Hangzhou

Sept 5th - Sept 6th (Day 185 - Day 186)

From Shanghai we took the high speed train to the small lake city of Hangzhou. Just to clarify small in Chinese terms still means a population of 6 million! The train took us through the countryside outside Shanghai at 300KM per hour. The chinese are very pleased with their new highspeed rail network and all the trains have speedometers in the corner of each carriage to let you know just how fast you are going...a nice touch.

Hangzhou itself is famed for its scenic lake and is considered to be one of the most beautiful cities in China. On our taxi ride from the station this wasn´t particularly evident at first as it just seemed like another large sprailling urban chinese city, but as we got closer to our hostel on the south side of the lake we began to see the more scenic side of the city with the vast lake giving way to wooded hills.

The hostel itself was great, with really helpful staff and a good room. They also had a lovely dog which looked like a small white wolf, Tina was particularly taken with the dog and I think she was very tempted to try and fit him in her backpack, this was until she realised she wouldn´t have room with all the handbags she had bought during the trip....ouch!

The reception has mentioned that they were right next to a school and that it can get a little noisy in the morning. Tina and I didn´t really think a few kids chatting would be a problem and had no issue staying in the hostel. As it turned out a few kids chatting wasn´t the issue.....it was the 3 hours of marching band music blaring out from the school at a ridiculous volume from 5am, whilst the kids were marching around the play ground. As it turns out this was impossible to sleep through. Not only was it stopping us sleep it was also a little disorientating to hear ´Auld Lang syne´ at 6am in the morning in the middle of August in the middle of China.

For our first full day in Hangzhou we decided to rent some bikes from the hostel and go cycling around the lake. We set off cycling around the lake, enjoying the amazing scenary and the views of the lake. The lake is surrounded by hills and pagodas which makes for a lovely setting, whilst on the lake itself there are a number of small islands with inlets and walkways and bridges which can be explored.

Our morning bike ride was going very well untill we heard some loud blaring music behind us, very similar to the music from an icecream van in the UK. We turned around just in time to see a huge golf cart full of chinese tourists whizz past us at great speed, almost knocking us off the path. As first we thought this might be a stray runaway vehicle....but unfortunately not, we soon realised this was in fact the main way Chinese tourists choose to see the lake. This is nice for them but a downside for everyone else walking or cycling. Since it meant that you had to be constantly alert incase you were run over every 10 minutes by a speeding golf cart blaring out horrific music. This slightly took the edge of the amazing views, peace and quiet.

Despite the golf cart dangers we thoroughly enjoyed our day cycling around the lake, stopping here and there to take in the views and take the odd jumping photo or two. Later in the afternoon we stopped at a local shop as we had to stock up on supplies as we were heading to yellow mountain the following day. We crammed our bike baskets with pot noodles and bottles of water and then headed back to the hostel for an early night as we had an very early start in the morning.

xxx