Free day in Zhengzhou meant we didn't need to be up too early so hoped that when we went up for breakfast it would be a bit quieter. How wrong were we!! There was LOUD music and a man on a microphone as if he was instructing an exercise class or karaoke. SO LOUD! What we found out later was it was a wedding reception. I couldn't think of anything worse. Loud yelly people with loud music at 8.30am, no thanks. I had a quick breakfast and headed down to reception to collect our passports. Each hotel collected all our passports to get copies.
It was just starting to rain as mum and I headed out of the hotel so we popped back in and grabbed our brollies and EP's (emergency ponchos). As we weren't sure what was around and what we would do for the day we just started walking. We met one of the fellows from the tour who's wife was quite sick, she'd be unwell before she left Australia and was only getting worse. Most of the bus group thought she shouldn't have come as she ended spreading her germs to quite a few of them in the group. Thankfully mum and I didn't get it. Anyway, he told us that some people had caught a local bus into town for 1 yuan (about 20c) and the bus stop was just down from the hotel.
Mum wasn't keen at first so we walk around a bit more but realised there wasn't much to see. Amelia had told us this is the textile area, so if you needed curtains or fabric you'd be in shopping heaven. We didn't so decided that we'd see if we could manage to catch the bus. Our main concern was getting the right one back!
One good thing was the bus started near the hotel so ended near the hotel which meant that as long as we got the right bus we couldn't miss our stop as it didn't go any further.
After working out were to get on the bus, we thought it was leaving without us but was just driving around the the actually bus stop. On we hopped, put our 2 yuan in the slot and found a seat for the bumpy ride into town. There was a lot of road works happening near our hotel so the roads were a bit rough and went around the world. We didn't mind as we didn't need to be anywhere and was a good way to see some sights.
Not knowing how big Zhengzhou was or where abouts the bus actually went we weren't too sure where to get off. After we'd been on it for about 45 mins we thought we should get off soon. We stopped near a large park so thought this was as good a place as any to get off. We made a note of the bus number and just hoped we'd be able to find one going back the other way. We did.
Scooters are everywhere. One the road on the footpath going in all directions and being electric they are quiet. We certainly had to keep on our toes whenever we needed to cross a road and just walking
down the footpath. Whenever there was an footbridge over the road we made use of it. Much safer although we did see some scooters use them as well!
Zhengzhou is a busy place as I'm sure everywhere in China is. Not really any different to any other city I guess just with more scooters than what we're use to in Australia. After a few hours of walking our legs were getting tired and our bellies were getting hungry. We decided to find somewhere for lunch. Easier said than done! After a lot more walking we found a bakery and bought a couple of interesting things and decided to find a bus back to the hotel and have lunch there.
We'd seen a bus stop not far from the bakery we ended getting lunch from that had our bus number on the sign so we headed for that. Just as we got there a bus with our number was just leaving. I flagged him and he actually stopped! Quick mum, jump on.
The trip didn't take as long as I think we'd walked nearly half way back. I was good to get a bit of an idea of what was around our hotel plus we met up with a couple of people from our group how'd walked around near the hotel and said that there is a street not too far behind the hotel with lots of restaurants. Somewhere to go for dinner.
I wasn't a huge fan of the things we got from the bakery, not really sure what the sausage/frankfurt thing was. Weird tasting. What was needed was a cup of tea. Luckily mum had brought some tea bags with her from home as English breakfast tea was never given at the hotel or was very sparingly given. We also got in the habit of getting a small carton of long life milk as milk wasn't provided in the rooms either. As they gave you green tea bags milk wasn't needed.
We traffic watched for a bit from our hotel room window. Eye opening and so amazing there weren't any accident. Scooters and cars going the wrong way but no one seemed to mind. There was hardly ever any horn tooting. Road rage seems to be very rare in China.
Time for dinner! We headed off in the direction we thought the restaurants were. We walked down quite a dark laneway but it still had quite a few people walking up and down it so we felt pretty safe. Once we got to the end we were on a fairly busy road so decided this must be the street to find dinner. We walked up and down trying to decide what looked ok and what looked a bit weird. We finally picked a restaurant that had pictures that we could sort of make out what the meat was.
We got shown to a table and given a massive menu. We started flicking through it and the waiter's standing there getting impatient with us as we were taking too long. We'd only just sat down and the menu was big! We finally decided on some dumplings and a beef stirfry thing with what looked like bao buns. I was trying to ask the waiter if we could just get 4 dumplings as the picture had millions of them but he didn't know what I meant. He asked another diner (who I think was from another tour group) if he could help as he spoke Chinese. He told me that you could only order what was shown in the photo. Okay. We ended up with 24 dumplings! They were only about $3 but that's a lot of dumplings. I think this was one of our most favourite meals we had on our trip. So good! We were absolutely STUFFED by the time we left. Good choice and it all cost about $15 for the two of us. So cheap for so much food. We did attempt to use the chopsticks provided but out waiter must have seen us struggling a bit as he brought us over a small fork each :-)
Final night here and then we're off to Suzhou (Pronounce: Suejo) on the bullet train tomorrow.
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