Suzhou for Dragon Boat Festival

So I must admit that of all the vacations that I have been on in the last couple months, and all of the places that I have traveled to, Suzhou was my least favorite destination. To be honest, I am lucky to have these kinds of experiences while traveling to all these different cities, and I am grateful the opportunities, but I was still rather disappointed. Then again, perhaps it was poor planning on our part.

Earlier in the week, we had thrown around different ideas for a vacation since we had a long weekend for the Dragon Boat Holiday. We did not really decide on anything until the night before, so we decided that we were just going to wake up early on Saturday, pack our bags, head to the train station and buy a ticket to where ever we could.  You may think that it sounds easy enough, but we have never been able to buy train tickets ourselves in the past. We have always had our Chinese assistant do it for us because all of the information is in Chinese. Nonetheless, we packed our bags and headed to the train station with my Chinese survival book and decided that we would just figure it out.

We arrived to the train station and first got in line at the self-service ticket machines. We nearly got through the entire process of buying the tickets before we realized that only local Chinese citizens could use the automatic tellers because we had to have a Chinese ID to verify the tickets (of course it could not have been that easy). After several minutes of wondering around trying to find the actual ticket desk, we stumbled upon the huge crowd of people waiting in line to buy tickets. Once we made it to the counter, it was a breeze… we picked a place to go, gave our passports, paid  41¥ and boarded the train twenty minutes later.

We ended up in Suzhou. Only about a thirty minute fast-train ride away, Suzhou is famous for its beautiful gardens, temples and water towns. Getting there was the easy part, but once we arrived, it turned into a nightmare. As soon as we got off the train, I bought a map. We did not have a place to stay yet, but the map listed several different hotels in the area, and a kind local man told us where the city square was and suggested several different nice areas. It seemed as though everything was falling into place – we had made it to our destination and we had an idea of where we wanted to go, so all we had to do was get there, and choose one of the ten hotels in the area. The trouble started when we tried to get a taxi.

Now typically, at any airport or train station that I have been to, there is an area where taxis just line up waiting to take people where they want to go. The drivers don’t ask questions… you just get in, tell them where you want to go and they take you there. There was no such area at this particular train station, so we walked to a nearby intersection where we saw several taxis. Each taxi driver seemed eager to drive us, until we told them where we wanted to go. Then they either said no, or they said they would take us there for 50¥ (which was ridiculous).

Sidenote: all taxis have a meter which runs for the amount per kilometer. However, sometimes if a taxi driver wants to be a dick, he/she will just name a flat price and refuse to do the meter. We get this a lot when we travel because local people try to rip off the travelers, especially us because we are foreigners. However, it is ALWAYS a rip off when they name a flat price. In this case, it definitely was. They all wanted us to pay 50¥ but it turned out to only be a 13¥ taxi ride.

Ok so back to the story. At this point, we were tired, hungry and irritated because at least 20 taxi drivers had refused to take us to any of the locations that we wanted. Then on top of that, it started to rain. So here we were, three girls in a foreign city that none of us knew, with no place to go, stuck in the middle of nowhere (because the train station was literally in the middle of nowhere)! We began carrying all of our stuff walking down the road in the right direction, and although we continued to try and get a taxi, we failed… miserably!
About an hour went by before we found a small local Chinese restaurant. We decided to go in, get some food and try to call some of the hotels in the area to check for openings. That was when we discovered that none of our cell phones were working. We attempted to call some hotels, and call friends to help us, but it was another failure. Once we were done eating, we ended up heading back into the rain in search of a taxi. When we finally found one, we were kind of tricky. We could not figure out why no one would take us to a certain area (we kept saying that it was the forbidden zone), so instead, we asked the taxi driver to take us to a different place, he agreed, we got in and he started the meter. Then mid route, we changed our minds and told him the other location instead. He groaned and moaned, but we finally made it there.

He dropped us off in front of the Home Inn hotel. So it was a start, we made it to a hotel, but we still really had no idea whether they would have any rooms available, or if they were a reasonable price. Thankfully, they did have a two bed room available for only 280¥ a night – SOLD! The room was decent; not the best I have been in, but definitely not the worst! We rested up a bit before we decided to brave the rain to explore the city.

