Plaza at the Entrance of Zhouzhuang 周庄
The good thing about buses in China is that they adhere to a schedule, at least the more formal bus stations do. So regardless of whether they are full or not they have to leave the station. This is good for the passengers but quite uncertain for the bus operators. As a result, they probably have to raise fares to make sure that they don’t lose money. It is also not uncommon to see buses picking up passengers right after they get out of the bus station. With the bus station out of the way, they stand to gain 100% of the bus fares.
Wide Street Leading to Zhouzhuang 周庄 Main Entrance
Our bus to Zhouzhuang will take us around an hour to get there. I have been there previously bus I had to go through Shanghai to get there. I actually asked my friends to go to Zhujiajiao 朱家角 instead of Zhouzhuang, both are water towns but I have been to Zhouzhuang, I thought I would be able to convince them to go to the one I haven’t been to by giving the reason that it was too touristy, which was actually true. Alas, the marketing muscle of Zhouzhuang overwhelmed me and they insisted we go to Zhouzhuang, whatever.
Inside Zhouzhuang 周庄
The driver of the bus was not very safe though since there was a portion near Zhouzhuang when he was too slow in overtaking and there was another vehicle coming from the opposite direction. To our horror, he didn’t slow down or stop even but instead veered further away from our lane to avoid the oncoming vehicle! Fortunately, there was no accident, my friend and I were watching the whole thing happen and we alarmed at how we narrowly missed hitting that vehicle. To our great relief, we eventually got to Zhouzhuang in one piece.
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