Hangzhou and Suzhou

After the bustle of Shanghai, and difficulty with going out to bars there other than the hostel I headed to Hangzhou with some hope of a relaxing experience and some drinks outside of the hostel. This proved to be necessary as, although owned by the same group, this hostel was in contrast to the Shanghai Ming Town, dead in the evenings. However, I had some drinks with people on my birthday (some of whom were English guys working in Suzhou as teachers), and enjoyed walking around the city. Although some of the sights in Hangzhou were very nice, and very easy to get to by public transport, some were grossly overpriced - it is obvious that there are a lot of Chinese tourists here, and a lot of them have a lot of money. 40 Yuan ($6.60ish) is a lot to go up one pagoda. However, on the other side of the lake (over an artificial causeway - very nice to walk over), up a hill, there was located a very beautiful monastery with fantastic views over the city through the recently cleared sky all for only 5 yuan (less than $1).

After a full day sightseeing in Hangzhou it was time to move on to Suzhou - that or die of boredom probably, beautiful place though it was. Jumping on the bus to the bustation to find it going in the wrong direction was a bit disheartening. It taking 1.5 hours (only 20 mins being in the wrong way) to get there was even more so. Getting off the bus to have not a clue where the damn station was was even more so. Finding it was good. It was amusing to see that even Chinese people were looking around wondering where the hell they needed to go to get to the bus station. It seems the city wants to set itself up to encourage people to go with the mini-bus touts who stand around the public bus stop.

For 70 yuan (outrageous price) a 2 hour coach journey got me to Suzhou. A brief taxi ride to the hostel and I was settled in in really quite beautiful surroundings, not only the roads outside (with a canal and restored buildings) but also the hostel itself (also a restored building). Thus far walking around Suzhou has been very nice, and relaxed if a bit odd as a result of appearing quite European with its coffee shops, tea houses, cake stores, river side restaurants and umbrella covered dining tables. Although the 'Garden of the Humble Administrator' [Suzhou is famous for its gardens] was very nice, it was a touch small for the price (70 yuan) and a bit busy, including a large number of tour groups led by microphone wearing guides...I'd happily have thrown them into the artificial ponds. Tonight I'll head to the night market in Suzhou for some cheap (and no doubt delicious) eats. Tomorrow I think I'm going to Tongil to visit the canals and Chinese sex museum - I'm told a much better experience than the one in Shanghai. After one more day in Suzhou I'll hopefully leave for Nanjing, and then on toward Jinan from there - although I've recently discovered that a public holiday canceling all the trains may cause issues with this...damn. Off to sort that out now.