Duvet Day!
Trip Start
Sep 10, 2008
1
57
71
Trip End
Sep 03, 2009
Nanjing,
Jiangsu,
China
Saturday, June 6, 2009
In the evening we had a rather eventful meal in a restaurant, or at least, the journey there was eventful. We got dropped off miles away from where we were supposed to be and I ended up walking to it in the pouring rain. It was actually pretty refreshing it has to be said. One taxi turned up very late and one of our group left her purse in the taxi and then had trouble when trying to cancel her cards. We headed to an ex-pat bar later for a bit of a relax.
As there wasn't much any of us wanted to see in Nanjing, we decided we would have a well-deserved 'day-off', which basically involved us dragging all our duvets into one room and gathering round Suse's laptop to watch DVDs. Whilst eating junk food of course. I know all of you at home will be wondering why anyone would do such a thing when you are travelling on the other side of the world, but really, its days like that you miss!
It was soon time for us to be on the move again, and so we headed to Suzhou (pronounced Sujo and spelt something like that...). Getting into the taxi I managed to get my bag run over by another taxi who decided that there was in fact enough room to squeeze by us if he drove on the pavement. Thankfully, nothing important was damaged, considering that bag had my camera, ipod and phone in, it could have been so much worse! What can I say, I screamed at him to reverse, eventually he understood and did. I screamed at him some more and finally got in our car. He couldn't understand a word I said. I wasn't impressed. He smiled and nodded, presumably wondering what the crazy white person was shouting at. His passengers looked a little confused...
Suzhou turned out to be one of my favorite places in China. An old traditional street ran down the side of a canal. There were models aplenty here on a photoshoot. I couldn't quite work out what was going on, as there were far more photographers than models, all hoarding round them. And then they spotted us. It was paparazzi chaos. They got us all to pose in a group to take pictures, and then we posed with the model. It was a very bizarre experience, especially considering there were quite a lot of foreigners walking up and down the street, not just us. We finally managed to break away and have a look down the street.
The next day we hired bikes to have a look round the city, but not before a few of us had a quick look in the silk-worm museum. I had never really thought about where silk actually came from, although I knew vaguely it came from worms. I didn't quite expect what I was about to come face to face with however, huge bamboo containers filled with hundreds of white caterpillars, audibly munching their way through copious amounts of leaves with a loud chewing noise. What happens next however, may put you off buying silk for a while, as the grubs are left to spin their cocoons. Once finished they are thrown into a bucket of boiling water, and an old-fashioned spinning wheel is used to unravel the cocoon. Never fear, the grubs don't go to waste, you can buy the little fellas roasted at the local market if you are feeling a bit peckish. Needless to say I passed on that one.
Cycling down the back streets was a day I will never forget. It was great just riding down the tiny streets, clearly not really designed for bikes, getting lost, locals pointing the way, saying hello. Big smiles all round. People selling fish and washing clothes on their doorsteps. Feeling like we were riding through people's front gardens, which we pretty much were. And then the huge market we found on the way back, which was basically like all our high street shops rolled into a chaotic but organized group of stalls. Motorbikes drive down the narrow aisles, even in the indoor sections, hundreds more bikes of all shapes and sizes left outside waiting. Most of the bikes are held together precariously with nothing but cellotape.
And so, we had time for one last stop before we hit the big city again. Hangjo is apparently famous for its lake, which was certainly pretty, but the fact it was incredibly smoggy/misty and pouring with rain for most of the time we were there did kind of spoil the effect slightly. The small shop was certainly charming, but less could be said for the restaurants perhaps. You may be familiar with the old - see the lobsters living in a tank and pick which one you want to end up on your plate, but this restaurant took it to the extreme. Not only were there fish and eels, and all manners of creatures, but I think the toads crawling over each other and trying to hop out of the mesh bag they were in made us leave the place rather quickly. Ironically, we realised on exiting the restaurant we eventually chose, that there was a snake in a bowl of water and a live chicken in a bag on the floor right where we had been standing when we came in. Oh well, at least we know it was fresh...
