Our First Day of Traveling

Around 9 in the morning we left NTU and traveled to Suzhou by bus, which involved the oh so fabulous ghetto ferry ride and driving on the bumpiest roads I have EVER been on! I think just about everyone planned on sleeping on the bus but even getting 5 minutes of rest was a challenge. On the ferry boat though I got off the bus to get some fresh air (well, the freshest China has to offer) and help my headache and other motion sickness symptoms to go away (thanks dad for passing that on by the way…J). But while I was on the top deck, I somehow struck up a conversation with two businessmen working for one of the leading textile companies in China. One was Chinese and the other was French, which was really cool because I hadn’t met many other foreigners yet even though I had seen quite a few. I ended up talking to them about business, soccer, education, you name it for the rest of the boat ride and I even took a picture with them before heading back to the bus… too bad I definitely can’t remember their names! Anyways, when we finally reached Suzhou, we checked into our hotel (which was NICE- check out the pictures) and headed to lunch, which was good but the lychee I bought off a street vendor outside of it was SO much better… lychee is everywhere here and I only know of it (and love it!) because of my family’s many vacations to Hawaii where my parents had lived for a few years after getting married. It was nice finding something familiar to me that was sold in such massive quantities and used as a usual flavor in candy/sweets. After lunch we went to Tiger Hill, a popular tourist attraction of a temple in Suzhou where I got some nice pictures. Next we headed to a place called the Administrator’s Gardens which was built in the Ming Dynasty. It was huge for its location, being that it was right in the city. A sign said it was 5.2 hectares but I seriously don’t think I’ve ever heard of the measurement in my life! Anyways, we spent some time there, shopped a little outside, and then had dinner at a restaurant outside of the silk factory we are touring tomorrow. So the rest of that night was free time which most people thought would be spent at the hotel’s pool, but sadly we had to pay to swim, so most of us had a couple drinks in the restaurant in the gazebo in the garden area of the hotel (in the picture of the view from my room’s window). After that I stayed in, because my ankle was definitely swollen and not getting any better, so I iced it and watched weird old movies on the HBO channel on our TV. Pretty packed day if you ask me!