21st September 2009 - 23rd September 2009:

Hangzhou is only a two hour train journey from Shanghai so we set off on Monday evening so that we could spend all day Tuesday wandering around the lake.

The train was one of the newer models with extremely comfortable semi-reclining seats and power sockets for the computer and made for a very enjoyable journey - apart from the "human germ" sitting behind Sean who spent the whole time sneezing, splattering and coughing against the back of his chair, yuk!!!

When we got to Hangzhou we once again realised we had committed another school boy error and forgotten to print off the address for the hostel so Sean had to plead with a local hotel staff member to use their computer and get the directions.

We then set-off to find a taxi but for some reason the police were not letting them stop near the station to pick people up. By now it was raining quite heavily so we took the risk of trying to hail a cab before the police had the time to say anything. To save valuable seconds Sean decided to jump in head first SAS style with his backpack still on and therefore spent the entire journey with his face squashed against the window unable to move in any direction.

At this point we should mention that Chinese people are TERRIBLE drivers and the taxi drivers are no better. It seems that the main requirement for passing your test is simply that you can afford to buy a car and that you know how to put the key in the ignition - that's it - forget about signalling, changing lanes correctly or watching out for other vehicles on the road.

In this context the cab ride gave us our first near death experience (we had expected at least to have lasted until a rickety old bus on a dodgy mountain rode in Vietnam before we had to start praying to God) as the taxi was going about 50mph in pouring rain and pitch black darkness when out of nowhere these headlights from a massive coach came speeding towards us from the right requiring a massive swerve from the taxi driver and a fresh pair of clean knickers for Liza!!!

We eventually found our hostel after searching for about 10 minutes and it was only at this point that Sean realised his side of the door was missing a vital component in a door handle. This wouldn't normally pose a problem but due to his earlier exploits he was now pointing in the wrong direction and semi-stuck with a heavy backpack on.

As a result he was forced into attempting to contort his body, like some sort of circus freak trying to escape out of a straight jacket, whilst moving backwards slowly out of a taxi and without falling arse over tit into a big rain puddle - not an easy manoeuvre. Unfortunately Liza wasn't able to assist at this time as she had lost the control of her limbs through laughing so much - its good to know that I can always rely on her in an emergency!!!

The hostel was very cosy and given the weather we decided to sit down with two bowls of chips and watch some movies, Quantom of Solace and Bolt (both highly recommended!!) and then hit the sack.

Unfortunately it rained for pretty much the whole of Tuesday so we only managed to walk around part of the lake for an hour or so and dared not attempt the pedaloes. We did manage to get some really beautiful scenic pictures of the lake so that we could show you just how huge it really was but 'someone' accidentally deleted all the photos from the camera (Handy Tip: if a camera option states "Delete all frames" chose "No" NOT "Yes") so they will have to remain as part of our memories.

However we did stumble across a lovely bar where Sean once again blew the daily budget on some imported pork chops and we stayed there for a few hours playing pool (4 - 0 to Sean if you were wondering!!) and then headed back to the Hostel for another movie session of Monsters vs Aliens and Juno.

It was really disappointing about the weather and the fact we couldn't properly enjoy both Hangzhou and the impressive West Lake as much as they should have been but we had already booked our train to Hong Kong so didn't have the opportunity of staying any longer.