I felt more awake at 6am than I have done for a long time! It seemed that the old people, who live in the first three floors of our hostel, did too. They were all out in the garden stretching and waving their arms around. The Singaporean lady, whose name we still don't know, was waiting for us in reception. She spoke Mandarin, which was very useful, and after we'd hailed the taxi she talked to the driver. I have to say that we must have become quite proficient in train travel recently because we both spotted the train numer and platform at the same time, and started walking towards it, while the lady was still squinting at the giant board. We explained that the only thing we could read were the two numbers, and we were technically guessing and hadn't been wrong so far. At the platform we showed her to her seat, and then found ours.

Halfway through the trip the lady, along with a ticket seller, came along to ask if we wanted discounted entrance tickets to all the attractions. We declined but the lady bought some anyway. When we got off the train, about three hours later, the lady told us she was going with a tour group for the day. We wandered off on our own.

We hadn't decided if we were going to stay overnight, so we checked train times back to Shanghai. There were plenty quite late in the evening and we thought that a long day here would be enough. We bought tickets for the only train with available seats, which left from the East station, and went to enjoy the sunshine. For the half hour of the trip we passed housing blocks that looked brand new. Most of the ones in farmland were made of brick and looked like English farmhouses, just six stories high. Then, as we got closer to the town, they were all tiled in red to look like brick and every one of them had a square turret with a tiled roof and a silver spire with a ball on it. The whole horizon was a misty mass of towers and the clusters of them by the tracks looked like a housing estate of castles. Unfortunately there weren't any close enough to the town for me to take photos of.

We took the bus to a temple and spent a while trying to find it. There was a cable car nearby and a place called 'Peak Flying from Afar'. The cable car wasn't running so we bought entrance tickets to the other place. It was a large park and full of people. There were a lot of paths and caves and grottoes and a big temple (the one we were trying to find) where a mad, meat-eating monk used to live. We walked up a hill to see what was at the top, and there were some big rocks, so we walked down the other side. One of the things I like most about Chinese gardens is that there are normally scores of paths taking different routes to the same place so that you can choose the one you like the look of best and not feel you're missing out on anything. They also seem to want you to explore, and some of the tracks lead to tiny features that you wouldn't see if you weren't investigating.

The park had something called a 'Tumultuous Gully" but I think it had dried up by now. Mikey bought and ice-cream and I had a corn on the cob on a stick that tasted like porridge. Then we went to find the lake. Hangzhou is famous for its West Lake, the one that all other West Lakes in China get their name from. We waited for the bus while a lady either tried to help us or interfere but I suspect it was the latter and we managed to ignore her. The bus took us to the lake and we walked the whole of the length of the causeway running through the middle of it, about two miles. It was really lovely, certainly worth coming out here for. There were paths and little bridges and boat rides and weeping willow trees and grassy verges and cobbled walkways and a view of the water at all times. We stopped to take photos and a group of girls invited Mikey to take a picture of them, and even posed for him but he declined. It was a beautiful late summer's day with a warm wind and the smell of cut grass. About two hundred yards onto the causeway the tour groups stopped it became peaceful and relaxing and almost empty.

From the causeway we walked to an island that had a museum on it and explored a pretty park by accident too. The museum was very nice, and free, which is always good for a musem, because then you don't expect too much and you tend to be pleasantly surprised. Which we were. There were about six rooms and they all had small displays that were easy to follow round without retracing your steps or missing things. It was mostly things that had been dug up in the area: seven thousand year old pottery and some jade axes. There were also displays of historical local crafts like massive, incredibly intricate jade carvings (that Mikey said I couldn't take home), marketry and wood carvings and a whole room of teapots. There was a garden outside with a fake mountain (very popular in China) where large rocks with holes in are concreted together to make tunnels and caves and you can walk through or over it. There was a pond below and a little pagoda on top and several bridges.

By the time we had finished and walked back to the town centre the sun was beginning to set. Men flew kites from the bridges and they were sttunning. There was a string og half a dozen fishes swimming through the sky, trying to escape from the eagle kite that was chasing them.Someone had a hoop-shaped kite too, that span and fluttered. We watched them for a bit.

We had intended to visit the night market before our train took us back but we were presented with a building site and a colourful chipboard wall where the market should have been. We went back to the main pedestrian street to watch the sun set, and it was particularly gorgeous, one of the best I've seen. The water turned lilac and orange too. When it was dark we went across the road to a cafe for supper. I had the best apple pie I've ever bought. Superb. Unfortunately I ordered it for Mikey, so I only had three quarters of it. The waitress saw our train tickets when she brought the bill and told us we'd have to run of we wanted to catch the train. I was slightly tempted to stay in town for the night becasue it was such a pretty place but we caught a taxi to the station. The ticket lady shooed us away at first and then beckoned us back and ran with us to the platform tunnels shouting after us. The train had just arrived. We ran along the platform (don't tell anyone - I don't run!) to our carriage and found our seats in plenty of time: the train left thirty seconds later.

The only interesting thing about the two and a half hour journey back was the tiny cockroachy beetle that crawled along the table and up the walls. The girl opposite me was so terrified that she virtually stood on the seat the whole time. When some one came to mop the floor (by which I mean, drag a dirty mop over a dirtier floor) about three minutes before the train stopped so that the floor would be nice and slippery for people getting off, the poor beetle got squished. That was it!

In the hostel we checked email and Steve, an American guy to whom we'd given out Tokyo Lonely Planet because he was off to Japan in the morning, gave me a necklace to say thank you, which was really sweet of him. And finally, just before bed, there was more to add to the Bank Saga.

A few days ago I tried to reactivate my online banking by phoning Lloyds and answering some security questions. I haven't used that account since April so they were unable to ask me any questions and therefore unable to reactivate the online banking. They said that I should go into my local branch or send my mum. My mum was told that she couldn't sign on my behalf even though I'd informed the bank of her right to do so before we left and they told her I'd have to phone again. So, tonight I thought that I could use the joint account I have with Lloyds to reactivate it because we've been paying the AA from that acount. I phoned. They put me on hold for the first two numbers I tried and said that they'd try to answer my call shortly. I called another number. The lady told me that because my first reactivation had failed, I wasn't allowed to try again. She told me my mum could go into the bank and do it for me. I told her she couldn't. She said my mum could forward the letter to me and I could go into my local branch. I told her I couldn't. I didn't shout or anything. I asked her if I could just transfer some money from one Lloyds acount to the other. She asked me if I was registered for telephone banking. I wasn't. I asked her what it involved. She didn't know. I hung up. There's one more thing to try and then I'll give up. It's not urgent, anyway, it'd just be nice to be able to get to some money occasionally! I HATE Lloyds bank, have done for ten years and one day, when I can escape their evil clutches, I'll thwart them.