First official day in Suzhou, yesterday didn’t count. Today was like some culture bomb, went to gardens and museums. More on that later.
Woke up at 7 for breakfast. I was expecting some awesome buffet breakfast, but it was kinda disappointing. The food was ridiculously oily, more oily than the KFC chicken I buy from the KFC near my house.
I couldn’t stand it and went back to pass out everything. Damned food.
Went out afterwards. Wanted to buy train tickets to Hangzhou but the ticketing office was closed. Well, I’ll have to leave the hotel earlier tomorrow.
We went to take a bus to visit the Humble Garden. We weren’t really sure where to alight but luckily some housewives on the bus overheard us and offered their help to us. So kind, these people. If only Singaporeans were so kind. D:
Bought tickets at the ticketing office to get into the Humble Garden. A tour guide there offered to take us for 80 RMB ($16). My parents thought that getting a tour guide would be better than walking around not knowing what we were seeing, so we had the tour guide lead us.
Okay, photos come now.
This was some rock that was supposed to be some sort of “welcoming rock”. Didn’t really listen to the tour guide, was busy taking photos, so I didn’t catch on what she said. :P
Random scenery photo that I took. It’s not very good, is it.
This’ some rock that looked like a turtle. Can’t see it? Too bad for you.
Another scenery photo. There’s so much scenery, even in winter.
I was looking at the dude on top of the roof sweeping off the leaves that was falling in winter, and I was thinking, hey, isn’t that dangerous, falling from the roof can easily cause a bone to break off. I guess he’s an expert (at sweeping leaves off roofs?), so he’s probably in no danger.
What was I thinking?
This here is a well used in the ancient times. Right now you can’t really draw out the water cause…there’s no pail or anything, but there’s still water in there.
There was this rock in a room that could produce music when hit. It was pretty interesting, but the range of music produced was kinda limited (obviously).
Ignore the person behind the rock. Just a person blocking my shot. D:
And this is a really old tree. With that big trunk in the middle apparently hollow.
If you thought these were wooden, well they aren’t. They’re real mandarin ducks. The patterns on them really look like paint, eh.
These are tinted windows. They might seem nothing special now, but during those times, tinted glass was really rare, plus the Chinese used paper instead of glass for windows at that time. So it’s quite special, this set of windows. Apparently the owner spent a remarkable sum of money and got someone to import it from overseas.
And another scenery photo! I took it ’cause I thought it looked really beautiful. Winter photos are soooo nice.
These are yellow bamboos, the light and shadows kinda made it look more brown than yellow, but trust me, they’re yellow bamboos.
I’m not in the picture, by the way. -.-
And this is another well.
After that we went to eat lunch at some family restaurant while the tour guide went to walk around. The fried beef rice there was awesome, still rather oily, but tasted really good with the pepper.
After lunch we went to the Suzhou Museum nearby with the tour guide. Entrance to the museum was free but we had to put our bags in for scanning. Which went fine except…
They didn’t allow sweet drinks inside the museum. And we had one whole big 1 litre bottle of iced lemon tea with us. And I drank up almost 650ml of that.
No photos during the museum visit cause of various reasons, being respectful to the artifacts was one of them. They still looked great, though.
My stomach started feeling queasy halfway. Probably because of oily breakfast and drinking so much sweet drinks in one go. D:
We finished touring the museum and walked a distance to a small silk factory. It was in some alley and…it wasn’t really that impressive.
Paid the tour guide 100 RMB (SGD $20) afterwards and she left us.
Went to Guan Qian Jie to shop. It was this big street full of shopping areas.
Stopped by macdonald’s to have mcflurry, it was cheaper than Singapore’s one. I heard a variety of music being played in Macdonald’s. Heard English, Chinese and even Japanese! Damn, I wish Singapore’s macdonald’s played Jap music too. D:
There were many places to shop there. Of course, there’s this…
Okay...Metro? LOL.
I wonder if that’s to avoid copyright infringement or just a plain spelling mistake. :/
There were quite some places to shop, but there were little things of interest.
Saw a bookshop and wanted to get Japanese books, but sadly I couldn’t get my hands on any. I thought there might be light novels or manga, but there weren’t any. Saw lots of Jap textbooks though, but I didn’t get them ’cause they were all in Chinese. Bleh, I don’t like the idea of reading a Chinese/Jap textbook…
Had dinner at Da Niang dumplings again! I love their slogan: Dumplings for China, Da Niang dumplings for the world (ftw)! I was LOL-ing at their sign. xD
Wanted to take a bus back to the hotel afterwards but sadly we missed the last bus. So we had to walk around and find another bus number.
Walked for quite a distance, I think we almost walked back to the hotel. Luckily, we found a bus stop with buses that could take us back to the hotel.
And so we finally got back to the hotel. Had a cup of matcha cup tea. These cup teas are awesome, I swear.
Two more days before we go to Hangzhou. I wonder what we’ll do tomorrow.
It’s just a little bit of culture.
