Seeing Suzhou by scooter . . .

Canal cruises

This weekend, I planned to take a day trip to see a nearby canal town called Tongli. I met my friend, Freddy, in Suzhou and we planned to ride his scooter to Tongli, 18 km south of Suzhou.However, due to an unreliable scooter (who is crazy enough to ride a second hand Chinese scooter from Shanghai to Suzhou anyway?!), an infrequent bus schedule and a desire to spend longer than 2 hours in the town, we gave up our plans and decided to explore Suzhou by scooter instead.

A home off an alleyway

Home?

Travelling by scooter gives you a totally different perspective on places. We were closer to the people and saw things that we probably wouldn’t have seen had we been in a car. If we saw an alleyway that looked particularly intriguing, we were able to stop and have a wander through it.

Get that scooter off the lawn! Unheard of in China

Scooters and people on the lawn?!

Suzhou is a really beautiful city, with wide, tree lined streets and hundreds of canals crisscrossing their way across the city. It has a great mix of Chinese and western things to do.Yesterday, we found a really great mix of the two. We wandered through the alleyways. We spent time hanging out with hundreds of other Chinese in a park, we sipped tea in my favourite bookstore, The Bookworm and we ate Mexican and Coldstone Creamery icecream at Jin Ji Hu (Golden Chicken Lake).

Enjoying some fishing in the Autumn sun

Taking a nap

So, although I didn’t quite make it to Tongli, it was still a great day of exploring a Chinese city in a very Chinese way, on the back of a scooter! I was back in Wuxi by late afternoon, as a group of us were heading out to the grand opening of a ‘new’ bar in town. I say ‘new’ because it isn’t actually a new bar – in fact, I attended the opening of it several months ago! But this was the very official opening with government officials in attendance, television crews interviewing all the laowais and the obligatory free food and beer that comes with a grand opening!

Do you know where you are going?!

Fruit stalls at a busy Suzhou intersection

Interesting outfit to water the lawns!

Belynda and Nat impersonate ABBA

Black and white theme!

Beau is interviewed by the local TV crews

The lovely Beau and Melinda

The boys act cool with the TV crews in the background