Pre Beijing Update

Rich is over my shoulder, so this blog is more from the both of us than just me. We know! We haven't updated in a while, but we've been busy! :P And it was kind of nice being off the radar.


Let's see...last time I wrote we were in Hangzhou at a very nice little hostel. It is there that I received my bag - a great relief! We walked around the famous West Lake and visited the Ling Yin buddhist monastary. It was my first view of buddhist grotto-style carvings. We have some really cool pictures but haven't gotten a CD made, yet. We also saw some monks...talking on their cell phones! I thought that was pretty funny. From Hangzhou we bussed to Huang Shan.


"Shan" means "mountain." We stayed in a little town at the base and met the near-famous Mr. Cheng, a tiny little man with a strange accent to his self-taught English. He helped us plan our trip up the mountain and got us a hookup at a 3-star hotel for only $17. The mountain was gorgeous, and it better be because we climbed thousands of steps. It was a clear day and the scenes were truly breathtaking. Even though hoards of tourists ruined the ambiance at times, I'm glad that we went. I wimped out at the end, though, and we took a cable car part way down :] From Huang Shan we took 12 hours of busses to Suzhou.


We had a bus transfer at Nanjing and were very close to being ripped off. A mini bus driver offered to take us to a different, better bus station to finish our trip to Suzhou for 148 yuan. When we arrived and were ON the bus, he said the 148 was for ONE person, though we made it very clear that the price was for two. Luckily, we only keep small bills in Richard's wallet and the larger bills in our money belt so after much yelling and trying to get off the bus Rich was able to open it up and say "Hey, I don't HAVE the money!" We ended up paying 180.


In Suzhou we stayed in a hostel not in Lonely Planet but the same chain as our previous hostels. It was my favorite room and one of my favorite cities. The hostel would have been perfect had the bar/cafe not been under construction. We were in a very authentic old style neighborhood - people walked around in their PJs in the morning and little kids ran around...they even had a red light "district"...just one "hairdresser" sitting by the window of her shop watching TV in a nighty, turning her red light on at dusk. One day we rented bikes and rode to the Silk Museum. Apparently Suzhou is known for its silk. Afterwards we rode to the Humble Administrator's Garden, one of the best known and well kept Chinese gardens. They were beautiful despite how packed they were. Again, I wish I had the photo CD made to show you! We also took a day trip to Tongli.


Tongli is really only known for its old town which you have to pay to enter! It was a bit touristy, but very nice. The products for sale were surprisingly not as inflated as we would have thought for such a tourist attraction. There is the famous sex museum and gardens.


Our last evening in Suzhou before the night train we ate at Papa Johns. In China it's an awesome sit-down restaurant. We had an island pizza that was superb. Shortly after we boarded a hard sleeper train for a 14 hour ride to Beijing.