Hangzhou
Hangzhou is a city that is on the West lake, south west of Shanghai. It is a big tourist destination for the Chinese and sure enough when we arrived there was millions of people walking around the lake and of course seeing two westerners (one in plaster!) was as big a tourist attraction as anything Hangzhou had to offer.
Our hostel was literally on the shore of the lake and it was possible to walk all around the lakes. However, with it being the holiday week that meant there were loads of other people and it was a bit overcrowded. However, the trickiest part of the walks were avoiding the electric buses that drove tourists around the lake. They basically saw pedestrians as mocvng targets and the only warning sign you had that they were coming was an incredibly annoying tune they continually played over their loud speakers - it was the death song!
The West Lake was beautiful and there were Chinese gardens constructed all around the shore that we explored. We were there for 3 nights and most of our time was spent wandering around the gardens. The gardens were intricately designed and many had temples or pagodas situated in them. The weather was really good so we took the opportuntiy of relaxing around the gardens and people watching - getting our own back and generally enjoying the break from city life that we had experienced in Shanghai and Xi’an.
We did venture further out and visited a tea plantation. Tea making is taken very seriously in China - it is known as tea art. The tea plantation had a museum for us to look round and it was interesting to see how all the different teas are made. The only problem was that buying tea is exorbatant. We thought that it would be as cheap as chips but no such luck. Of course being on a budget (or rather saving our money to buy Chairman Mao watches) we didn’t have any tea in China. One person in the hostel was telling us that you shoudn’t buy tea from the licensed tea sellers and buy it from the black market as it is loads cheaper - unfortunately we never found those illusive black market tea sellers.
Once again in Hangzhou we failed miserably to find anywhere decent to eat. The first night we were there we went to a restaurant in which the waitress wouldn’t let us order anything that we wanted and we ended up with what I can only describe as pork scratchings and pig bones in a sweet and sour sauce and a beautifully cooked fish. The only problem was eating the fish with chopsticks was a Herculean task that neither Karen or myself were up to. On the final night we found a restaurant with pictures on the menu and this was heaven - we could finally see what we were ordering and as a result we ate like kings!
From Hangzhou we headed for Shanghai. We went on the bullet train from Hangzhou. It didn’t go as fast as we thought it would but it was more like an aeroplane than a train and now that Karen is officially a train spotter many photos were taken!