[email protected] in CHINA Part 7 - SUZHOU

oliver999 said:

hehe, any pics of suzhou jinji lake? or industrial park pic?

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Unfortunately not. I was only there for one day (took the express bus from Shanghai in the early morning and back in the evening) so I mainly focused on all the gardens.

snowmancn said:

My God, the Garden of Lion crowded with visitors, people were everywhere, I could not really enjoy the beauty of this classic Chinese garden.

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Every major Chinese sight is pretty crowded these days. I could deal with the crowds of people, but what annoyed me way more in China were the stupid tour guides of Chinese tourist groups who used megaphones at rock concert volume all the time. \/

Great pics. I was there last month. We arrived in Shanghai at 9 am after flighing in from Morocco via Paris (~20 hrs in total), and on the spur of the moment we decided to drop our suitcases off at the hotel and take a train to Suzhou. It was exhausting but worth it. We spent a few hours there and returned in the evening.

Thanks all. Parts 8-14 will follow soon.

LuckyLuke said:

May I ask how much money did you spend for your whole 5 week trip?

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Way less than I had even planned for the trip. That being said I always stayed at cheap hotels (2 star Chinese hotels where I was often the only foreigner(~5 Euros/night in rural parts, ~18-25 Euros/night in the big cities like Beijing and Shanghai)), avoided tourist restaurants and ate where all the locals eat and so on. So I ended up paying just 2500 Euros for the entire 5 weeks overall (flights, hotels, transportation within the country, entrance fees, food, other expanses). The flights almost made up for 50% of it (FRA-HEL-PEK; HKG-HEL-FRA on Finnair for 730 Euros), the 3 inner Chinese flights (PEK-XIY, XIY-HGH, PVG-KWL on Air China and Shanghai Airlines for another 290 Euros).
Overall I would say China is still a place where you can travel for very little money, although its increasingly expensive in the big cities.