided to head back to our room, it was absolutely freezing. We couldn’t figure out the heater so we turned on the shower to see if that would help. Of course, the handle attachment was on instead of the showerhead and was pointing straight out the door so I got soaked when I tried to turn it on. Jess then changed it to come out of the showerhead and then turned it on and got sprayed as well. It turns out the lever to switch between the two settings was broken, which led to a pretty unfortunate shower in the morning. We left the shower on and ended up falling asleep and got up a couple of hours later to turn it off before our bathroom flooded. Not sure if it heated the room that much but the sound of the water put us right to sleep.