Venice of China

I got up in the morning and decided that I will go to Shuzhou. Actually before deciding that I was trying to figure out when is the actual MOTO GP race day in Shanghai Circuit. Once that was clear well almost, got ready and let the hotel to go to Shuzhou. It is a one hour travel by train from Shanghai. That meant that I had to take a train.. I went to the Shanghai Railway station and got a ticket , but the train was at 1:30PM.and there was a lot time to kill. I was worried about the weather as it was dark and cloudy and the forecast was for rains. If it rains then the trip to Shuzhou would be a total disaster. Shuzhou is called the Venice of China. Because of its backwaters that criss cross the city. I got to know about this place from a booklet that a travel agent had printed and was interested after reading the description of the trip that he had to offer. All I knew is that I have to go to Shuzhou and nothing more that that. What is there and how to travel locally no data available or known. Went around the railway station area to kill some time. And at 01:00PM I went inside the railway station. I must say that the railway station is like Bangalore airport. Modern and sophisticated. I saw that they don’t have platform concept. They have waiting rooms. Each waiting room has many platforms. And you have to check in as you do in airports. The check in stops 5 min before the departure time. No body comes and asks you for a ticket after you have checked in. The train that I took is a double Decker one. I was seated on the lower portion. The seats were good, ones that you can find in a luxury bus. The train left the station on time. They do travel at a good speed. After cruising for about 45 minutes he stopped at a small station. I was wondering why and then in a span of half an hour 6 super fast trains maybe bullet trains passed by us. And I was getting pissed off. Finally in another 15min I was at Shuzhou station and now wondering what to do. I could see a couple of places where some tour operators were there. While I was searching for tourist information centre a guy came and spoke to me in English and asked me if I needed a taxi. I told him I am here to see the gardens and back waters and gave him the booklet that I was carrying. He saw that and told me that the backwaters and garden is in the city but the other place is about 70km away from the city. I was not willing to go so far at that of the day. He said the boat ride would be 250 RMB. I thought it was expensive and asked him to just take me to the place. I will not boat. He also told me that for 100RMB he will take me to the backwaters and another famous garden, Lingering gardens and back to railway station in his car. I accepted his offer and there we were riding in the streets of Shuzhou. The city still has the old buildings preserved and you can see that the water crisis crosses the city a lot places. We reached the place of boating and the entrance was that of a gate. He told me that at this gate the architect of the town was beheaded and his head was hanged here. This was done by a king. The price for the boat that he said was not for one person it was for the entire boat. Later I thought what the big deal. Let’s go, so I had the entire boat for myself. It was a nice and beautiful experience to go boating in the backwaters. Very nice bridges, houses and restaurants don the banks of the backwaters. There were a lot of tourists also there. The entire trip took me 50min , not bad huh. From there we went to Lingering gardens. This is a world heritage centre. And supposed to be one of the famous and beautiful gardens in China. The garden is small but very beautiful. It has some weird shaped stone sculptures and a green ambience. There are small ponds and streams inside the garden. A nice and peaceful place. The garden is in the centre of the city and there is so much peace inside. I guess it is mostly because of the large number of vegetation that suppresses the noise. Well I spent about 45 min inside the garden and after that we were headed to the railway station. Our guide dropped us off till the ticket counter and told me to but tickets from there. When I got my tickets I saw that the train leaves Suzhou at 11:30 PM. I was pissed off it was still 06:30PM and I had to wait for five hours to travel one hour. Damn…..then I realized what the guide had told me about the buses, a five min walk away there is a bus station from where we can get buses to Shanghai. So I went there and found a bus to Shanghai. I was asking her the bus operator what time you leave from here and how much and to get that information from was fun. She did not understand what I was asking and so did I. finally she gave up and went inside the bus to get hold of a guy who could understand English. Finally I came to know that the bus would leave to shanghai at 7:00PM and the fare is 50RMB. I was happy to loose the 7RMB train ticket and travel on this bus. Over all it was fun and adventure for me on that day.