It begins in Hangzhou

We flew to Hangzhou within hours of finishing our exam marking and handing in our final grades for our classes. We’d have liked to get train tickets, but with 200 million Chinese people using the trains to get home for Spring Festival they were sold out well in advance.

We arrived at the West Lake Youth Hostel on the South East corner of the famous West Lake. It was 1am, but we were happy to see Frank waiting at the reception to greet us. He was smiling as ever and his english had clearly improved a lot since the last time we saw him in March.

The scenery in Hangzhou was as pretty as ever, but there were about 5 times as many tourists as we’d ever seen. I think this was because the weather was quite mild for winter. The last time we were there in January there was a foot of snow on everything, this time I hardly wore my jacket.

One of the less plesent changes was the onward march of Chinese Development which meant for the first time in 4 visits the lake area had smog from the nearby city. There was a noticable increase in traffic as well.

Without trying to sound too much like an aging hippy reminiscing about how good Thailand was before it was “discovered”, I have to say Hangzhou was better before the massive increase in development and is a lot more relaxed with less tourists around.

Quynh was ill with a stomach bug for a few days, so I spent a lot of time showing Bill (our American teaching colleague and co-traveller) around the sights. I did some shopping too and managed to find clothes that fit me which is quite a task in China.

We enjoyed staying in the West Lake Hostel again, it remains one of our favourite places we’ve stayed in. If anyone is heading that way make sure you look it up.

Now off to Kuala Lumpur for some hot weather.