Suzhou to Hangzhou

Day 3 began with the requisite bowl of steaming noodles and the bustling cacophony of sound from the ecletic mix of rusty rickshaws and gleeming Mercedes drifting through the window.
First stop of the day - the Tiger Hill pagoda, just out of Suzhou. Carrying on the pseudo-Italian theme the pagoda itself is pretty much the Leaning Tower of the East. Perched atop a terraced hill of ascending gardens and courtyards, the 900 year old structure tilts at an alarming degree. As with most ou stops, our first goal was to find the most roundabout tortuous ascent possible in a bid to ditch the ubiquitous Chinese tour parties.

A brief word on these tour parties - they usually consist of 40 or 50 Chinese tourists, each proudly wearing their official coulour-coded tour cap, being herded along by one or two guides screaming into a megaphone. Needless to say, when 5 or 6 of these hordes converge the results aren't pretty... Imagine 300 Mei's jabbering away... :)

Anyway, once free of he masses, Tiger Hill proved to be well worth the climb with superb vistas over the spralling metropolis of Suzhou. After stopping briefly to chat Super 12 with a Queenslander (small world), we set off for the main destination - the tourist mecca of Hangzhou.
Another hot and sticky nightmare journey through the impossibly crowded streets ended with the inevitable. We crashed. Well to be more accurate the bump itself was no more than a scratch, but the ensuing argument with the taxi driver involved rapidly escallated into an hour long armaggedon complete with frantic hand-waving and livid swearing. After an hour leaping around in the 30 degree heat and traffic fumes, sanity prevailed and a truce was called with the face saving transfer of the princely sum on 30 Yuan ($5 kiwi).

Thus it was with much relief that we finally arrived in Hangzhou. Probably the best description of the city is Queenstown-esque. Perched on a big lake the city is all polish abd class - an oasis in the industrialised wasteland that sprawls over so much of the country.

The big lake is dotted with islands, each bearing some form of garden or pagoda. That evening we hopped on a cruise to a couple of the island, most of which were mercifully free of fellow tourists and we were able to watch the sun sink over the misty water-lilly dotted lakes.