Suzhou, Home of Brit Bars, Red Lights and the Rat

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So. We were on a 15hour, sleeper train to Suzhour. Didn't get much sleep though and was resltess all night. The train seemed to get noiser at night, even with all the snoring. Anyway i caught a few glimpses in the early hours but that was it.

We arrived at Suzhou and had to get a cab to our hotel, in the downtown. We nearly didn't make it. The car was being flung around at 100km/h, playing chicken with lorries and busses and our driver didn't recognise red lights. It was like a Bond car chase. But needless to say, as i am sitting here typing this, we obviously made it alive...just.

Out hotel was grotty, bery grotty but you;ll find out more later...

We went to the Master of Nets Gardens. This was a typical classical chinese style garden, embracing the feng shui. It was amazing. It was beautiful. I'll get a picture on here when i can.

After that we went for a walk round Suzhou. It is descrived as the "Venice of the East". It has a few canals i'll give it that much. So after an hour or so we headed for some food.

We decided that we would sample some of the local night life as we were in the bar district of the town. We were told afterwards it was the red light district and it must be said, it was quite obvious...

We had a few "suggest" from Dragon, our local contact, for bars to visit. We went to one. Now, imagine. Its a dark alleyway, go down the stairs into a dark and dingy room, filled with smoke and a low ceiling. In the far corner is the bar and in front of you are tables of men smoking, playing cards and drinking beer. Imagine its a western and the heros enter the bar and all the men stop what they were doing, even the incredibly bad music in the background stops and they get stared at until they are served their drink...yeh, it was nothing like that. It was upstairs, empty and we could hear the sound of 70's and 80's rock music drifting across...the walls were covered with Brit and Yank posters, there was English Premier league on the TV and Carlsberg is on tap. We ordered two kingfisher and what we got was warm kingfisher. After a few frames of pool we gave up and hit the sack...

....So, its christmas eve. But the song goes the night before christmas, but here is my version.

Twas the night before before christmas and all through the flat, there wasn't a sound just the massive fucking rat!

So i was asleep, you know as you do. And i felt something on my head...something furry...so i turned the light on and watched as the rat ran around our bedroom. Had it not been my room and had it not been a fucking rat, it would have been quite cool. But as it was both these things, it wasn't so great...

I woke Rob, to an outburst of curses. "what the fuck are you doing!!! it's one in the fucking morning".
"Tell Mr RAT that!" I coldly replied.
Naturally i was elected to visit the elequent guy on the reception desk to explain our rather delicate predicament. He gave us the room next door.

"Leave your stuff. Get in the Morning."

"I don't want to leave my stuff with the bloody Rat, i want to take it with me." I thought but was too tired to bother saying. We trapsed to the room next door and after the longest paranoid half hour of my life, i fell asleep until the morning, when we were given complimentary breakfast and didn't have to pay for the mini bar...wish we drunk more...

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