The Shilla Suzhou

... talking/arguing/convincing, she finally told me rationale behind it. apparently the accountant thinks that e-tickets/receipts can be used more than once but a boarding pass is only good once.

so i hurried back home, desperate to find any boarding passes. boarding passes are usually the first things i throw away when i'm traveling. when do you ever need it after you travel??? at all the previous places i've worked at, an e-ticket is more ...

... 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 ...

... the garden. The tea was a bit overpriced, but not too much, so I didn't mind it. The view and the building itself made it well worth while. After relaxing a bit we strolled around the rest of the garden. The buildings in the garden were quite spectacular and were built around a lake with a zig-zagging bridge crossing it. One of the buildings which was particularly ...

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 ...

... ease. We then went to a noodle bar and had a bowl of traditional Chinese noodles. We then headed back to the hostel and chilled out with some beers. On the 23rd, we headed to the south of the city. We started with the Twin Pagodas (Suzhou like their Pagodas!) which were pretty cool. We then walked over to the Garden of the Master of Nets, which was tiny compared to the other gardens but it was impressive inside. We continued to walk on ...

... to confusing the cabbies. We started off with a decent Chinese lunch and a gondola tour through the canals of Suzhou, also called the Venice of China. It was quite relaxing and the gondola driver was entertaining us with his songs. Then it was again time for us to explore the city center on our own, again Matt, Gareth, Megan and I started this little adventure ...

... bikes/cars/trucks was quite an adventure. It's too bad we didn't get there earlier because we could have spent a couple more hours there. We tried taking the train back at 8:45pm but the station was again busy. We caught a cab to the bus station but it was closed! We were going to spend the night in town but since it was raining, we decided to hire our taxi driver for the ride back to Shanghai.

... Let me put your minds at ease with some answers in anticipation: 1. Yes - there was Billy Joel. 2. Yes - there was 'A Whole New World' from Aladdin (and how!). I'm sorry Mel - I did feel like I was kind of cheating on you a bit by singing this with someone else - but you'll always be my first... 3. Yes - there was Especially For You. Ha! 4. No - there was no Friday I'm in Love, much to the disappointment of those involved in the night which shall remain ...