Suzhou/Shanghai

All right, for me, it's Sunday morning, so I'm going to have to backtrack a bit. Depending on my memory, this could be a long post. Are you settled? For the first thing, this hotel is driving me bonkers. There wasn't a safe in our room, to begin with and when we went to check at the front desk, they patently didn't believe us. But they sent up someone from housekeeping, who went straight to the closet, opened it, looked down and went "Oh." So they sent up another one. Who steals the SAFE from a hotel? LOL Then the fancy glass showers in all the rooms leak, so you end up with a swamp in the bathroom. And finally the "business center" hours are 8:30am -9pm, the shortest of anywhere we've been and when I came down Friday night at 8:30pm, it was already closed. Aaargh.

But onwards. Friday morning we climbed on the coach for the 1.5 hour drive to the medium sized city of Suzhou (population 8 million!) 2.5 hours we finally got there and all made a beeline for the washroom! Suzhou is looked at be Shanghainese with a big of pity, because it's so small, but Suzhou looks down it's old blood nose, because it's been around for about 2000 years, while Shanghai is a baby at 700 years. Suzhou is famous for a number of things, and I think we saw them all.

We started at Tiger Hill, where the Leaning Tower of China is located. It's a Buddhist pagoda, that is 6m taller and several hundred years older than the tower in Pisa, but not as famous, because its lean is only 2.5 degrees as compared to Pisa's 4 degrees. And they've shored it up now, so no chance of it overtaking it's marble cousin. It's on the top of a hill (more steps!) and most of the hill is comprised of a beautiful park, full of little buildings and ponds and trees.

From there, we went to the Silk Mill and had a completely awful "Western buffet" lunch in their cafeteria. Yuck! Then we went in to the mill to see the Mulberry trees, and the silk worms and the process for unwinding all the silk from the cocoons. It was pretty cool. Then it was time to shop! The first stop was in the room for bedding. People went nuts - some folks bought one or two or three complete bedding sets: comforter, duvet cover, sheets, pillows and bedskirts - all made out of silk. I already have a silk duvet and wasn't really interested in a duvet cover, even if they'd had a pattern I liked. Then we saw a short fashion show and they let us loose on the clothes. It was a total bust - nothing came even close to fitting me, not even close enough to bother tailoring. Sigh. Even the rolls of fabric were disappointing, not my colors and way too many flowers. I'd gone in prepared to break the bank and ended up with a tie -bah!

The next stop was fun though. Suzhou continues the Italian theme by also being the Venice of China. Many moons ago, they Chinese dug a Grand Canal from Beijing to somewhere south of here. It goes through Suzhou and the local people dug smaller canals off it, into the city. We just managed to squish everybody onto one small boat and tour some of the canals. They run down what would be the back alleys at home and it's pretty wild. Everyone's house has steps that run down the back into the water. There isn't space to tie up a boat there, so they just look like steps into nowhere. The boat guides were great too - not great English, but very friendly and happy and excited to be showing us stuff. Much different from some of the bored folks and a huge improvement on "Hello Lady, come look at the "whatever", you buy, cheap!" which is what we usually hear. LOL

After another 2.5 hour drive back into the city, we had dinner at a floating restaurant on the river. Chinese this time, but pretty disappointing as well. Unfortunately, it seems to be one of those places that depends of the novelty of the setting and has let the quality of the food drop. By the time we got home, the business center was closed, so no blog, sorry.

Yesterday, we started out by walking the Bund, the strip which began as all the foreign concessonaries and is now the "wall street" of Shanghai. Then we stopped at the Jade Buddha temple here in Shanghai; one of the few temples in the city. Our local guide here, Tony, would seem to be a Buddhist and became a bit more reserved and formal in the temple, which was funny, because normally he is very lively and amusing. From the temple, we slogged through traffic to a formerly private garden which became public when the republic was formed. It was very beautiful and I took lots of pictures, don't worry.

We stopped for lunch and I got my chance to continue my survey of international fast food. Stuart is going to gag and spit, but I ate at the McDonald's. I've eaten there in Singapore and Hawaii too, just because I'm curious how "american" food translates. It turns out that Chinese McDonald's is pretty much exactly the same as at home. Which is funny, because it wasn't in the other places. Don't worry, Stuart, I've brushed my teeth really well!

The rest of the afternoon was spent shopping in the old temple district and on Nanxing Road. That was kind of disappointing actually; we didn't see anything we hadn't already seen everywhere else. I'd planned to get my "knock-offs" here, but it turns out the Shanghai is much more expensive for those than anywhere else, so I guess I missed my chance.

We were all pretty tired by the time we headed off for dinner. Fortunately, it was Thai and turned out to be quite yummy. After dinner, we went to the theater to see the Acrobatic Show. I'm running out of time, so I can't go in to details, but it was spectacular. You'll have to ask me in person to find out how.

Anyway, today we get on the plane for the ride home, and I can't wait to see what goes wrong. Talk to you all when we're back in a similar time zone.
Cheers!