Day 5 - Hangzhou

Another day, another hotel.
Hangzhou is a very beautiful city, surrounded by mountains and built around the West Lake. We headed up the mountains to the famous Dragon Well Tea Spring. The tea grown in this region has been cultivated for hundreds of years, however it is not just the quality of the leaf that is famous, but the well that the spring water is drawn from. We saw some tea there that was approximately AU$200 for a half kilo! Today was so hot that it was more comfortable to just drive around and see the scenery from air-conditioned comfort. We stayed the night in a more resort-style hotel, and as we were all a bit under the weather from the heat, we had a relaxing night in. The only problem with that came when we were ready to order some room service and didn't want to bother Giselle to translate for us, so we thought we'd give it a go ourselves. John began by trying to order but got the impression that the restaurant was closed and no room service was possible. It was only 9.30pm so I thought that was a little odd. We knew something was being sent up but weren't sure what. A few minutes later, our cook-in-pot 2 minute noodles arrived. I decided to have a go myself. I pointed to the menu in the hotel booklet, pointed to the phone then pointed to the girl. I thought she had the message right that I wanted her to order what I pointed to when she picked up the phone, but I realised she was just checking the room service phone number. I kept pointing to her, the phone and the menu, but that didn't seem to help. I flicked through my trusty Lonely Planet guide. They only have a handful of phrases included there but I found "I want to buy..." so I pointed to the phrase, the menu, the phone and the girl....and voila! About half an hour later our dinner arrived. Of course, what I didn't really know was exactly what I was ordering. There were some green vegetables. Great. A wafer type of thing. That was OK. And a huge crock pot. When I lifted the lid, there was a whole duck, beak and all, simmering in soup. Confronting at first, but extremely delicious. I recommend blind ordering...but only occassionally!