Day 4
To start off...
All-you-can-eat breakfast at Hilton. - I would like to eat more, but I was afraid I may get an upset stomach.
First stop of the day.. mandatory shopping stop. JADE SHOP. Spent quite a while in there.
Inside the shop there was a display presenting a brief history of how jade is extracted and how to differentiate the different types of jade. Also, a salesperson will demonstrate how to differentiate the jade based on the sound. If you tap the jade with a metal and the pitch is very high than it means that this piece of jade is of very high quality. Someone from our group bought a $5000 CND Buddha necklace....errrr
My family was waiting outside since we were already in there for 1hour. While waiting, I've noticed at least 10+ tour buses parked outside and the store was in the middle of nowhere... tourist traps.
The last attraction in Nanjing was the Yangtze River Bridge. As you go inside the building you will be welcomed by the gigantic Mao statue. High-five dude.
There's not much to do in lower levels, just a whole bunch of pictures and newspaper clippings on the history of the Yangtze River Bridge . Everything is written in Chinese, no English translation, so if you can't read Chinese then too bad for you.
When you enter, you will be given one of these. I believe this attraction place is free though.
In order to go to the top of the building you have to get on this super old elevator, which was actually quite creepy. Once you are at the top floor, you have to walk by the souvenir shop in order to get outside the tower.
The view from the top of the bridge tower.
Apparently this is a very famous spot for people to commit suicide- People like to jump into the sea.
It was close to noon by this point, so we headed off for lunch.
This was the place that we went for lunch at. The decor had an ancient Chinese style which was very nice. There were red lanterns everywhere. By this point, food was starting to taste the same. It's almost the same Chinese dishes every time- would like a pizza now. And it was here, that I've experience the squatter toilet. SO GROSS. The tour guide told everybody to go to the washroom else they would not be able to go for 3 hours, though there will be 1 washroom stop. Anyways, once I've encountered the squatting toilet, I was confused as to which direction you are supposed to face- towards the front of the door or to the back?? The floor was also wet with urine. So gross. My legs were quite sore from squatting mid way - though aiming was kinda difficult when elevated so high - couldn't help but splash some here and there.
Once we got to the new city "Wuxi", our new tour guide was waiting at the destination. Now this guy looked young, I would have thought he was in late 20s, but other people in the tour thought he was in high-school...they were hitting it off quite well... the tour guide showed us his ID which indicates that he's 30-40 years old and he also has a kid.
The new tour guide led us around "Yuantouzhu", a place to admire Lake Tai -the main water source for the city. I wished that we could've explored the area ourselves. A quick google search and I see that we didn't go to a lot of interesting places. We only went around Lake Tai and admire some flowers, etc. I would've liked to see the heart lock, the giant turtle, the beach..
This is an Gu-boat that have sailed the Taihu for hundreds of years.
Papaver Rhoeas
Gigantic Ferris wheel behind the garden.
And finally it was off to dinner. The restaurant was definitely very glamorous, looked very much like a wedding hall. When you enter the restaurant, they have a long wide flight of polished stairs; and the inside was very clean. But, with a restaurant that looked this nice, the least they can do is restrict people smoking at the foyer. If you take a look at the decor, it looks so much like a wedding reception. When we entered, the food was already prepared and laid out on the table. I guess, they were expecting a flood of tour groups. Half an hour into the dinner, the whole place was occupied. No kidding.
We were told that we would be served a Qianlong feast, the feast that the Qianlong emperor ate when he visited Jiangnam, and that we would be served a dragon too. Apparently, half way through the dinner, the tour guide came to our table and informed us that they didn't have enough of the dragon dish and asked if we can substitute another dish for it. Our group at the next table said that we could have theirs, the tour guide brought the dish over and showed us the dragon dish and... low and behold, just some kind of cream on top of some cucumber? at the bottom. No thanks. We'll stick with another dish- I asked if we can have lobster and he gave the "WTF look"-lol (I was just kidding). So it was replaced with soup.
The dinner fit for an emperor - there's barely and meat...
After dinner, it was time to head to the Wuxi Xizhou Garden Hotel for rest. We were supposed to stay at Hilton but there were last minute changes to the itinerary. The room is quite small compared to the other hotels we stayed at. The decor is very old and the bed is not very soft. When we got to our room, there was only 2 beds, so we had to go down to the front and tell them that there are three people. They admitted that they forgot- like the honesty. While my sister and my mom went down to the reception, I was filming the room and suddenly the room when pitch black- apparently my sister took the room card with her, so I was stuck in the pitch-black room- at least I wasn't doing my business. By the way, since the start of the trip I have not took a dump yet, always feeling so constipated.
The washroom - the bathtub is on the other side.
The corridor- the room looks very old. The drawers, cabinets, closet, etc. has paint peeling off.
And this is where we would be eating breakfast the next day.
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