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A late wake-up call
(7.30) and departure at 9.00 for the Lu Gardens.
The gardens are close to "China Town",
a restored bit of the old city almost exclusively
for tourists.
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The gardens were
lovely, but a bit too full of other tourists for
our liking! |
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area, including the zig-zag bridge
looked too contrived. Chris &
Sue had their camera stolen near the
bridge after putting it down for only
a minute while paying for something
in a shop.
A man approached us and invited us
to visit the antiques market. We politely
refused, but later found the market
ourselves quite by accident. The articles
for sale were fascinating and we are
quite taken with a beautiful, life-like
banana made out of ivory. (not very
PC!) We may well have bought a few
things, given some time on our own
to decide, but unfortunately the man
from the zig-zag bridge arrived, recognized
us, assumed that we had plenty of
money to spend and wouln't leave us
alone. We left via the nearest exit,
somewhat disappointed. |
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| This hard-sell
approach was becoming a feature of most of
our attempts at shopping and we wished somebody
would tell these traders that they could probably
do much better by being less assertive. |
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The obligatory
factory visit followed; this time a jade carving
factory, where workers were not wearing any masks
and there was a fine dust everywhere! Lunch was
held in the same complex - a Mongolian barbecue.
At this point, a few people had stomach upsets.
Much concern was being expressed by most people
about everyone else's bowel movements. |
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Some free time
available before the boat ride, so
we made an unscheduled visit to an
old colonial house in the old French
concession where arts & crafts
students now study. We watched, fascinated,
as a lady demonstrated the making
of a doll out of dough - applied to
a stick and decorated with facial
features and head scarf. A man then
gave us another demonstration, this
time of paper cutting. He created
a rabbit, a positive and a negative
template in minutes and the standard
of workmanship was excellent. A "quick"
shop followed. On leaving, we saw
a group of people apparently cutting
the grass by hand! We then heard that
Simon's tummy had got better, however
Chris had become unwell. |
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| We drove to the Bund for our afternoon
boat ride along the river. We noticed that most of
the tree trunks in Shanghai were wrapped in rope.
We were told that this was to protect them from insects. |
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We arrived at the
boat just in time for the 3.15 departure. Zhou was
not amused when we ignored her instruction to sit
downstairs and all went upstairs, where we all found
seats, despite being told that it was "full".
The views from the river were quite stunning and
looked quite different from last night when we saw
them all lit up. After cruising down the river as
far as the huge new bridge, we turned and went back
upstream to the point where we had embarked. |
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We then drove to the railway station,
where Lizzie and Zhou lead us to
the "soft seat" waiting
room. We had about half an hour
to wait for our train.
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Sue found the massage chairs, which
she made use of, to our general amusement.
(2 yuan gave about 10 minutes of chair
quivering which Sue rated as rather
disappointing).
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Our double decker
train left at 5.30 for Suzhou and
we bade goodbye to a rather sour-faced
Zhou. We learned later that she was
furious for only getting a tip for
one day. She thought she should have
got two days' worth (and she is probably
right). Tipping on this holiday is
all done according to Kuoni standards.
We each gave Lizzie 25 pounds at the
start of the holiday, which was meant
to cover all tips to guides, porters,
bribes etc.
Left: Geoff and Ros had become firm
friends by this stage of the trip!
(A shared love of shopping perhaps?) |
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After an hour on
the train, which was very comfortable, we were met
by the local guide, Pan, at Suzhou station. She
had a trainee called Cindy with her and we were
told to practice our colloquial English on her.
We soon found that she could barely cope with standard
English, but she is very sweet nonetheless. |
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A twenty minute coach ride took
us to the Bamboo Grove Hotel. Our
cases hadn't arrived, so we went
to the bar for a happy hour G&T.
Dinner was at 7.45 in the hotel
restaurant.
The live music ws excellent, a trio
playing a Chinese zither and flute,
but they had to give up because
almost nobody was taking any notice
of them. The meal was very good,
Bruce's bowels are still fine, Geoff's
bowels are fine. We must remember
to show visible concern for everybody
else's tomorrow. Everything is right
with the world and we have an early
night... (cont'd)
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