Day two in hangzhou, and it was time to cycle round the lake. Now Jen and I had realized we were getting very short on funds after seemingly breezing through our cash on the first ten days of our trip on three square restaurant or hostel meals a day, beers and coffees whenever we wanted them and so on. Last night we ate a meal of two steamed buns for dinner as they were ¥2 each, and breakfast today was the same.

So we walked the route down tourist street towards the lame, trying to figure out how we rented these bikes that were locked in various stations throughout. Hangzhou does this thing where it has multiple bike points all over, you swipe your card which releases a bike, and you can drive it around leaving it wherever you want at any of the points. It's free for the first hour of any use, then it charges you ¥30 an hour after that. Brilliant scheme. What we didn't realise is that you first have to pay a ¥300 deposit then put money on a card. Hmmmm, we have no money. Screw it, well take a stroll around.

The lake is bloody massive. Very pretty, but it's a five hour walk around, and that's with taking shortcuts along the way. The first couple of hours were fine, we passed shops and street performers that drew a crowd as they sang (which sounded terrible to me, but maybe traditional?) through tinny speakers accompanied by ethnic musicians on their pieced together instruments. We had a coffee by the lake in an upscale restaurant and it was a beautiful warm sunny day.

Jenny wore flip flops, that she had t worn before, thinking it would be fine for cycling. Three hours in, she was in some serious pain, quite funny to me as she was walking a little like she had piles to try to self manage the pain.

A few wrong turns, very long stretches of paths, and photographs either taken of us as we were walking by, some discreetly, some blatant, some people coming straight up to us and flinging their arms around us as they posed for their friends holding the camera, we got back to our start point five hours later and made the walk back to the hostel, via a steamed bun dinner stop off, where Jenny bathed her feet in savlon and applied plasters.

It had been a log old day, we were supposed to go to Suzhou the next day, but we couldn't face another stop off in a massive city before heading to shanghai, so we decided to go straight to shanghai and spend two days there and rest up. It had been an intense travelling schedule and we were shattered.

That sorted we settled down for a beer in the courtyard which quickly turned into card based drinking games and a plan to go out and find a reggae bar we'd read about on the web. A reggae bar in deepest china? Surely a winner!

We headed out and got a taxi to where we thought it was. It wasn't. We walked up and down this km stretch of road several times, stopping once in a bar for a beer before moving on (meeting a couple of Gap Yah student types, conservative Brits who Jen invited to join us!!).

A couple more laps and a stop of to ask some Chinese restaurant staff (who had no idea what we were talking about, despite Jenny's shouts of 'bob marley' and doing a reggae dance) and the same again with a group of German tourists, and the same again with a. Sweet Chinese man who tried to help us, including asking local security guards for us, as a result Jenny flung her arms around him in thanks. God I love drunk Jenny. We headed back up the road to the old captain bar.

It wasn't reggae. I don't know what it was, but it was busy and there was a bands equipment set up on stage so we thought we'd stay. Then on came china's version on n-sync. Terrible but quite funny I bopped along to their tunes, even earning a nod, point and wink from the singer. It was time to go. Jenny tried the same techniques in asking where the reggae bar is, this time including a hand drawn picture of bob marley to ask the bemused bar man where this bar was. He couldn't help.

They had wifi, I thought I knew where it was, I had the map! But after another 30 mins walk we still couldn't find it. Balls.

We were defeated so got a taxi, after a few refused to take us, and headed back to the hostel. Hungry, tired and a little tipsy, we crashed in bed.