Day trip to Wuxi

I was at People's Square by 6.30am where I met Joseph and our tour group heading to Wuxi. The traffic was so bad that a normal 1.5 hour journey turned into 7 hours! Yes, 7 hours! What an experience!

When I saw the sign for Suzhou was 10km away and Wuxi 56km, it took us 4 hours to reach Suzhou that I felt like I would go crazy knowing we were not even halfway to Wuxi. The tour guide explained to us that this normal stretch of road should take 10 minutes, took us 2 hours. She also explained that the government had changed the rules this year that allowed small cars to travel for free and avoid the toll charge so there was an increase in cars.

As we were late, we were unable to visit Taihu (Tai Lake) which I was told is the largest inland lake in China. We drove past it and it is very big I have to say. We reached Ling Shan which is where one of the largest Buddha statues stands at 88 metres tall.

We rode on trolley cars to different stops and we arrived at 2.30pm where people had paid to have a vegetarian meal at the temple but Joseph and I didn't join them and walked by ourselves for a while.

We visited a huge palace that had so much gold. We were required to wear shoe coverings before entering. The huge hall was magnificent with a colour-changing constellation ceiling, many paintings and lots of gold decorations. The details in the wood carving was amazing. The next hallway led to 12 statues of the Chinese zodiac so we took photos next to our animals. The dragon was most popular with people.

The next room was the music room which had a colour-changing ceiling as well. In the centre of the room was a huge display of Siddhartha meditating under the tree. The hall had many seats and beautiful paintings on the wall.

After this palace we saw the musical fountain and then went to see the big Buddha. It was difficult to get a feel for the size as it was standing so tall but there is a replica of the hand that you can stand by and compare the size. At the base of the stairs is a hexagonal well that had been restored back to its original place from the Tang Dynasty.

The feeling of history and religion was very strong. I lit candles and incense and got to make a wish. We left at 6pm and it took us 2.5 hours this time to return to Shanghai.

I do wish we had more time to visit other places in Wuxi but I guess there will be another time - when it is not a national holiday! I feel I really should have listened to others who experienced this last year to not travel but it was just part of the experience. So for the rest of the holiday I intend to stay in Shanghai!

Starting a long week before MidAutumn Festival....

Time flies so quickly out here and I already am into my 3rd week at university. This will be a long week as next week is Mid Autumn Festival which is a national holiday and lasts for a week, however, as is the norm in China, the missing time gets made up on the weekend so Saturday is actually a normal working day.

As much as I'd have loved to planned to travel during that week I have been advised by so many people not to because the whole of China will be on holidays and travelling. So it looks like I am stuck in Shanghai. I will plan to make the most of it and explore other parts of Shanghai, maybe visit art galleries and markets - perhaps this time I will go to the fabric market and get a Chinese dress made.

On Wednesday it was an old classmate's birthday so a few of us went to her house and had a bbq which was amazing to sit on her terrace in her beautiful home. The weather was good and company was good. Then afterwards me and a friend headed to Shanghai Brewery to check out the salsa night at the expat mixer and met some of my other friends there. It was good fun to go out mid-week.

Most of the week passed just studying, I try to keep busy. I tried this nice vanilla pastry, and felt a bit homesick and wanted some soup so I went to Pizza Hut.

Saturday my friends decided to head to the club but I realised I didn't have the right things to go so I had to head to Yuyuan market to buy a bag and some accessories. I am always nervous to go there and being early there were so few people around. I bought a nice velvet bag which hopefully can go with other outfits and some hair clips. The details on one of them is amazing, I really like the style. Also I like there are so many peacock designs!

 

Peacock and Phoenix

We tried to get into M1NT but they were very busy and telling us to wait, we could get in or not. Then we went to Geisha which was more relaxed but I think after 11pm there is a fee of 100RMB which includes a drink. Geisha has 3 floors, 1st floor is a restaurant, 2nd floor is a dancefloor with "harder" music, and the 3rd floor is more hip hop with an outdoor terrace which is quite nice too.