The area of Shanghai was under a typhoon alert for the past few days and extended a few more days. Early Sunday morning, we took the subway to the train station for Suzhou. The town was bubbling with tourists. Although we had been in Suzhou five years ago, we barely recognized the downtown. We struggled a bit to find a hotel. After settling in, we embarked on a city bus (#69 to be precise – we’ll remember) which was said to pass close to Jenny’s parent’s cemetery. Well, it was a very very long bus ride standing up with the locals with their fruit baskets. Once we got off at our bus stop, we learned that the cemetery we were looking for was much further way. Suzhou is home of many cemeteries. We started to walk but end up arranging for some local transportation to and from the cemetery. We did manage to find Jenny’s parents. Back in our hotel, we rested a bit before going in search of restaurant under the rain.
The next morning, we bought train tickets for Wuxi scheduled for later in the afternoon. After a late breakfast/early lunch, we went to visit the “Garden of Master of the Nets”. It is nice to appreciate one of the few things that doesn’t appear to change in China as these Chinese gardens (some other are probably template and monasteries).
In the afternoon, we took the train for Wuxi where it rained heavily upon our arrival. We had a very long taxi ride in search of an hotel. We finally found a room at our faithful “Home Inns” hotel chain. We got a executive suite, which was a least twice as large as our usual room size. We went out, under the rain, for supper at a “steak house” but did not try out their house specialty.
On Wednesday morning, we were scheduled to join a tour group to visit Tai lake but it was raining again heavily so we opted to skip the tour. Later in the morning, the rain slowed down and we ventured to Tai lake and did our own exploration. The entrance fee was fairly expensive for the time we spent there. It rained on and off during our visit. For supper, we went to some relatives of Jenny – an old aunt.
Although our hotel room was great, we experienced some very frustrating time with access to Hotmail. It seems we had no problem accessing various Internet websites but for some obscure reason we could not access our Hotmail accounts. After googling this type of problem, we managed to get some limited access to our Hotmail but failed to be able to reply to any messages. Strangely, access to Hotmail in Shanghai at the same time was working perfectly. ISP issue?
Thursday morning we had a late breakfast. Later, we went to the train station for our one hour ride to Shanghai. In the afternoon, we visited a few local shopping mall in an attempt to buy some karaoke and DVD but without any luck.