25th March - Hangzhou

We woke up after a lovely sleep, took a long hot shower in the comedy bathroom (blinds closed), helped ourselves to the free goodies of a comb and some toothbrushes and went back to our hostel.

I was still feeling crappy so enjoyed some time in the sun in their beautiful garden and had some more tasty vegetables before pulling myself together to go into town on the proper bus.

The bus turned up as full as the other buses we'd seen yesterday. We weren't in any rush to get anywhere and so stood back to watch the mayhem. Despite the bus already looking stuffed, at least another 20 people crammed on to it. A couple of those who were unsuccessful had to push the last person hanging off the bus inside, as someone else pulled shut the automatic doors. We quickly gave up and took a walk down the the road to see what we coud find instead.

We were so glad we did because we found a beautiful park instead. It was still crammed with people but also had loads of gorgeous flowers and ways to wander. A lot of it was quite fake but it was still a green and sunny day so we just meandered about and tried to see all the pretend 'attractions', including a man-made waterfall and a 'windmill'. There also seemed to be brides posing in beauty spots everywhere we turned and though some of them looked very traditional, some were more unconventional. Matt surmised that many of them were fake and just playing dress-up for the camera but that still seemed odd to me because they were all in couples. I can't imagine many blokes agreeing to dress up like they were getting married when they weren't. I'd like to hear the women approach the subject if that's the case.

We found a path to hike up the mountain and get away from the crowds. I was feeling like a bit of exercise might actually do me good but I wasn't counting on quite so many steps. Eventually we got so far it was impossible to turn back and the way signs did have little motivational paragraphs estolling the virtues of keeping fit so we kept going. The view at the top was great and you could see the cluster of lakes and the city beyond. I might leave the description to the photos though because I'm running out of ways to describe nice things.

We were stopped by a guy to look at some 'Golden fish' in a kind of muddy well but I just felt sorry for them. I was so grateful that someone had spoken to us for once that I offered to hold him by ankles so he could fish them out, but he wasn't having any of it so that was the end of a lovely new friendship.

The walk back down was ok but since Matt had seen a disused toboggan run through the trees, he just didn't appreciate it the same.

We stopped by the waterfall to slag it off and to watch people posing but it was quite nice really. And we saw a bloke do a brilliant slip, fall and run off pretending that it didn't hurt routine so that was a bonus too.
I was starting to droop a little so we took the park route as far back to the hostel as we could and walked the rest of the way down the crazy road of bonkers Chinese tourists and insane coach drivers.