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Published: December 20th 2006
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I finally went to Suzou last week! Although I have actually been to Suzou before I didn't really get to see any of the city due to us going to the theme park instead. This time I got to see the city.
I think Suzou is a very nice city, I could tell it has a lot of character and a lot of history. The city itself is a few thousand years old I think and is the silk capital of China or something like that. It's very obvious it has a lot to do with silk as there were so many clothes shops selling stupidly cheap silky items of clothing!
We were intending to go and see the gardens in Suzou and thought we'd try our luck at finding them. We also thought we'd try our luck at finding a Pizza hut using directions given to us from an old teacher. Turns out the directions were wrong and we ended up going to a really fancy hot pot restaurant. Hot pots are cool, there is basically a massive metal bowl in the middle of your table full of water and underneath it some kinda burner that boils the
water. Then you order lots of food and they bring it to your table and you whack it all in the "hot pot", let it cook, then eat it! It's quite good fun actually, perhaps not the best food I've ever had, but it's very interesting and quite a cultural experience I guess.
After the hot pot we decided to continue our quest to find the gardens. We strolled and strolled and strolled and got a little bit of a feel for the city. It kinda reminded me of fairly old cities or big towns in England, with cobbled or pebbled roads, fairly short buildings, fresh air and a certain feel to it. The shopping road was very nice, it was fairly large but felt very small. It was a lot like an old English city actually.
After we walked through the shopping street we came across an area with yellow temple like buildings, surrounding these buildings were market stalls selling the coolest items. I proceeded to haggle some items down to great prices, I got some 30 kwai nunchuckas knocked down to 10 kwai! The nunchuckas are great fun! I got other things for a lot less
aswell but cannot reveal the identity of those items until they are received by mummy and daddy and Natalie after christmas! Another thing I got for myself was a funky Chinese style red silk jacket with Dragons embroided on. I can't believe I've forgotten to take pictures of myself wearing it, I shall do that for the next post!
Through the market we came across lots of cool products, like Chinese swords of awful quality, lots and lots and lots of silk clothing, pictures, chopsticks, blah blah blah, blah blah blah, blah blah blah and watches! I'd spent more money than I was happy with spending by the time I got to the watch stall but I think I will definetely buy some watches the next time I go there! Nothing beats a 20Kwai rolex! The more expensive fake watches for about 100kwai were of better quality, I am certain that if I had bought a 20kwai rolex it would have stopped working 20 minutes later.
We walked some more, and then it was time to get the bus. We'd failed to see the beautiful gardens of Suzou! But we had a really good shopping trip! And we
The main shopping road in Suzou
KFC is everywhere in this country from what I have seen, note the KFC signs in the background shall return to Suzou just for the gardens, that will be next month aswell as another city called Wuxi which I have heard both good and bad things about.
In other news, I have had a cold for the majority of the week, which sucks. I guess that serves me right for going out lots and lots! I also went out to a party last night that Aussie Jo held and that was quite cool. I got told by more girls that my chinese was good which was good. And I got a girls phone number whilst some of my fellow teachers were making fun of me from the otherside of the room. Then we went to a nightclub and I think I danced with a prostitute! It was a really fun night! A few of us ended up going back to Jo's place and then Jo and I decided that at 3 in the morning we still wanted to go out partying and so went out to find more things to do. Unfortunately this city falls asleep after about 1am so we were left very disappointed! But it was still a very fun night. I'm planning on having
another fun night tonight, although I have to be out practicing Tai Chi at 7:30am tomorrow with my Tai Chi teacher so that's going to be fun!
Oh I've also uploaded some pictures of some of my really cute students from a class I teach in a school called Dongxiao. Dongxiao has a very bad reputation as a school, unsuprisingly so as the kids are all insane. However after a few months teaching with them some of the children in another class I teach there have accepted me and I really love them to bits. So enjoy some pictures of some cute kids striking poses for my camera!
And another thing, thank you very much Huw for going to the trouble of uploading lots and lots of Nintendo DS games for me to waste away my life with! I've only played one of the ones you've uploaded and there's like 22 more! I am loving my Nintendo DS to bits and am trying to make sure I don't waste away my life with it which is very difficult. I'm also thinking of buying a PSP soon but I want to save a bit of money before I do.
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nice
haha sounds (and looks) really great Jamie! good work with the haggling, although people tend to only discover their real haggling potential after a few months, so it'll become second nature eventually. I dunno, there are good points and bad points. sometimes i'm in somerfield and i'm 3p short in cash, and I get so tempted to just try my luck.. lol. Then again, when i'm in China sometimes i get told a crazy price and you just have to stare at them thinking: "200Y? look, we both know i'm gonna walk out of here with that thing for 25Y, maybe 30." Good typo, btw! keep them coming! so erm... where does a sheep and a teletubby feature in anything? don't tell me even the inanimate toys started asking to pose for photographs with you?! argh... I better get back to work. post the next entry soon so i don't work too hard! D