Our friend met us at the airport and we took a bullet train to a town called Suzhou (pronounced we-have-no-idea). By bullet we mean it went 300 kilometers per hour (186 mph) - which is very fast.
We arrived in Suzhou in the late afternoon, found a hotel (Talia's first time not knowing where she was going to stay when she arrived in a new town), and froze to death. We mean, we were given a room that was so cold that there was no way we were staying the night there. Fortunately, our friend speaks fluent Chinese (for real) and his room was way warmer, so he gave us his room and got a new one for himself. Also, we got extra blankets, just in case, which we totally used.
After really cold weather in Beijing, where the highest was about -2 Celsius (about 30 Fahrenheit) and the lowest -11 C (about 1 degree F), we were looking forward to the "warm" weather in Shanghai, which was supposed to be about 7 C (44F).
Not so in Suzhou where it was just as cold. We we depressed to the point of tears. Not to be ones to surrender to the cold weather, we went out to grab a bit to eat and sight see. Unfortunately, the only sight you can see when it's below zero outside is your body parts falling off.
After grabbing some post-lunch-pre-dinner food, we returned to the hotel. We went out again for dinner, close to the hotel, where we met up with a friend of our friend's as well, and then turned in for the night. We felt bad going to sleep at 9:30 pm, except we got up at 4:20, so we had a good excuse.
As part of our room rate, we got free breakfast with our reservation. Apparently it was cheaper for us to pay the cost of a membership card for the hotel than to just have the room without, so we both got a discount and free breakfast.
By 'free" they must have meant "free of the foods you are used to eating for breakfast." In Asia, breakfast is a regular meal. As such, you can find such breakfast foods as noodles with beef and soup. Even though we've been really good about trying local foods (and beers), we drew the line here, but had a really large portion of toast and jam to make sure we were getting our money's worth. :-)
Suzhou is famous for it's gorgeous Chinese gardens (they're a UNESCO world heritage site), so that's where we went. We went to the Humble Administrator's Gardens (we didn't make that up), which is also known as the Garden of the Unsuccessful Politician (we didn't make that up either), and it was beautiful, even though there weren't really many flowers because of the cold. These gardens are apparently around 700 years old, though parts of it were rebuilt in the last century.
Our next, and final, stop in Suzhou was an awesome restaurant where they had all you can eat meat for 39 RMB, which is just under $6, or 21 shekels. And it was delicious. The tables have a mini grill in the middle and you go to the buffet and take whatever meat (on sticks like kababs) you want and cook it yourself. There's also plenty of vegetables, fruits, and Unidentified Objects. We ate SO much, we were pretty sure that we wouldn't ever eat again. And to tell you the truth, we didn't really had a meal after that for over a day, just a bit here and there.
We had train tickets to get back to Shanghai at 5 pm, so we started trying to get a cab at 4 - the station was very close to our hotel, and we had already checked out, but we needed to pick up our bags. Unfortunately, hailing a cab in Suzhou is about as easy as getting a 3 year old to eat Brussels sprouts (which we just learned is capitalized and has an "S" at the end of Brussels - who knew!) So we missed our train by 20 minutes. We were able to switch our tickets for a later train, though.
We arrived at our friend's apartment in the suburbs of Shanghai, where he has a really awesome apartment. After settling in, we played some games on the X Box Kinect. Basically, it has a camera that can track your movements, and playing a game is actually a physical activity where you aren't touching anything. For example, one of the games is about navigation through water and collecting coins. You need to physically move to get in between hurdles and physically jump to collect coins or get over other hurdles. It is very fun and very tiring.
Even though we could have played for hours, it was time for dinner. We weren't really hungry, but our friend was, plus he wanted to show us this great restaurant by his apartment that has what's called "hot pot." The table has a pot in the middle that's divided into 2 sections, spicy and not spicy, and you order all kinds of meats and veggies of your choice that you drop into the pot to cook. It was really delicious, too, not to mention insanely cheap, though we couldn't really eat a lot cause we were still full from lunch). Originally our friend was going to take us to a karaoke bar after dinner, but we were really tired at this point so we found a great hotel in the center of Shanghai for $20 (including taxes) and went to sleep.
On our third day, we hung out with our friend for a while, and then we all went into the city (about an hour from our friend's place) and checked in to our totally-awesome-for-$20 hotel. The rooms are of course small, but clean and comfortable, which is all that matters, really. After resting a bit, we walked over to the People's Square, which is about a 5 minute walk from our hotel and one of the famous landmarks in Shanghai, and then through a few other areas until we got to Nanjing Road, which is a really awesome pedestrian mall full of great stores and people offering you such classy items such as watches, bags, whores, and drugs.
It was at one of the department stores that we were finally able to find a decent-priced thermos. After braving the incredibly cold weather of Beijing, we decided it would be best if we had a thermos of hot tea or water with us when we are outside to make sure we had an easy and quick way to warm up a bit.
In China, it is known that you should bargain in small shops and stands. However, we did not expect large department stores, sprawled over 7 floors and selling such items as Rolex watches, would also be part of this bargaining process. In the end, we were able to bargain down the price of our thermos from 218 Yuen ($33) to 160 Yuen ($24), which is big for a department store, in our opinion. Anyway, we are now guaranteed hot water for the rest of our trip. Woo hoo!
At the same department store, Talia also bought a pair of fake Ugg boots, that look totally real, for $43 (instead of around $150-200), and they are sooooo warm! Anyway, that should help her a bit in Japan as well.
From Nanjing, we walked all the way down to The Bund, which is probably the most famous area in Shanghai nowadays. On one side (ours) are many old-style European buildings, all lit up, and across the river is the new side of Shanghai, full of sky scrapers, also properly lit up. The are is definitely beautiful. The old architecture vs the new is definitely gorgeous, and our friend said that the entire side of the sky scrapers was built in the last 15 years or so - before that it was just fields, which is pretty amazing.
And that's it for China! Our next update will be about the INCREDIBLE time we've been having in Tokyo. Talk to you soon!
Pics from Shanghai:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=605341&id=906005363&l=5985e2d7f1
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