From Hangzhou to hangover

After what was once again a surprisingly good night’s sleep on the sleeper train, the group is woken by the family in the carriage next to ours. In China many manners that are common in Britain aren’t a thing here, such as covering one’s face when you cough, not hacking up and spitting in public, closing your mouth when you eat etc. But the two I am missing most this morning are not playing your phone out loud on public transport and not letting your children run wild in public places, both of which the family next to us decide to do at 6am this morning. Unsurprisingly both Tom and I wake up in a little bit of a mood having been hoping to sleep all the way through to our next stop, which we don’t arrive at until almost 9am. Anyway once at Hangzhou we are met by our next guide Tao and head to the hostel for a quick shower and nap to catch up on our missed sleep.

Once we are more refreshed the group meets up in the lobby and start to head out to West Lake. We walk to the bus stop and jump on a crowded bus. We didn't last very long on the bus; the speaker is broken and is making a horrible noise and the bus is packed, so we all jump out and decide to walk the rest of the way. We pass though a park with a pagoda and a pond. The pond is filled with goldfish and turtles, Tao tells us the reason there are so many is that some locals buy them from the market and let them go in the ponds, as their good deeds. Soon we are at the famous West Lake, a fresh water lake surrounded by many parks and home to a few islands and the scenery that is captured on the back of the one Yuan note. After a quick walk around one of the parks we jump on a boat for a quick trip round the lake and pass the famous one yuan island scene. Unfortunately the boat is absolutely packed and Tom and I are unfortunate to sit on the wrong side so are unable to see most of the scenery as we are surrounded by too many people who stand up in front of us for the whole trip. Once off the boat the group decide to hike Jiuyao Mountain. We were supposed to wait for sunset but it is a foggy day and as it is next to the lake we decide to do it straight away. It is a fairly short hike taking about 20 minutes to reach the peak, the viewing area gives a lovely outlook over the West Lake and city. There was another viewing point the other side but it was over grown so was hard to see much with all the shrubbery mixed with the fog. After taking in the views we all head down. Tom and I walk quite a bit quicker than the rest of the group and end up taking a wrong turn and have to google maps our way back to the bus stop we said we would meet up at.

Leifeng Pagoda at West Lake

One bus ride later we are back at the hostel. Rather than heading straight in, Tom and I go for a wander around town. We are hoping to find a mall; we have both been on the look out for deodorant and razors for the last few days and have been unable to find any as of yet, but Tom has done some googling and found a shop that should suit. We set off in search of this shop following Tom’s Google maps, however we soon learn that although Tom has a VPN the fact that China blocks google means that even with the VPN, maps doesn’t work properly. Luckily for us though my Apple maps works even without a VPN so I get us to a local mall where we had great success getting both razors and deodorant, so I headed straight back to the hostel and had a much needed trim and shave, although think I will need a hairdresser sooner rather than later. The rest of the evening was spent chilling and watching Apple TV, one of the only apps that isn’t blocked on my new China SIM card.

Tea at the Tea Plantation

The next day started with a taxi ride to Nine Creeks and the Misty Woods. Although described as a hike this was more of a slow walk on a flat surface. It was however rather pleasant; the area was a lot less busy than West Lake had been yesterday. We walked passed lovely creeks and woodland areas before arriving at mountains cultivated for tea production. The local farmers rent the land from the government to grow the many types of tea that are available here including flower tea, green tea, oolong tea and the less popular here but my favourite, black tea. Tom and I walk ahead of the group and find a tea shop and stop and get some tea and are shortly joined by the others. Our guide Tao puts a photo of Ricardo, Tom and I in the group chat and jokingly asks if any of them have any single daughters for us all. After finishing our tea we head back to the hostel to collect our bags before heading off to the train station for our train to Shanghai.

Once we reach Shanghai we meet David our next guide who takes us for a group meal and orders a set menu for us. The group, especially Tom and I who both don’t eat fish, aren’t overly impressed but I am looking forward to tonight; it is the pub crawl night. Unfortunately it turns out the pub crawl is not on but David gives us the address of an area full of bars and all of us, apart from Erika, head out. When we first get there Ricardo and Paulina are happy to see a bar full of people salsa dancing and I try and convince them to teach me some moves but upon seeing the skills of the local salsa dancers they bow out and don’t want to dance. That is until we reach our next bar; a very busy bar playing popular UK songs. Between us the group gets through two hookah pipes, six litres of sangria and twelve of rum and coke, which may explain why I didn’t get back to our new hostel until 7am. Tom and I stayed until closing, obviously, which was 5am and then after somehow getting separated, I decide to walk back, after all its only 45 minutes. Only problem being is that I get lost for about half an hour and no one is answering their phones. I finally get back to the hostel to find I’ve lost my key but thankfully after 15 minutes of a broken English conversation with the tired receptionist, I get a new key card which I didn’t have to pay for. So I drunkenly clamber into my bed at 7am wondering if I will make my 10:30am Chinese lesson tomorrow!

View from Jiuyao Mountain