Side tracking...

I>> Hope you're enjoying your trip. Autumn leaves? Must tell you about the odd partner arrangement.

Thanks to l.m.l's heavy subsidy, we went for a Romantic Jiangnan Tour. We visited Hangzhou, Wuzhen, Suzhou, Nanjing, Wuxi and Shanghai. I've been to all these places (except Nanjing) 10 years ago. That time when I did, I was there for 2-3 weeks for some kinda Cultural Exchange Programme or something. I must say they've progressed by leaps and bounds. Farmlands have given way to commercial buildings. And the toilets now are wayyy much better. I say, better visit these places soon before it develops further and loses it's rustic charms.

Hangzhou's my favourite by far. If you're talking about scenery so on and so forth. If it's shopping you're concern about... then, erms, it's gonna be disappointing. The Chinese drink ALOT of tea and especially so in Hangzhou. They are famous for it's Xihulongjing tea. Drinking tea's an art. There are little stand alone tea houses sprouting out from almost everywhere near the Xihu or Westlake. I like. You can buy tea leaves and keep whatever you don't finish there for the next visit. The pace of living is pretty slow, the people there play mahjong and winner is determined only when the person himself 'zi-mos'. Yah...so you can imagine, it may take forever. They also drink tea during fall by boiling a pot of water and sitting under the guihua tree and they'd wait for the leaves to fall and land in the pot. No kidding. I love the teahouses, someone bring one back to Sg! We bought a small bottle of tea leaves (smaller than the small Evian mineral bottles) and it cost about 60sgd. And that isn't the finest grade of tea. If you think that's ex, this lady in our tour group spent a few hundred on tea leaves. I'm starting to think that we might just have been fleeced.

The teahouses look pretty much like the coffee joints. Except that coffee joints are not so Oriental in architecture. Starbucks below...

love, lady-dauntless