hangzhou day 3

the hostel that i stayed in had an extremely beautiful and playful male kitten:

he’s an amazing kitten and i REALLY wanted to bring him home soooo badly.

look at how he was trying to play with my arm and gnaw and claw at it.. so cute!!

on the hunt and distracted by a hand

stalking his prey over the couch

we were on our way to Qu Yuan Feng He, a collection of gardens on the other side of the lake. however, the taxi driver dropped us off halfway cos there was a traffic jam up ahead and he didnt want to get caught in it. we ended up having to walk about 2km :S

there are a lot of lotus plants along west lake

bridal shoot:

the weather was very hot that day though..

one of the gardens in Qu Yuan Feng He:

more rocks

i like this lotus, cos i’ve never seen dual-toned ones like this before! unfortunately it wasnt blooming very prettily..

the name of the gardens – things are a bit confusing in china, cos sometimes you’re meant to read from left to right, and at other times from right to left. in this case, it’s right to left:

i like this view:

i thought this was very innovative too, incorporating the pavilions and the round walls:

we caught a double-decker tourist bus on the way back, and here’s the view from it:

the man united team was in hangzhou as part of their asian tour, and a group of fans was waiting outside hyatt hotel:

hangzhou day 2 - 飞来峰 and 灵隐寺

Feilai Peak and Linyin Temple are apparently the premier sights of hangzhou. the former is described as such on Lonely Planet:

“The walk up to the temple skirts the flanks of Feilai Peak (Fēilái Fēng; Peak Flying from Afar), which is supposed to have been magically transported here from India. The real highlights here, though, are the Buddhist carvings lining the riverbanks and hillsides - all 470 of them, dating from the 10th to 14th centuries. To get a close-up view of the best carvings, including the famous 'laughing' Maitreya Buddha, follow the paths along the far (east) side of the stream.”

it was rainy that day, so the climb up some of the slopes were a bit dangerous.. here are some pictures. not many pictures at all, mainly cos of the rain and cos i was trying to keep my balance while trying to avoid all the china tourists. and i hate rain, so i was in pretty much a shitty mood that day..

look at how heavy the rain was:

here’s the entrance to the grounds of the area:

it was also here that we met some pple who were trying to scam us. first, they told us that we were going in the wrong direction, then offered to show us to the correct place and were trying to lead us somewhere else. they said that you also have to wash your hands to purify yourself before praying as that’ll work better and some other crap.

here’s a pic of a guanyin who was carved into the rock:

i’d rented the audio guide, which came in mandarin for 10RMB. there werent any in english for this place, but in most of the tourist attractions, the mandarin guide is only 10RMB, while the foreign language ones are 40RMB. quadruple the price! but i still rented the english guides though, as this chinese one had cheem words that i didnt understand.

check out this big rock! can compare the scale with the boy:

here are more rock carvings that are in the open, rather than in caves like those above:

check out the number of tourists:

just look at the stream due to the heavy rain:

 

it was such that some areas were flooded, so we had to backtrack all the way to get across the stream to the side on which the temple was. and of course, my shoes were all wet and gross.

this is lingyin temple:

 

it was here at the ticket counter where i first experienced discrimination cos pple think i’m from china, compared to if you’re obviously a (white?) tourist. the lady at the ticket counter was so gross and pissed me off so bad. dont want to say anymore about her. gross.

anyway, the temple is quite nice as it has many really pretty buddhist statues, but i was in an awful mood then and you’re supposedly not meant to take any pictures anyway, so i dont have any photos of this place at all.

after we left that place, we had an extremely late lunch in this nice cafe:

and then went to check out another one of the parks next to the west lake, called “Orioles Singing in the Willows”:

it had nice carvings on the pavements:

mandarin ducks and dragons

i believe this below is Leifeng Pagoda, another famous landmark:

i think this would have been such a great pic if i had a DLSR, cos it’s blurry!!

sunset:

and at night, while we were walking in the rain looking for dinner, we saw this:

quite interesting rite? it looked like the structure was on fire. no idea what it was though.. haha.