Trip to Suzhou

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Trip to Suzhou – China’s Venice

When I found out that I would be transferring in May I knew I had to get my ass into gear and do some exploring outside of Hangzhou (the trip to Hong Kong does not count) Its April now and although I’ve barely seen everything that Hangzhou has to offer – to be fair some of the so called tourist spots don’t really interest me, I knew I needed a break and get out of the city.

One of the onboarders that I met in December works in Shanghai and I knew she was itching to do some exploring to as she has yet to escape Shanghai. On my to do list having looked through my handy Eye Witness Travel China book were Suzhou, Ningbo and Wenzhen. They were simply chosen because they were all a simple train journey away and didn’t require that much thinking about buses etc which if your Chinese writing isn't up to scratch can be a whole crazy experience.

So I got in contact with Jackie and we started planning our trip. April seemed the best time because we had the same weekends off Wednesday and Thursday and it seemed a good idea for me because I’d be leaving in May and therefore could fit the trips in just before. Booking me train tickets in the office near my apartment was an experience to start off with. I had written down the dates and times that I wanted the trains on, there and back. The woman in the booth somehow got confused and I was explaining to her in Chinese that I wanted it morning on the 9^th and evening on the 10^th. She ended up calling a colleague over to ask me in English to which she repeated the exact Chinese I had used 2 seconds before. The women in the booth still didn’t understand and the 4 women behind me in the queue seemingly just as frustrated as me then shouted the exact same Chinese at her again and yay she finally understood. Such an ordeal for two train tickets haha but they were booked and that was that. A few weeks before getting the tickets I had booked us into a hostel that was recommended by Rebecca and another FT from Wulin called Natalie (a fellow Brit that I have great conversations with) and others also on the Hangzhou Expat website. One night in the Suzhou Water Town Hostel was only £5 each.

Now work has been kind of quiet recently in the terms of me getting to teach lessons with people being sick, but in March I was asked to cover Alex and James holidays dotted around in April and May which I happily agreed to do. There was plenty of time for me to get some more lesson planning done and get myself ready for Guangzhou. Until.... The Wulin Disney English centre in Hangzhou (where I did Phonics winter camp back in February) asked me to cover some of their FT’s holidays in April, which overall meant me being there from the Sunday 6^th April all the way to Monday 28^th when I would then start covering Alex’s holiday from Tuesday 29^th ahhhh!!!!!!! Crazy sudden work over load. Of course I happily accepted and looked forward to the challenge. What’s this got to do with Suzhou you are probably asking right now? Well I had accepted the cover work originally because their LLD had said that it was a Wednesday Thursday weekend like my normal schedule. When I eventually got the schedule through via email with all the classes it turned out to be a Tuesday/Wednesday schedule that would require my first day covering a whole timetable to start on Thursday 10^th April when I was supposed to be exploring Suzhou. So I had to send an apologetic email to the LLD and explain the situation, whilst also discussing the fact that my Fridays were empty of classes and asking whether I should just stay at Xiaoshan to do my planning where I could be in my own classes and not using up a computer in Wulin when they are already desperately short without me being there. Thankfully it was all sorted J

I’m going to write the next section more like a diary entry because it just makes more sense that way.

Wednesday 9^th April:

I got up bright and early this morning ready to catch my 9:15 train to Suzhou. I had texted Jackie last night to say I was armed with lots of information about places to see and how to get there and that I had printed it all off at work so we wouldn’t have to worry about getting lots of stretching our Chinese skills to far. I’d also reminded her last night not to forget her passport because she’d need it.

I arrived at the train station with my backpack filled to the brim with snacks for the journey and other bits and bobs. It was only last night that I realised that the train was one of the slow sleeper trains and it would take just over 3 hours to reach Suzhou so I wanted to be prepared and also didn’t want to have to go shopping for food whilst in Suzhou. Jackie had said previously that she would just buy her ticket at the station because it was only 30mins for her to get there and she couldn’t find a ticket office like the one I went to, to get the tickets. So the plan was to meet her there at 1pm at the main Suzhou railway station. I got a text part way through my journey from Jackie asking if she really needed her passport as she’d left it in her apartment. But of course when you’re an expat in china you need your passport for everything including picking up your train tickets and checking into the hostel. She then had to make her way back to her apartment to pick it up. I had arrived in Suzhou when I got a text telling me she had arrived back at the train station in Shanghai and her train was in 30mins. That meant a 1hr wait for me. So I decided to go check into the hostel.

