China - Suzhou/Shanghai

6 - 9 May '08

After arriving in Suzhou (famous for its gardens), we walked around for a while before taking a gondola boat around the Venice style canals. That evening we soaked up some culture by going to the 'Master of the Nets' show in an intimate garden where we heard various classical Chinese instruments, saw dances and opera. There was only one way to end the night whilst in the company of Aussies - drink! Somehow, we stumbled into an Australian bar where we drank beers & sambucas and challenged the Aussies to table football - but in true English fashion....we lost!

A 2 hour bus ride from Suzhou brought us into cosmopolitan China - Shanghai. The city immediately felt different to those we had seen in our previous 2 days (with its boutiques and skyscrapers), and the rich/poor contrast was a lot more evident (slums bordering modern buildings/apartments). We walked around for several hours taking in the sights and saw an impressive acrobatics show in the evening. So far, most of our meals had consisted of Chinese food and we felt we could deservedly break this habit with Pizza Hut (pizza never tasted so good!)

On our final tour night, in Shanghai, we went for dinner with the rest of the group where we played drinking games (including 'fuzzy duck, ducky fuzz' and 'who is the captain'). We then stumbled our way to the French Concession area where we ended the night with cocktails.

After saying our farewells to the rest of the group (and exchanging email addresses), we boarded our 21 hour train to Hong Kong. Now that we had already experienced hard-sleeper trains, we thought we would treat ourselves to a deluxe soft-sleeper cabin for 2 (for an extra 30 quid each - highly recommended) where we could enjoy the views, our own privacy :) , and our own western style toilet.