Watertown Trip + Hairy Crab this weekend Dec 01

Shanghai Expat Forum Index » Hot Topics Forums » Recreation and Nightlife

Author

Message

comradeA

Reacher

Joined: May 07, 2004
Posts: 361
Location: in the old house behind Plaza 66
Status: Offline

Posted: Nov 26, 2007 - 07:15 AM
Post subject: Watertown Trip + Hairy Crab this weekend Dec 01

Hi! I am planning on a trip to the watertown this weekend... If anyone is interested in joining, please feel free to contact me...

Saturday, Dec 01 : Those interested can meet up after an early lunch to check out the heritage building I live in... This will be the last tour I give since I am leaving Shanghai and when I come back it won't be available for me to live in...

After that (around 13:30) we will meet up with the rest at the train station to go to SuZhou...

Once in SuZhou, we hire a van to bring us to TongLi, which is approx. an hour south of SuZhou...

We then check-in to the inn in the town... It should be around 16:00 so all the day-tours would have departed, and we are left with an old town with some overnighteres (like ourselves) and mostly locals...

The rooms are all different in size and decor, and thus price... Of all the places I stayed in watertown trips, this is the nicest in terms of western standard amenities (esp. the bathroom) and in terms of style (lots of joints try to deck up their rooms "Chinese style"... not necessarily successfully)

We then disperse to roam the town... Meet for dinner... Roam some more, or relax in the sitting room or the balcony of the inn... If we are lucky, the owner will play his lute in the evening and invite us for tea... but I only ran into that once in all my times there...

Sunday Dec 02 : Highly recommended to get up early... Anywhere from 05:30 to 07:00 to roam all over to watch the town wake up like it has for hundreds of years... Photo ops at all the dockside washing... silver haired old folks... rays of sun over misty and quiet streets and boarded up shops (with wood planks the traditional way)... Moments of sneaking a peak on a different world... which will vaporize along with the morning mist the moment the first flag-weilding day tour troopers arrive...

This is the one biggest reason why I keep telling people to NOT do a day trip to the watertowns... because you want to see it like when the day-trippers are NOT there... otherwise it is little better than YuYuan...

We can have complimentary breakfast at the inn (need to notify the hostess ahead of time)... or just munch on whatever local breakie we run into...

We will leave around 12:00 via hired van to our lunch in SuZhou... less than an hour's drive away... we head straight to Lotus Island in the middle of YangCheng Lake...

We'll eat our crabs along with some other dishes... then we head back to Shanghai on the hired car or the train... I'll get a consensus on how much the group wants to spend...

Either way we get back to Shanghai in the afternoon...

Based on 6 people, I am projecting a very comfortable budget of 500 + room charges (different for everyone depending on the room you took)...

The rooms start at 180 for a standard room with 2 twin beds, to 480 for a very large room with a large Chinese bed and a western double bed...

That's all I can think of now... Shout if you have a question...

_________________
yo, comrades!