Suzhou Water Town hostel is ideally located in Old Suzhou (called this because its within the old city walls that surround the canals that intertwine throughout the city). The hostel is nestled in between some larger buildings down a very Chinese side street. The buildings are those you think about when you think Chinese buildings. The staff spoke good English and I was shown to the room. We had booked a twin bed and we got a triple room with a bunk bed and a single bed next to the window. Jackie had previously expressed her free of hostels having watched the horror film Hostel. So naturally I took the bed by the window – first one in and all haha. So yeah back to being ideally located. Suzhou currently has 2 metro lines. One of which has a stop not far from the hostel, so its easy to get to from the train stations. It’s also pretty much bang in the middle of the old city which makes getting to the tourist spots really easy to reach as the tourist buses pass on the main road near the hostel too.

I made my way back to the train station in the hope that Jackie would arrive around the same time. It was getting close to 4pm then and I was getting slightly concerned we wouldn’t be able to fit all the places I wanted to see into the time we had left. My train the next day wasn’t until 7pm but still. Turns out I was right to be concerned because Jackie missed the Suzhou stop and luckily managed to get off at the next down Wuxi and had to hop on a train coming back this way. Trains in China are quite hard to get used to especially if its your first time on one. Although pretty similar to flying with set seat numbers etc the only real issue is the lack of English announcements either verbally or on the scrolling screen. You really have to keep track of where you’ve gone through and the estimated time of arrival to make sure you get off at the right place. So Jackie arrived around 5pm the exact time that all the tourist spots closed for the day. So I decided that it would be a fun way to see the city if we hopped onto one of the buses that left the train station and would take us to the Hostel, that way we could still see the city.

We hopped off the bus near to the hostel and decided to do some sightseeing around the area since we wouldn’t get too lost when it started to get dark or be to far away for when we wanted to get back to the hostel. Checking the map we saw a park and Twin Pagodas not far away as well as the ‘Walking street’. We had a good natter catching up with what we’d both been up to since last seeing each other in December and popped into a few shops along the way. It never ceases to shock me when I find some amazing Chinglish (Chinese translated English) gifts and products in the shops and one shop in particular had us both in stitches. I picked up a Winnie the Pooh shower cap and a birthday present for Dan in that shop. We found the park and decided to join in with the walking group of Chinese people doing circuits around the park. Although we kept taking shortcuts and giggling when we took over people continuously. We also got distracted by all the random ‘emergency ......’ signs that were dotted around, and then suddenly became very aware that this would be a sh*t emergency shelter as it was so exposed unless there was something underground, which in China is highly likely. We never did figure out where the ‘emergency airfield’ was actually located since we were surrounded by trees and tall buildings.

Wandering around the streets we stopped a few times to pose for photos, a Chinese woman stopped and asked to look at the photos. WEIRD!!!! We stopped and had dinner and the Suzhou delicacy McDonalds (hahaha!!!!) and then went to the walking street (shops where no cars can drive through) and headed back to the hostel to enjoy a cold beer and check Jackie in. Bless her she was very apologetic but I think China is having a strange affect on me because stuff like that I just brush off now, its not worth the stress and worry over here, theres a million other things that could be worse after all. Back home I would have been really angry having put all the effort into booking stuff, researching stuff and making an itinerary but we figured that we would get up early (7am) when all the places opened from and hit as many as we could since we weren’t heading home till 7pm.

The beds were the usually Chinese style where the mattresses are probably best described as nonexistent and thinner than a camping sleeping mat. I ended up folding the quilt in half width ways just big enough for me to lie sideways on to have some sort of cushioning and since the weather has been warm lately I had the sheet as my cover. I also commandeered the spare pillow from the bottom bunk bed (yes Jackie took the top bunk J ) and Jackie took the spare quilt to lie on as well.

