In Suzhou

Well, we made it to Suzhou in one piece, though barely. We had our first experience with a Chinese train station, but this story begins with our taxi.

So for the most part, our traffic experience thus far has been relatively tame. Yes, there's been the obvious laps of shoulder checking and a lot of honking, but today, it seemed that all of Hangzhou was headed to the train station. Once we passed the main area around the lake, all concept of lanes disappeared. There were two cars in some areas, three in others, and occassionaly a fourth or fifth trying to honk their way in. Honking by the way, is like the universal signal for everything: shoulder checking, signalling, a pre "I'm-going-to-run-you-over-if-you-don't-move" warning, and in our case an "I'm-now-going-to-drive-on-the-side-walk warning. Yup, as soon as we hit the traffic jam (which is what I thought we were in the whole time, but oh how I was wrong) our taxi just pulled up past the meridian pillars and right up onto the sidewalk. We were passing crowds of oncoming people carrying luggage, scooters and bicycles. Darren and I just looked at each other wide-eyed. It was fairly intense; but, kudos to our driver who got us there a lot faster than everyone behind us, and shimmied into a pretty sweet front spot at the station.

Once in the station, Darren and I had to get our tickets. Most of my travel guide says to book things the day of or not too many days in advance, and Hangzhou being as laid back as it is, we weren't too worried about booking tickets in advance. We will probably not make that mistake again. I don't know if it was just because it was the weekend, and/or because of the World Expo, but with a lot of coffee and an empty stomach, my senses have never been so overwhelmed. I imagine the experience was close to something like Wall Street. There masses of lines of people, loud voices transmitted through speakers from behind the plexi-glass, flashing lights and tons of signs and symbols we couldn't understand. We showed up to the station just over an hour early, and had no idea which line to get into, or if we could even still get tickets. We figured it out eventually, and here we are... though coming out of that ticket office- more like stadium, I definitely felt a little nauseous. But we made it, in one piece...

Once we got settled in, Darren made friends with some of the girls in the room next to us. They're from Israel and just spent the last two months in Beijing studying Mandarin (friends like these are good ones to have around). Darren and I spent a few hours strolling through the canals, stopped at a local tea shop and just had a quiet afternoon. Afterwards, we met back up with the ladies and went to go watch a light show on the harbour. It was pretty cool.

Afterwards, we just spent the night visiting with our new friends and having a few drinks. Tomorrow, we're going to visit a few of the 70 infamous gardens, then possible meet up with our new friends for a boat ride through the canals. Hope all is well.