Chateau Regency Hotel Service A Suzhou

... with a copy of my itinerary for 11/11 to fly from shanghai to new york city. this is the second time i've given it to the accountant, but i wanted to make sure that everything was ok. this time she looked at the receipt and said this is no good without the boarding pass. i said i haven't taken this flight yet so there would be no boarding pass. she said that i'll have to bring her a new one with a boarding pass.

after several more mins ...

... what's changed? what's remained the same?

lil was telling me that she had a friend in australia that just recently left the states. as a joke, she asked her friend what's changed back home? it's only been a year so how much could have really changed, right?

well her friend tells her that blockbusters don't really exist anymore. like a lot of other stores, they're all closing, and selling their dvds for $1. and you can rent movies at these machines all over the place ...

Today us canadians celebrated Thanksgiving! you must be thinking, "rice on thanksgiving? that's ********" but no my friends we had a TURKEY! And stuffing and potatoes and gravy, oh my god i'm the fullest i've ever been in my life! It was one of the best nights i've had so far actually, I really don't think i've laughed as much as i did tonight since i've gotten here so thats always a plus =). Celebrating thanksgiving with friends is quite ...

A rainy day today due to a typhoon but didn't hinder our day. We visited the Master of the Nets Garden and the Humble Administrator's Garden.
The Humble Administrator's Garden was established in the 16th century by a retired magistrate, Wang Xianchen, and developed over the years as subsequent owners made changes according to the fashion of the day. A 16th century painting shows that originally the garden was less decorative than ...

We leave Shanghai at 9am for Suzhou on the way we visit a water town established about 700 years ago and check out some of the old homes of the wealthy people back then that are surrounded by water canals. We then take a boat ride along the canals.
Had a lovely traditional dinner including a pig hock cooked and marinated in like a soy sauce, it was very nice.
We check into our Suzhou Hotel - Suzhou is about 1 and a half ...

A very sleepy-looking mum managed to find me in a random shop at Pudong airport where I was panicking about not having a clue where to go. We forced ourselves to sit on a bus for 3 hours and finally got to mine in the afternoon. Not wanting to let the jetlag take over, I dragged mum around Pingjiang Road (the pretty bit) and we celebrated the first ...

ever since i've been back in wuxi, i've been hearing a lot about suzhou. only 15 mins away on the fast train and only costing 13 quai, it's a perfect place to go for a day trip.

leah and i decided to go there for my first weekend back. so tues. morning, i boarded the train and was immediately impressed with everything. suzhou was the china i expected to see when i stepped off the plane. clean and idyllic, it's the china you see whenever you're ...

... brought out and set on the burner in the middle of the table, to start warming up. We open our 'goodie bags' -- with the standard wet napkins (to wash your hands before eating), dry napkins, chopsticks, toothpicks (to clean your teeth post-meal), and a bonus: a straw! We laughed a bit at the inclusion of a straw in the goodie bags, as it is common to drink beer with Hot Pot - and beer from a straw just isn't that great. So our raw food was brought ...

... Qin Shi Huangdi, the first emperor, unified China more than 2,000 years ago through the written characters. So the answer to Ian's question is he must learn the characters in order to be fluent in Chinese. He is also learning the pinyin because that is the best way to teach someone to speak and understand Chinese. You learn to speak and understand the oral before you tackle the written characters. There are many dialects in China today and it's to the extent where sometimes ...

... so busy staring at us. When we go shopping, people look into our trolley to see what we buy (makes you a bit self-consious as to whether you're setting a good example) - its just so different to Thailand, where you're pretty much a commodity. Most people are pretty friendly, and heaps want to practice their English on you, but a lot just stare weirdly. Maybe they're ...