Advertisement
Published: February 13th 2007
Sorry for the long delay in blog entries! I haven't really had much to write about lately, plus I've been busy at work so not really anytime to do anything exciting. It's currently winter school which means I get hardly any time off, I'm currently on day 7 of a 10 day stretch with no breaks. It doesn't suck as much as it sounds because the hours are very regular, I only teach 2 classes a day and I'm finished by 3:15 in the afternoon, which suits me really nicely. Sometimes I get the mornings off because I've finished 2 courses lately. And this morning was the second morning I've just watched a film with my class, so it's not all that bad.
The week before last I took full advantage of the huge amounts of money I seem to not be spending and got 2 massages in one week. I'm starting to get hooked on them now, and they're becomming quite an interesting experience. I've heard of certain massage establishments offering "Happy Endings", which I shall just leave up to your imagination. And I honestly think I've been to some of these establishments (if not every massage place in
China offers these), because I have recieved some interesting massages. The first I went to had a rather attractive girl giving me a massage which was nice, not only that but she really knew how to give a massage. I found her subtly sliding her slightly down my trousers every so often...Which I really didn't understand the point of, because she didn't come close to offering a happy ending! Nor did it contribute anything to the massage. Also it was so cold in that room my feet actually froze and it took a few hours for feeling to fully return to them! The second place I went to was just plain annoying, the girl insisted on asking me loads of questions in chinese (I made the mistake of letting her know I speak a bit of chinese) and she really didn't know how to give a massage. On top of that she was massaging areas that just shouldn't be massaged (like bones).
I'm soon gonna go off to Shanghai and Nanjing for a few days holiday, I intend to find many cheap massage establishments and become an expert on massages!
I've learnt a few lessons about speaking Chinese
lately. There are some situations where you just plain don't speak chinese. Like when I went out the other night with a few friends and we went to a streetside BBQ vendor (there are plenty of these around). We were waiting behind a drunk chinese business man who started speaking to us in Chinese. I responded in chinese as best I could and soon he had us sitting down at a table with him, buying us drinks and kebabs and not listening to me when I was saying I don't drink alcohol. We tried to leave him after a while and thanked him but he was so drunk he insisted we stayed and got rather physical about it. We later ran off to another bar and he followed us in there and kept on asking me to translate "I'm very happy to know all of you tonight!" which was very polite of him, but when he says it about 50 times and literally drags me across the bar I don't consider it very polite. We decided to just ignore him and he eventually, after a lot of hassle left us alone.
Anyway, on to the main topic of todays
post. Suzhou! I took advantage of my last day off work before my long 10 day stretch and went to visit this pleasant city. I almost didn't go, I was so tired from a long night out! Oh yes, that's another story. Aussie Jo came back to town, he brought with him his friend Aaron who'd come visiting to finish off his 7 month travels through asia, and American John tagged along. We went to a few bars and then decided to go to a disco that we realised on that night has never ever let us down. The other 3 decided they needed to be drunk before they got in there as they didn't want to spend lots and lots of money on the discos over priced drinks, so they bought small bottles of EVIL EVIL Baijiu for 4 kwai each! These are 56% alcohol and will certainly get anyone drunk. So they smuggled them in and poured them into the cheap cokes they purchased in there. I don't need alcohol and so whilst they were finishing off their drinks in the funky room upstairs with a view of the stage, I vanished and went to the dance floor
where a few minutes later the other guys saw me up on stage dancing away! A little while later the other guys came along and we were all dancing and it was great fun! We tried going up to quite a few girls and asking them to dance with us but they seemed to be rather shy...And quite uninterested! The night continued with us dancing, and then there was a slow dance part where most people sat down. The other guys encouraged me to go up to the DJ and ask him to put out an annoucement saying that 4 white Laowai's wanted 4 beautiful girls to dance with! We thought we were the bee's knees, it's quite easy to think that in China, especially when you are the only foreigners in a disco. In theory girls should have flocked to us, but no. We just embarrassed ourselves (which we seemed to have done alot of this week) and came out seeming fairly arrogant. However, the night got better. The fast music came back on and we made a little spot on the dance floor for us to dance on! We were dancing away and decided to make a circle
and every so often we took turns to dance in the middle. Eventually the circle got bigger and some strange drunk chinese guys decided to join us. I went and danced in the middle of it, I did the splits (quite a few times), a little flip up thingy...I even got really stupid and went down and did like 3 press ups which seemed impress the chinese a lot and got many cheers! Then I just continued to dance and just completely spazzed out and jumped around like crazy and the circle got pretty big! Yet again I had so many people surrounding me on the dance floor just watching me, either being amazed at how great I was or how stupid I was, either way they were quite entertained and I was having a lot of fun! Of course, in hindsight, the real reason they were probably looking at me was because, when I got out of the disco, Aaron pointed out to me that something had happened to my jeans. I looked down and guessed that during the few times when I did the splits, I ripped a huge hole in my jeans in a rather embarrassing area!
