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VIDEO
CAPTURES - PAGE 3
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| Chinese version of the Spice Girls at Longting Park. |
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| From Kaifeng we took the jeep to Zhengzho and took the overnight train to Wuxi. We arrived early at Wuxi and witnessed a splendid argument between our local guide and driver. We then ended up at a hotel which can only be described as luxurious. Breakfast was, to put it mildly, huge and delicious. Steak, anyone? We were supposed to take the boat down the Grand Canal to Suzhou but due to SARS and the accompanying lack of tourists it was cancelled. Instead, we had an hour or so on a canal boat around Wuxi. Entertainment was provided along the way! |
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| Gemma got a bit carried away. We ended up taking the train to Suzhou. I think this was the journey where Gemma and Janet bounced a suitcase off a chap's head. Or it may have been the one where I accidentally reclined someone's seat for them. |
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| Suzhou, a beautiful city. Highlight was the Humble Administrator's Garden. I don't know what he administered, or why he was humble about it, but if I had a garden like this I'd get some other poor sod to do the work and sit and enjoy the view. One of the highlights of the trip, without a doubt. One part of the garden had birds and fish on display, although the birds were caged and the fish were in large soup bowl things. |
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| What are you staring at? |
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| Beautiful, eh? |
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| Now we're getting arty-farty, framing the picture. |
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| This was a little shelter type of building. It had four of these archways, the idea being that each of the seasons was best viewed through a particular archway. |
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| This is a very popular place whcih means it gets crowded at times. When we were there it was a mixture of serenity and marauding gangs of Chinese pensioners bellowing at each other. |
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| Ooooh. |
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| Aaaaah. |
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| Dus, Janet and our local guide Sheila take a break. |
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| Another place where we spent far too short a time. |
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| If this is the reward, maybe there's a good reason to be humble. |
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| I could not have put it better myself. |
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| Tongli Water Town. A sort of canal theme park, it looked like a film set to me. Another popular place. This is where Mary met up with her daughter Becky, who was teaching English in a school a couple of hours away. |
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| Don't say we didn't warn you! |
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| Canal boats at Tongli. Just round the corner from the place that sold pottery, including tasteful little boy figurines that pee when you pour hot water in them. |
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| We spent the afternoon walking around Suzhou, and made our first raid on the CD and DVD shops of China. We ended up with just a few between us by the end of the trip. Packing them in a backpack was difficult to say the least, I left a stack of CD cases in the dustbin of more than one hotel. We took another train down to Shanghai. Dus was amused that there are as many people in Shanghai as there are in the whole of Australia. | |
| Cleaners at the hotel opposite ours. |
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| See how high up they are? Shanghai was a surprisingly westernised city; skyscrapers, neon lights and double-deck motorways, big shops and shopping malls. |
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| We went to this acrobatioc show one evening in Shanghai. Other than the performers and a few guides, there were no Chinese people there at all. |
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| Skillful, if not entirely practical. |
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| Plenty of room on top! |
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| Flying tonight. The next act was a chap who did things with hula hoops. I have no film of it because I was hauled out of the audience to be part of the act. Why do I get picked on? |
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| No, I didn't stay onstage for the next part of the show. |
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| There are five motorbikes inside this sphere, going at a reasonable speed. If we are honest about it, many in the audience were disappointed that they didn't collide. |
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