Thursday 10^th

True to our word we both woke up early ready to FINALLY explore Suzhou. I had decided that we should start off in the South and then work our way North. My train station for getting home wasn’t the one I arrived in and was further north so it made sense, especially since there was a great concentration of sights the further up the Old city you went.

1. Pan Men Scenic Area

Pan Men Scenic Area can be found at the most South Eastern part of Old Suzhou and this means you can actually climb the old city wall at this point too. We hoped onto a bus and made our way there. Within the Scenic area is a huge Pagoda but unfortunately it was cordoned off with scaffolding put up around it so we didn’t get to take a look at Suzhou from above. Still it was a lovely gardened area to visit with lots of windy paths and cool buildings.

I had asked Jackie to take a picture of me along the waters edge with a massive building in the background. By the time we both made it down to a space I had been asked to take a photo for a group of Chinese tourists and then asked to pose for some photos also. I think there must have been about 6 different versions of the same photo within the first 10mins of us being there. But it was good fun too.

We went on a gondola underneath the old drawbridge and had a lovely old Chinese man sing to us throughout. He even let us pose with his hat and steer the boat for a bit too.

After the boat we climbed the city wall where they had the usual dress up traditional costumes. We managed to haggle the price and get them to take a photo with both of us dressed up. Jackie really wanted the warrior outfit so I went for the Chinese princess. The dress was literally placed over my arms in place and the kimono part wrapped around me. The bit that really made the outfit was when they adorned my head with the head piece with all the dangly parts to it. Jackie rode the horse and I did my best to look like a princess in distress. Was a great photo and a great experience too.

2. Humble Administrator’s garden

Next stop on the tour was the Humble Administrators garden. Listed as a World Heritage site of something it was 1 of 4 in China. The second one we visited later. Not very often you have two amazing places in one city.

The garden itself was down a Chinese walking street. We went and saw some of the stalls surrounding the complex first and then brought our tickets. The place was huge, split into different sections according to the original guy’s beliefs or something. With amazing little islands within the ponds and grottos dotted around.

It was a very busy day I guess there but it wasn't to packed to be squeezed in and was nice to take in all the sights and different sections.



3. Lingering Garden

The last stop of the day was number 2 of 4 World Hertitage sights. We took a Rickshaw across the city. We hadn’t realised how far it actually was according to the map and haggled with the guy. About half way across we both felt super guilty about the guy cycling all the way with both of us in the back. We ended up paying him an extra 10 and giving him 2 of the better bottles of water from the shop opposite the entrance to the Garden.

By that time I was getting quite tired and also annoyed with so many people taking pictures without actually asking. So when a group of students asked Jackie for photos I kept walking. We made our way to a Pavilion at the top of a grotto out of the sun for a bit when I group of girls came up and asked. At that point it was either embrace the moment or be really rude. I went for the first option which resulted in another 3 groups of students pushing up into the pavilion to have their photos with us. Big groups, girl groups, boy groups and individual. Most have been at least 20mins of none stop photo taking but it was good fun because when we wondered across them in the rest of the garden they would be polite and smile to us. We were probably really famous on wechat/QQ that day.

It was actually smaller than we expected but still it was a nice place with lots of Bonsai trees dotted around.

4. International Tourism fayre/ Suzhou city wall

We still had a few hours to kill before my train so we walked from the Lingering Gardens to the nearest metro (they have 2 metro lines eeekk!!!!) and headed towards a the stop next to the river on the other side of the old city.

When we came out I was a little disoriented and the map wasn't very happy so we took the wrong road at first but got some pineapple on the way. Think it’s something like the first time I've willingly eaten pineapple. They carve it into spirals here so it was like being a big kid. Defiantly going to purchase some more if I ever see it on the streets.

After finding our way to the river we found a giant wall similar to that seen at the train station. On the other side of the wall was an international tourism fayre. We had a wonder round, there was so much random food stalls the smell was overwhelming, lots of clothes, household gadgets and a hold section on outdoor decorations. Was an interesting experience to say the least.



We then headed to the train station to have some dinner and make sure Jackie got a train back ok and once she was on the train I rode the metro to the North train station to catch mine. I’m so glad I paid the extra money to get the G train back. Was a nice luxury indeed.

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Photos

One of the many groups
Just one of the photos that were taken in just this one spot. We'd been there 10mins