Today was our first full day in China. The overwhelming thing about the whole experience was cold. It just wasn't warm anywhere. We woke up in the hotel room cold. I did manage to get a pretty warm shower, but it wasn't hot. The hotel was OK although the bathroom smelled pretty bad it did have a flushing loo, shower and sink - all of which were luxury compared to many Indian hotels. Ruby came in at 11.00 just as Vincent was finishing his shower; it was much nicer to be able to choose layers of clothes than hurriedly throw them on like yesterday. We put on almost all the clothes we had brought with us then went to have lunch. Ruby took us to a little Chinese restaurant just down the road from the hotel so we didn't have far to go in the cold, we thought. Sadly it seems that the Chinese don't feel the cold. As we noticed last night in the bus station when they left all the, apparently perfectly functioning, doors open - the restaurant had no heating besides the heat of the kitchen and people constantly left the door open. We asked Ruby to find us something vegetarian, assuming most of the Chinese people were still vaguely Buddhists we thought veggie would be an easy option. Also not true. There was pretty much nothing on the menu that was veggie. We asked if there were courses and Ruby suggested a soup and then noodles. Vincent chose a mushroom soup and I had seaweed and egg. What Ruby forgot to tell us was that in China you share your food, we had ordered enough soup to feed a small army then we still had a bowl of noodles to come at the end! The food was delicious however, and hot so we sat and chatted to Ruby for ages and she phoned a friend of hers to help her with her English. Actually her English was fine and she is studying it at university. We went outside to look for a taxi to take us to the Humble Administrators Garden, but they were all full, so we decided to take the Chinese version of an autorickshaw, the peddle rickshaw. The 3 of us squeezed in me and Vincent at the back and Ruby practically on our laps. After only a few minutes we realised our mistake, it may be a cheap way to ride and slightly faster than walking but it was absolutely freezing! Ruby being a fashion conscious girl was wearing a pair of skin tight jean and high heels with no socks, she was almost frozen by the time we got there. Also we both felt bad because the man peddling our rickshaw looks at least 50 possibly 60 and Vincent said maybe he should peddle and the driver should sit in the back with us.About 100m away from where we were going Ruby suddenly shouted what I assume was 'stop!' in Chinese and he driver ground to a halt. That seems to be the norm round here, if you ask a taxi to 'stop please' no matter how calmly you say it they grind squealing to a halt immediately. Ruby had spotted her friend, who turned out to have a rather good name - Nicole!The road leading up to the garden was full of little tourist trap shops but the girls wanted to look in and so we stopped too. The pearls here are amazing and the pearl shop was full of beautiful necklaces with real pearls in blue, pink, nearly black and of course white. They weren't expensive either, just £5 for the one I liked - but we didn't buy anything as China is much more expensive than India and we don't have jobs yet. The oddest thing was the 'lucky dip' where you bought an oyster and opened it yourself at home to see what you got, there was one opened there and it had at least 5 pearls in. The next shop we went to sold weird hot milky stuff in a plastic cup with black beads at the bottom, Vincent tried it but I decided not to! Apparently it wasn't unpleasant but the black beads were chewy bits of rice dropped in it (yuk!).We wandered around the beautiful gardens for about 2 hours with Vincent taking lots of great photographs because my hands were completely numb. To be honest although it was beautiful and had little houses and pagodas full of interesting old Chinese art work, at -5 degrees we just couldn't stay longer and voted to go and find a place to get coffee, or in my case hot chocolate.We had to spend the rest of the day in the hotel covered up by the duvet trying to get warm again, and although we went out later to explore, had pizza for dinner as we were too scared to try and find something we could eat in a Chinese restaurant, then went to meet Paul at the pub we didn't get far and his meeting ran over so we only had one drink then went back to bed - not before I had gone in every shop I could find until I found a hot water bottle J even if it was the smallest hot water bottle known to man (later found out that it was a hand bag bottle than you use to keep your hands warm during the day and keep in your handbag)