Suzhou

Last week a large group of students (both foreign and Chinese) went on a day trip to the city of Suzhou. It is about two hours west of Shanghai, so I had to be up and ready to go at 6 am. I did not know that time existed over here as well. After I threw back two cups of Nescafe coffee (tastes like dirt), I trudged out into the pouring rain to go on this journey. After all the people were rounded up we headed out to Suzhou. This trip was planned by Fred and Tom, and they did a very good job. 

Tours in China are lead by a professional tour guide, and ours was all about business, she must have known everything about everywhere we went because she did not stop speaking for 11 hours. The only problem was that she only spoke in Chinese, so the international students tuned her out pretty quickly. Suzhou is famous for its gardens, and for the fact that it is about 60% water. It had stopped raining, but it was still pretty cool, so it made sense to keep moving. The gardens were really neat, but the rocks were very slippery, and I almost bailed on more than one occasion. That would have been epic, if I was able to break my other ankle while here.

Soon we went to a silk factory, which was amazing to see, but it was also a little bit creepy to watch cocoons getting unravelled, so they could make fabric. But the process was really neat.

I walked through the gift shop promising myself I would not buy anything,  and who knew I actually have will power.

The next stop was lunch which could be a whole post on its own. Lets just say tour guides probably get a cut from the restaurants that they take you to. We ended up eating Mc Donald's in a temple, which probably wasn't the PC thing to do but we were so hungry.

The next night the whole crew went out to some pretty Club Love, and let me state that this bar had the worst service of any club I have ever been to in the world. We waited for over an hour for drinks, and when we got them they were so watered down, mormons wouldn't have even gotten a buzz.

The next night the boys all decide it was time to go KTVing (karaoke). We decide it would be smart to drink a bottle of vodka beforehand as we would only buy one bottle there. Well we drank better than we sang, but I still think that the frenchman has a duty to sing Celine Dion. 

That is all that is really new here, I am off to listen to a CFA speak about the financial crisis, and how it is effecting this part of the world so that should be quite interesting, and after that we might go grab a burger at the Blue Frog.

Keep on Rockin........

Derek