Wednesday, May 10, 2017

Day 6 - Nanjing/Hangzhou Trip 2016 - Wuzhen Part 2 - Very beautiful ancient watertown - very worth making a trip to visit

I let my photos talk for themselves about Wuzhen. It's really worth making a trip to visit the ancient watertown of Wuzhen especially the west scenic zone. Wuzhen comprises of the East zone and West Zone, but the west zone is more charming and beautiful. It is possible to visit both the east and west but we two old folks visited only the west, our legs does not listen to our heart hahaha, we wanted to go both the zone but legs too tired.

The ticket costs RMB120 for the Wuzhen West Scenic Zone and RMB100 for the Wuzhen East Scenic Zone and a combo of both places costs RMB150. No discount for senior citizen above 60.

After scanning the ticket at the entrance gantry, there's a queue for free ferry to go to the opposite side where the historic street was located. It saves some walking. It is possible to walk to the historic street without taking the free ferry but the ferry provided a short cut and saves some leg power and time.

The boat trip is less than a minute ride but a real short cut to the historic street.

The Indigo Fabric Workshop is a large, environmentally-friendly, print and dye workshop with an area of 2500m². Paved with green bricks, the cloth-drying space is filled with tall poles and terraced cloth frames. In addition to using bluegrass as dye for fabric, the dyehouse also employs its unique color roasting technique which can reproduce bright colors from plants belonging to the local flora, such as tea, mulberry bark and tallow leaves, hence its Chinese name, Caomu Bense, which means "true color from plants" in Chinese. As a traditional specialty product of Wuzhen and the favorite natural clothing material of the local people, patterned indigo cloth is an ideal souvenir for tourists.

Source: Wuzhen.com

Dont worry about food, there's some eateries, restaurants and push carts selling food, noodles, etc. As we had heavy morning buffet breakfast, we decided to buy some tea eggs and purple sweet potatoes for light lunch.

The rest of the photos shows the charming and beautiful ancient watertown of Wuzhen.

After a long satisfying trip at Wuzhen, we headed out to the bus stop for K350 to bring us back to Wuzhen Bus Station. The fare is RMB2. If you decided to visit the East Scenic Zone, take the free shuttle bus at the same bus stop, I guess you have to show the driver your admission ticket to take the free bus to the east zone.

We did not go to the east zone, besides of tiredness, we also worried about not catching the last bus (I think is 6.30 pm for the last bus from Wuzhen to Hangzhou), as we did not buy the tickets in advance, we hurried back to the bus station. Luckily there's no problem getting the tickets , the same story goes about our passport being in the hotel so we showed the staff the photocopied of our passports and the bus tickets that we bought from Hangzhou to Wuzhen. If we missed the bus, we had to take the taxis outside the bus station, I guess they would charge very expensive, at more than RMB100+.(But if there's four people, I think is worth it cause the ticket alone costs RMB30 for the return trip per adult), but I did not like to take taxis in foreign countries, they drove so fast and in one of my past travel trip, we almost got into an car accident cause the taxi driver drove so fast and braked so suddenly that we almost hit our heads at the front seats. The driver could even apologized by saying "Paisei"(Embarrassed or ashamed).

Once inside the bus station, head to the gate no. as indicated on the bus ticket.

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