Going Solo...

Today marks my first day of going it alone in China. Yesterday I left Dave in Beijing and hopped on the Z85 Overnight Train headed for Suzhou. The journey was reasonably uneventful- apart from a chinese man asking me to put my shoes back on because my feet smelt and spilling the contents of my pot noodle on myself.

The train was quite comfortable and despite only having a "hard" sleeper I had a good nights kip- there was even a western toilet on the train. The Journey was well timed as the train departed at 7.30pm so after a few hours of playing PSP I then watched the Royle Family and ate my pot noodle- well what was left of it. Then I read my book for an hour and went to sleep about 11pm.

The train arrived in Suzhou at about 7am. It's quite a scary feeling getting off a train by yourself in a city you don't know, and where you don't have a clue where your going. Leaving the train station all I had was the phone number and name of the hostel where I was staing at, but after a little initial confusion with the taxi we managed to find the hostel OK.

First impressions of Suzhou are good. My bed wasn't ready when I arrived so I headed out at 8.30am for a few hours to scope out the city and get some breakfast. It's a lot greener than anywwhere I have been in China before and whilst it may not live up completely to having the title "the Venice of China" the lakes running through the city are certainly beautiful.

I will spend 2/3 days here- maybe 3- then head onto Nanjing by bus.Where a friend of Nancy's will show me around I hope as my friend Matt (that I met in Beijing) is on his own vacation in Kunming. I think I will spend another 3 days in Nanjing before travelling by train to Hangzhou. Hangzhou is meant to be the "most beautiful city" in China so I'm looking forward to going there- think I spend 4 or 5 days there before moving on to Shanghai. In Shanghai I will meet Clare and we will spend CHinese New Year there before moving on to Chengdu on the 20th Februrary. In Chengdu we will go to a Panda sanctuary and visit the huge Buddha they have at Le Shan before going a Yangtze River cruise (if not too expesive). On the 25th we make the short flight back up to Shijiazhuang so I can show Clare where I have lived all this time and then the next day we will get the train to Beijing where we will go to the Great Wall and Temple of Heaven- as well as doing some shopping I expect. Hopefully in Beijing we can meet up with Dave and the other's for one last goodbye.

Then it's time for me to come home!