Honglou International Hotel Tonglu

... definitely were not as cheap as everything else since there was no bargaining involved in purchasing items from these shops. Right next to this area, was some very low rent areas in China. This little houses had kitchens that were 2.5 feet by 1.5 feet. Not kidding, we measured it. The houses didn't have bathrooms and they all shared public bathrooms. Many were sitting outside playing some really intricate ...

... games and movies, and I was having a ton of fun. So much fun that I didn't realize our plane never took off. We sat on the tarmac for 3 hours without moving. We got served our food and drinks and watched a whole movie before I knew we didn't move. They announced that bad weather was the problem. As long as these games and movies kept coming, I was set! Finally we took off and the flight was uneventful and about an hour and a half. We land in Beijing and get in a taxi. Matt had ...

... is that there are lorries that whiz down the streets every afternoon, spraying out water to clean the roads with the "Happy Birthday" tune as a musical accompaniment. I also had a haircut here, which was an interesting experience - for 5 pounds you get an excrutiating hair wash, during which time you check your scalp to see if it's still attached, followed by a gruelling body massage (you begin to wonder if you have offended them, and perhaps you should look up ...

... I didn't see it at it's best. Also, being as famous as it is, it is correspondingly crowded even in the middle of winter. Crowds in China means not just people, but all the fairground that come with them - food stalls every 200 yards, electric golf carts to ferry lazy people around, tacky ways of wasting extortionate amounts of money, etc. And crowds mean I get stared at. I know I don't exactly look like a local, and ...

... ne sono parecchie solo pedonali. Ma il bello sta attorno al lago. Le dimensioni esatte non lo so, oggi ci abbiamo fatto il giro saranno stati circa un 8 Km ma non so esattamente. Quello che so e che attorno a tutto il lago c e un parco! E anche questo e molto curato e ben tenuto. Hangzhou non sara famosa come Pechino o Shanghai ma di ...

... on earth there is Hangzhou. We have two nights in Hangzhou and tomorrow we are going to Hong Kong. Well that's the plan at the moment but we are having trouble with the arrangements. Hangzhou is beautiful. It's situated beside a lake and the scenery is unreal ...

... to the top. To me, the cathedral was just another cathedral, regardless of its condition and age but Micah complained that it having been built two weeks last Thursday was too modern. We wandered around and found the observatory which was supposed to have been pretty ancient. It wasn't. It was 100 years old or so and not the 1000s I had been led to believe. Still, it was moderately interesting. After that we went in search of a patch of grass to ...

... and climb up to his stomach. We afterwards visited Tai O, a small fishing village lying on the edge of the island. This second windy bus journey almost finished me off, and I felt I had to concentrate on not fainting! The village was sufficiently interesting to help bring me back to life. The majority of the houses seemed to be constructed out of thin sheets of iron, flimsily joined together, and placed on stilts over the water. They looked like they wouldn't ...

... a stroll around the large but unspectacular Botanical Gardens. The highlight of the day was definitely the night market. These are common in China, but yesterday's was the first I have eaten in. There are numerous stalls selling a wide variety of weird and wonderful foods. The idea is to hop from stall to stall trying out the snacks. There was a stall specialising in ducks - you could choose from duck's head, duck's neck, or duck's feet. On one stall a man was frying ...

... in the future weather. We had dinner in one of Hangzhou's most famous restaurants, although I had better eel in a Japanese reastaurant here on my first night. My oddest restaurant experience was last night, however. I decided to go to an Italian restaurant. Whatever I chose on the menu, they said "mei you" (not have), until the waiter finally said, "Do you like Chinese food?". On giving an affirmative answer, he produced a Chinese menu, and I had some noodles!