Suzhou: A Day Trip

Today, Jessica has a day off, so we took a day trip to Suzhou, a nearby city. Suzhou seems to have a lot to do, so I will probably make another day trip later on. Jess and I were supposed to go to Suzhou and see some of the sights it has, as it is well known as Jiangsu's best attraction (Jiangsu is the province I'm in). Unfortunately, we were in different train cars, as I had to buy the tickets last minute the night before, after getting back from Hangzhou. I was excited to see some of the many things it is known for, but Jessica made a friend on the train, and so we went out with her to the place she was going anyway.

Her friend (we later named her Helen, she didn't have an English name) spoke almost no English, so Jessica spoke to her most of the time, and since my Chinese isn't nearly as good as Jessica's (hey, she did live here for a year), I felt kind of cut off for the day. I'm sure Helen felt the same when Jess and I were chatting on the bus to her mystery attraction. She showed no signs of it though, always smiling, and trying to pay for us in that Chinese hospitality way. I hate that. Why the Chinese insist on paying for everything is beyond me, it makes far more sense to split the bill, especially when they make significantly less money than we do. I make a typical Chinese monthly salary with my tutoring in about a week and a half, and I work about 1/6th of the hours. It's really not necessary.

It turned out that she took us to Suzhou's New District, to an amusement park. I was looking forward to seeing Suzhou's sights, more than just blow money on roller coasters, but it was a fun experience and I didn't want to be the naysayer, so I went with it. It was fun, in the end. The park had one roller coaster, which was really good, quite a few crappy rides, China's largest Merry-Go-Round, and the best bumper cars I've been to yet. The reason I say the bumper cars were so much fun is because in Canada, it's always some crappy ring, and it's jampacked with too many cars, so you just get into a traffic jam, and barely get to move. This was big, open, and only had 9 cars running. We actually got to drive around, get up to decent speeds, and hit each other (which is kind of the point).

We also climbed a big fake, potentially fake (it jutted out of nowhere) mountain. By climbed, I mean we took a skylift up, and climbed a small bit of stairs to the peak. We got a nice view of the city, but the best part was how we got down. We took a hang glider, suspended on a cable. You got to ride the cable the whole way down. It looked a lot faster than what it actually was, but the experience was a lot of fun.

Since the park closed at 5, as does the rest of China, we took off, and tried to find a nice restaurant to take Helen to, since she was a tricky one, and managed to pay for too much of the amusement park rides, as well as the admission. The meal was good, although fairly high maintenance. I say that because there was a lot of shrimp and fish in the meal, and they don't take apart the shrimp, they cook the whole thing, and expect you to chew the shell off, as well as the head, the legs, etc. The fish, as well, still had bones in it. Still, it was good, and I managed to pay for the meal before she had a chance to open her purse.

Since our tickets for the train back to Wuxi didn't depart until 9, and most attractions close at 5 or 6, we just sat in KFC at the train station to kill time. Jessica and Helen taught each other more vocabulary in their appropriate languages, and this is where Jessica named Helen. Once again, the wily Helen managed to buy us ice cream. We then headed back to Wuxi on the bullet train.