To Hangzhou the hard way (pt. 1)

Last week (Oct 8th) was a national holiday commemorating the founding of the People's Republic of China (PRC). While we were at the nearby Korean restaurant stuffing our faces with grilled meat, beer, and soju, a combination that I find greatly enhances one's ability to think clearly and make good decisions, we talked about planning a trip to a nearby province. Somehow during this conversation biking and Hangzhou came up, so we decided to put the two ideas together and had our preliminary plans for the upcoming holiday.

Sometime Mon or Tues it was decided to leave on Thursday morning (Oct11) and come back either Saturday or Sunday. Next steps were to buy our bikes, figure out how to get there, find a place to stay, and assign GI Joe call names. Step 1: We went to Carrefour (Big French department/grocery store) to pick out our 自行车. The bikes ranged from 200RMB to about 800RMB so as you can imagine the quality wasn't exactly all there. Which wasn't a problem since my budget was 300RMB, therefore quality wasn't exactly a high priority for me. After about 45min of kicking tires, I spotted my baby. She had everything I was looking for: big cushy seat - check, brushed dark purplish/blue steel finish - check, bell - check, I'll take it.

Step 2: Figuring out how to get there. I was a little nervous about this part, but after speaking with friends of friends of friends who have actually made this trip we were told the route to Hangzhou from Shanghai is relatively simple. So we headed to the local bookstore and picked up a 15RMB road atlas of Shanghai and its surrounding provinces. After consulting the map the trip would be about 220km (over 120miles), so if we were to average 20km/hr (15mph) throughout the trip we could get there in 11hrs + a few hours for breaks and food. We also plotted our route to Hangzhou, which was head SW from Shanghai and get onto road 320 and follow that for 180km.

Step 3: Lodging. Because it was a holiday week we knew it was going to be hard to find lodging especially this late in the game. Hangzhou is also a major tourist destination so that only complicated things. I figured we would just pay out of our noses for 1 or maybe 2 nights. But my friend Jae Hyun came up with a brilliant idea. Last week after a night of drinking he introduced us to this bath house in Shanghai were you can soak in hot tubs, get massages, and sleep overnight. He proposed finding a similar type place in Hangzhou rather than stay in a hotel. So he did the research and found the address to the place and made sure we would be able to stay the night.

Step 4: Pick appropriate GI Joe call names. Me - Beachhead, Doug - Snow Job, David - Hawk, Jae Hyun - Lifeline. Done. Everything came together relatively smoothly and I felt we were pretty well prepared despite the last minuteness of our planning. The next day, we planned to meet up at 6am in front of my dormitory, get breakfast and head out together.