And I only noticed about 20 minutes after we got out of the disco! That was a really fun night!
Anyway, back to Suzhou. Basically, I've heard a lot about how beautiful the gardens in Suzhou are, and how "The Sky has heaven, and Earth has Suzhou and Huangzhou (another "pretty" chinese city). So I went to Suzhou, I got the bus there, I arrived and realised I didn't have a clue where I was! So I got in a taxi and asked the driver to take me to the most beautiful garden in Suzhou. A few minutes later I arrived at the "Humble Administrators Garden" and my god, it was a hot day in Suzhou! The first hot day I'd experienced in about 3 months, and the weather still hasn't become fully hot yet (it seems to be deciding whether it should be hot or cold right now, but that day it was hot). I strolled through the touristy gift shops and then made my way to the ticket gates. It cost 50 kuai for a ticket, which in my opinion is a rip off. I then got approached by a girl asking if I needed a tour
One big jug
About the same height as me, and there was a German tourist standing quite near it, which was interesting.guide and I said no and proceeded to walk into the garden. I very stupidly walked back towards the shops (as I had no idea where I was going) and the tourist guide pointed me in the right direction probably hoping I'd come to my senses and admit that I am too stupid to not need a guide. I still refused her anyway! I made my way into the garden and it was very peaceful. Just the sound of birds, people walking through it with peaceful curiosity. Occasionally you'd walk past a water feature and hear the nice sound of water running. There were pretty green trees, interesting rock and cave features, steps leading up to little Chinese hut type thingies. There was a Bonsai garden which was only slightly cool, it just had lots of small and big Bonsai trees in rows which weren't very attractice layed out the way they were. Infact my overall impression of the garden was that it had a bit more character than the ones in Zhangjiagang, but it was nothing special what so ever. Very peaceful and fairly pretty, but not worth 50 kuai, nor worth going out of my way for. It
just seems like any other garden you'd come across in any odd Chinese city. Also it wasn't that big. So my advice to anyone reading this and contemplating going to the Suzhou gardens, only go there if you happen to be in Suzhou, they're not that great. What was great though was the shopping! Maybe not as great as Shanghai, or maybe just as great as Shanghai, I don't really think I'm one to judge this, but I had a great time wandering through the DVD shops. I've never seen so many boxsets of popular TV shows for less than 5 pounds! I got seasons 1-3 of Family Guy, I saw heaps of brand new movies for 7 kuai! Ahhh bliss! I only bought Family Guy though, decided that I'm gonna wait until I go to Nanjing before I buy anymore as I hear Nanjing is good for DVDs.
Well I don't have many other stories to tell right now. I'm leaving my current job fairly soon and I can't wait. Although to be fair I have to say that this school has looked after me very well, and had one or two opportunities to screw me over which
many schools would have taken but not this one. I am very greatful to them for how nice they've been to me lately. But I still can't wait to leave as I am so bored of Zhangjiagang! I've already ranted a few times about how crap it is so I shan't rant again. I'm currently trying to work out where I'm going to travel to, Guangzhou or Hong Kong, and when I'm going to get there, how I'm going to get there etc. That'll be another story in a few updates time. Next update should be about my trips to Shanghai and Nanjing! See ya lata folks!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.096s; Tpl: 0.017s; cc: 8; qc: 49; dbt: 0.06s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
Huw "Forfeit Frisbee" Timbrell
non-member comment
Sounds Like Ur Having Fun
Yo Whats Poppin Player...havent spoken to u in like 10minutes...sounds like ur having fun...i may try and get out there in october if i can but thats a bit of a risk being my 3rd year and all...but thats a risk i may be willing to take!!!! and ill definately bring a frisbee ;) ur favourite black (white) man huw