China Day Two.

Yeah, I know the title's super cool lame right. For the next few posts, it's prolly gonna be China Day Three, Day Four and so on, so deal with it. Heh.

Okay, so we left Shanghai for another city/province, Suzhou.

First place we headed to was the People's Square. The tour guide pronounced it in a really funny way that all of us in the group couldn't understand what it meant at first. We thought it was Pipol's Squire. That was how she pronounced it. Her English and Cantonese was really funny. If I were to judge her intonation, I'd have given a C plus. But who am I to judge man, I can't even speak Chinese. You know how the same Chinese word can have different meanings once pronounced wrongly. Happened to me while I was there. Omg, super embarrassing. I'm still thinking if I should blog about it. Hmm.

The People's Square is where the museum is at. Actually, I didn't pay much attention to the tour guide because that place was quite boring. Reason because we didn't get to enter the building and all we could see are buildings and a square land. Lol. As a matter of fact, I don't know if it was square as well, but since it's named like that, then I assumed it is. Hehe.

Standing in front of the whatever building.


More buildings.


Next up was pretty interesting. We went to a reflexology centre to what else, but to get a foot massage. Haha. One thing I didn't like about this trip is that it was very commercialized. They brought us to a lot of places which requires you to sit down obediently and listen to them speak about their traditional medicinal values/green tea/tea pot/feng shui. All in Mandarin. Omg can die. Then after the talk they would obviously persuade/bug/irritate you to buy their products. Wasted damn a lot of time there! >=(

But I found this foot reflexology visit the most interesting. Haha. View pictures to find out why.
They claimed that this method is the most traditional way to soak your feet in to cleanse and relax or something like that. Apparently, it's been used in China since ages ago, during the dynasty era. The solution was freaking hot, like boiling hot. Worse than the hot spring experience. So as you can see, I didn't dare dip my entire feet into the solution.

Suddenly become more daring already. The braver side of me took control over my feet. Lol. FYI, the colour of the solution IS like that and not because my feet was so dirty it turned into this colour okay.

The best part of this whole thing is right after boiling dipping our feets into that so-called herbal solution [smelled like there were herbs in it], we got a foot massage! =)

The bestestest part is my masseur was a cute one! haha. Before the massage started, I asked my Chinese educated youngest sibling how to say 'geli' in Mandarin just in case I had to use it when I got massaged later.

True enough, when he started massaging me, I started moving uncomfortably and was trying so hard not to giggle until he thought I felt pain. hahahah. My translater was obviously none other than my sister. Each time he asked me a question, I would look helplessly at my sister sending SOS signals. Such an embarassment. Sigh.

I swear if communication wasn't a barrier, I would have gotten his number by now. Muahahahahah.

After leaving the cute one, we had lunch and soon after hopped onto the bus to get to our next destination which was the Lion Forest Garden. Even though it was indeed quite scenic, I got kinda bored after seeing the same thing again and again.

I'm gonna take the easy way out by copying and pasting what Lion Forest Garden is like. Courtesy of Google.com =p

Compactly yet harmoniously spaced,the Lion Forest Garden has a prominent part for series of man-made mountains with various buildings around the lake ,and an artificial waterfall and cliffs at the edge of the lake on the west. Remains of the 14th century man-made mountains, covering 1,152 sq.m.and being the largest of all at Suzhou, can be still seen today. Noted for its labyrinthine mountains with winding pathways and caverns, old pines and cypress trees, awesome peaks and jogged rocks of grotesque shapes resembling dancing lions with striking and unusual poses,it possesses with pride the true delights of mountain and forest scenery in limited space with a flavor of Zen Buddhism. The Hall of Peace and Happiness, one of the principal buildings in the garden, is a master-piece of typical mandarin ducks' hall at Suzhou. Divided in halves, the northern half of the hall differs from the southern half in many particular aspects, such as beam-framing systems, furnishings, pavements, carvings, window designs and so forth. With painted patterns and beam carvings and looking splendid in green and gold, the True Delight Pavilion in the royal style with the "True Delight "tablet inscribed by the Qing Emperor Qianlong is a main viewing place in the garden and differs from the other plain and elegant gardens of Suzhou.Other buildings include the pointing at Cypress Trees Hall, the Asking Prunus Mume Pavilion and the Stone Boat, etc.

The Lion Forest Garden boasts 22 buildings of varied types, 25tablets and plateaux, 71steles inscribed with the famous Calligraphy Collection of the Listening to Rain Tower, 23 brick carvings, 5 carved wooden screens, and 13 valuable old trees such as gingo biloba L. [the ingredient used for the 'pei pa kou' cough mixture]

Interesting, no? ;)

Then, we headed for the temple which I wasn't very keen of because it was so smoky inside and all we did was wait there for everyone else to be done with their prayers.

Outside the temple.

After that, we went makan again. Our dinner would always be around 5-6ish. So early. Sometimes I won't feel that hungry but would still stuff myself nonetheless just in case I get hungry later at night. Sounds like a pig, I know.

Then, we went shopping at some street, which I forgot the name. Who cares about the name anyway? Oh, another thing I hate about this tour group is because the amount of time allocated for us to go around shopping would be insufficient. So everything's always in a hurry and my dad who's always trying to be the punctual one would nag at us to hurry up. In the end, the pattern of my shopping would be 'see if it's nice, check price, buy' without much hesitation. Consequently, I ended up buying 2 pairs of boots which were not my size out of pure desperation because they ran out of stock for my size. [They were a size smaller] If only I had more time to look around! >=(

One of the shops which caught our attention. Instead of 'Impossible is Nothing', look at how creative they can get. Lol.

I remember enjoying the second day better than the first because I finally got to buy something and returning to the hotel without being empty handed. Heheh.

Ahh. Bliss. After a whole day walking, the bed will always be my favourite...until the morning call starts ringing and annoying the crap out of you. Hmph.