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Arrival in Hangzhou
Our flight was pretty painless, although delayed by around an hour, and we arrived at The Holiday Inn, Hangzhou in the late afternoon/early evening.
The Holiday Inn
Whilst still not quite as good as the room at the Bravo in Guilin, this is the closest we've come to it since then. We're on the 13th floor which provides spectacular views and as soon as we entered the room we noticed the pillows on the bed had silk ribbons on them with a label to let you know which pillow was soft and which was firm! All the other things about the room was of high quality but unfortunately there is no wifi in the room so not sure when I'll get chance to upload blog updates.
Hangzhou
Hangzhou is described as a very wealthy city and it shows. The first car I noticed as we left the airport was a new 4 door Porsche and then as we were driving through the airport gate I saw a lad in his mid 20's in a new Ferrari!
The sky scrapers are nit as tall as those in Beijing but they are very impressive. The Chinese seem to love neon lights and theres lots of buildings covered in them here.
I noticed one that must have been 100 floors high with lights racing up and down and changing colours as they went, it was just like a fairground ride!
Hang Fe
We relaxed for an hour or so then took a taxi in to town to visit the 'Hang Fe' pedestrian area. Essentially this another street market but at one end of the street there is also a square. Once again we saw ladies in the square doing some kind of aerobic/tai chi exercise except this time there were probably nearer 100 as opposed to the 15 or so we saw in Guilin. The Chinese really do seem to have a sense of community. Even though it was nearly 9pm, parents were also in the square enjoying the evening with smaller children and some of the kids were playing together running around cones in what must of been some kind of organized children's entertainment.
The street market had the least aggressive traders we have come across with it feeling much more like a christmas night market in York than a Chinese street market in a busy tourist area. I also got to try some street food here as Hang Fe has a dedicated food alley. Here were maybe 50 traders all looking to sell hungry shoppers there weird and wonderful cuisine. Frogs, chicken feet, duck heads and gizzards, strange and very large wood lice cross prawn looking creatures....... Even I couldn't bring myself to trying some of the weirder stuff. I did however try some fairly safe looking noodles and dumplings whilst there but suffered a bit for it the next day :(
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