Sept 19^th

Whew!  A long day! – quick overview – drove about 3 hours to Hongzshu for boat ride on West Lake.  Visited a dragon Tea tasting place  Fly to Bangkok but not expecting to get in there until  1:30 in the morning.

We enjoyed a rather leisurely big breakfast buffet at the hotel.  Today I had an egg roll up type of thing with crispy bready center, some fresh fruit, some good sausage with vegetables.  

We load all of our stuff  into the bus and are off about 9:30.   Our destination is Hongzshu.  We have a potty break after a few hours at a travel comfort type of place.  Besides lots of restrooms, there are various eating places that range from very simple to quite extensive.  There is a shop that sells local delicacies packaged in an omiagi style.  There is a monument with pictures of the leaders that were at the first national congress of the Chinese Communist party held in Shanghai in 1921.  This is really the first monument to communism that we have seen. 

Back on the bus for another couple of hours.

Lunch is another mass buffet on the lazy susan.  This one really seemed pretty mediocre. 

Melodie and I discussed the great discrepancy of wealth in Shanghai. 

The road to West Lake was lined with Sycamore trees.  We park and then walk about 15 minutes to the lake where we board a traditional style boat.  It is electrically powered which keeps the sound and pollution down on the lake.   The day is rather cloudy but pleasant.  I seem to be a bit of an oddity as several Chinese people want their picture taken with me. 

After the boat ride, we went to a Dragaon well tea plantation.  This was another one of the government sanctioned tourist stops to sell their product.  The landscape driving there was beautiful and green.  The presentation seemed a bit like selling snake oil as drinking the tea was the cure to pretty much everything.  The grounds were pretty and peaceful.  

After the tea plantation we go for another lazy Susan dinner.  Everyone is getting pretty tired of scrambled eggs with tomatoes in it.  

From there we go to the airport to catch a plane to Bangkok.  No one told us it is a red eye....  It is about 1:45 AM when we get into Bangkok, have to go through immigration.  Exhaustion!  We all make it through only to discover that we are supposed to share a bus with another Sinorama group to the hotel.  Oh bother!  There aren't enough seats on the bus for the two groups.  We smush in and drive for an hour to the airport.  Arrive about 4:00AM and are to be on the bus ready for a big day of site seeing at 7:30 AM.  One couple is quite upset but the others are all going  with the flow.  

To bed for a short nap.