It was the craziest thing… on the way out of the hotel we saw a group of foreigners hangout out of the hotel window talking to a Chinese man across the way (who was also hanging out of the window). Thus far, they were the first expats that we saw (it is a very Chinese area), so we yelled hello up to them. They were clearly young Americans, so we asked where they were from. Turns out they were a group of 30 students from University of Michigan studying abroad at a University in Shanghai, on vacation in Suzhou for the weekend. About ten of them ran down stairs and they went to dinner with us. It was totally random running into people from Michigan. They were very nice, but very young at the same time. None of them were 21 so they were living up life in Shanghai; drinking and traveling a ton on their parents’ money. Since we were both in Shanghai, they kept asking about the bars that we go to or the clubs that we party at, our favorite thing to drink, etc.

I nearly barfed when one of the girls said that she had to go home and change before they went out anywhere because she was in jean shorts, and it is “sorority protocol to never go out in jeans”. Thankfully, all of the friends she was with also made fun of her, so I wasn’t alone in my judgments! 

So anyway, after dinner, we went our separate ways. We ended up at a Pedestrian street where we did a lot of shopping, played some basketball on the street and ate some more Chinese food that was delicious. We were pretty beat from the horrendous day, so we ended up back at our hotel room pretty early in bed reading our books (totally lame, I know).

The next morning, we were woken up early by a Chinese midget street performer in hot pink pants singing into a microphone right outside our hotel room window around 7:30 in the morning – I know, it sounds like a nightmare, but I swear it really happened! We got up, got dressed and headed out for the day. We ended up in a water town right down the street from our hotel. Water towns are old Chinese villages built along canals full of food, shops and such. They usually offer some boat rides along the canals to visit all the different water towns.  They are neat and very traditional Chinese, but once you have seen one water town, you have seen them all (and we live in a water town in Shanghai). We spent a little bit of time walking around, bought a lot of souvenirs and lots of Chinese food. It is Chinese tradition to eat Zòngzi for the Dragon Boat Festival, so we got one to try. It was kind of weird. It is all wrapped up in some kind of leafs and cooked, so when you buy it, you have to unwrap the leafs to eat the inside. It was slimy and smelled weird, and when I finally made it to the inside edible part, it was just a big rice ball with pork chunks. You can get them with all kinds of different things. The Courtney’s made me take a bite first, so I ate a small corner of just rice. To be honest, it was not my favorite thing! It is not like it was gross, it was just sticky rice, basically, but the flavor that the leaves gave the rice was not good. We all took a bite, but we ended up throwing it away and not even finishing it. Nonetheless, we can still say that we ate Zòngzi during Dragon Boat Festival.

Anyway, after we had had enough of the water town, we jumped in a taxi and headed to another water town area with some gardens. Suzhou is known for its beautiful gardens and water towns, but to be honest, I just wasn’t impressed much. The gardens were nothing fabulous, and like I said, once you have seen one water town, you have seen them all. We spent some more time walking around and whatnot, but we decided to head back toward the hotel shortly thereafter to get ready for dinner.

That is when more taxi trouble started! It took us nearly 45 minutes to get a taxi. It seemed that there was a total of twenty taxis in the whole town, and none of them wanted to pick us up. Open taxis would just fly right by us and would not stop! We were getting so mad and we were totally over the rudeness of the town! When we finally got a taxi, we decided that we needed to go straight to a spa for a massage to relax… and that is exactly what we did. We found a spa near our hotel and got 80 minute foot massages!

Side note: while we were getting the massages, one of the guys knew a little English so he was talking to us a lot. He asked us where we were from, and we told him that we were American. Then he looked at me and asked, where I was from (in Chinese). I told him that I was also American, and he started laughing. Then he said, “No, I think you look Chinese!” Clearly I have been here for too long if local Chinese people think I look Chinese!

Anyway, after our massages, we got ready and headed to dinner across town at Zapata’s – a chain Mexican cantina that we have back in Shanghai. We thought that it could not go wrong, but yet again, we were disappointed! They were apparently out of margaritas, the food was awful and they over-charged us for half our bill! After that, we had decided that there was nothing good about Suzhou and we couldn’t wait to leave, so we went home and packed up to get ready to leave. The next morning we got up early and attempted to get tickets to go home. It turned out to be a little more challenging than coming back, but we finally figured it out, and we were on our way back home (not soon enough).

I do love traveling and exploring new places, and even though it wasn’t the best place, we still had fun with each other – we usually make our own fun no matter where we end up, and it was the last vacation with the three of us together, so it was kind of sad :(