Zheng Zhou 郑州 - part 1

This is a place that I haven’t heard of..yup, I admit, my geography is not very good~~~ was deciding where to go for 1st weekend, I even brought my CHINA dictionary all the way from HK and kept referring to it….had to leave on fri, but it was already wed that my colleague and I had not made up our mind…gosh…worst come to worst, go to Haerbin…not that Haerbin is bad, just that it’s not winter yet, so there would be nothing to see….on Thursday, my colleague suggested Zhengzhou..without checking, we just booked our ticket and hotel!!! I “worked OT” the night before just to find out wat’s there to see…turned out there are a lot of things to see…. 1. It used to be capital city of China for a few dynasties; 2. it is 关公’s home and final home; 3. could see yellow river; 4. 3 hrs++ drive from Zhengzhou was Luo yang where there are a lot of attractions; 5. food is unique, delicious and cheap; 6. 1.30 hr ++ from Zhengzhou is 少林寺 (Shaolin temple) and other temples; and 7. ETC Day 1 (fri nite) While browsing the web the nite before, I read a lot of comments on how CUNNING ppl from zhengzhou are…so on fri nite, we took a taxi from airport to our hotel…we told the driver the name of the hotel and his 1st reaction was: WOW, that’s the best hotel in Zhengzhou!! I was afraid that he would try to dig $$ because of that, so when he asked us if we have been here before, we quickly said YES!!! We wanted to rent a taxi for a day the next day to go places, so we asked how much he charged…he said without thinking: RMB1,000!! @_@ WHHHAAAaattt??? Do we look like 水鱼? I said, WHAT? It’s more expensive than my ticket to Zhengzhou…so we said, no thanks…then he said he could take us for RMB500…we were very disappointed in him already, so we rejected him. Still too expensive….we were in the taxi for 40 mins already and it seems like a never ending journey, so we asked him how long to go to reach the hotel, he said another 30 mins!!! We didn’t trust him, so we called the hotel to ask…the driver quickly told us, there’s another 10 mins…I was a bit pissed, so I said, I thought u just said 30 mins??? Oh well, we reached our hotel safely…tat’s the most important part J TO BE CONTINUED (City centre of Zhengzhou) (My room part 1)