HAPPY CHINESE NEW YEAR! (Its my year you know...year of the dog-why does that make Liz laugh so much?!) We have been having some dilemas. Most involving transport=lack of, and language=none. As you can see from our ever changing itinery we are not in Vietnam or anywhere close for that matter! Instead we are 2 hours from Shanghai! After a farewell night on the town with Will and his bad influence...having had 1 1/2 hours sleep we dragged ourselves and our backbacks to the train station and arrived 2 hours later here...in Hangzhou. The most beautiful place we have seen yet. Propper chinese! water and huts and stuff! we think its the best place to be for chinese new year, especially since we got to join them for their celebratory dinner last night. We headed off with 'Ken' a chinese American who is sharing our dorm, for a little stroll around the lake....4 HOURS LATER...we still seemed to be hiking our way around the biggest lake in the world. Im sure the view would have been great if it wasnt for the gunpowder haze from the pyromaniacs. We actually saw a 5 year old girl holding a 6 ft long firework (lit & firing!)...Ah well chinese motto- safety last! So...its all change for our plans again. Dispite being proud of ourselves for actually getting some train tickets (like gold dust) through sign language, to a place we actually wanted to go, it turns out we would never be able to get out of there during chinese new year. Being girls with a mission this is not good enough..so off we went for our refund this morning and landed ourselves some plane tickets-rather expensive, but at least they are heading in the right direction- Chinzin or something like that..its near Hong Kong anyway and not spelt anything like that! While we wait for our flights on Weds, we are perfectly happy to be staying in 'the garden youth hostel', situated on the bank of the river, surrounded by authentic buildings and chinese heritage.Its so wonderful we cant describe it with any justice. We are going to get some bikes tomorrow and explore. Hopefully we will escape the shrimp dumpling breakfast tomorrow thankyou Ken..bring on the cornflakes anyday!xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx