woohoo. yes, i'm finally updating about you know where.

anyway, it's gonna be LONG. so if you're lazy, you can just read that paragraph below & tag. that's it, please don't complain.

morning we wake up & push our luggage (in some cases no hotel waiters to help us) to 1st floor. eat buffet breakfast, then we get on the bus & go someplace else (another city). one main tour guide called 小任. few other tour guides per day. all meals were at restaurants/hotels. mostly every night we go shopping. (& we paid $80 for that -.-) after exploring all the places, we go back to our hotel, check in and sleep.

for those who are patient enough, please switch your encoding to unicode before reading the whole chunk of crap below, if not it'll be a nuisance. trust me.

day 1 (4dec, shanghai)
free day. we reached china airport at 8am. hustled around for the entry cards to fill, everyone was quite pissed at that time. waited a long long time with the tour guide (she's nice) for the 6 people who were supp to be with us. we went outside to feel the cold air (: the 6ppl didn't turn up, so we put our luggage in the bus & went to take the maglev train. omg it was uber fast :D 430km/h. cool eh! farms, houses, rivers, bridges & a kfc factory flew past (:

checked in at the hotel. unpacked a lil then went down for lunch at 12pm, next to the hotel. stupid lunch indeed, the chicken was all bones & no meat. then the table shook like siao :@ i saw 2fishes die! one minute they were happily swimming, then they did a flip flop & went to heaven. got a phobia of fishes dying you know.

went back hotel to sleep. 4pm got up to see the sky darkening. yes, it's winter so there's more night than day. amazing (: went nanjing road by cab. went china's 7-11 (forgot what it was called) then ate dinner at a seafood restaurant. (with karaoke!) wth some waiters just slacked man. but there was this girl, i like their attitude (: we ordered sth too spicy but didn't know, so she offered to tell the chef to dilute it :D

shopped. winter clothes, winter clothes as usual. jeans for 48 RMB. bought bks, uber cheap. walkwalkwalk then got hungry. ate 大娘 (haha) dumplings. loved the pork soup :D on the way home it was uber cold. think it was 3deg. shivered like siao. finally got on a cab but the cabby was stupid. don't wanna talk about it lah. anyway we got back to the ulu hotel & watched tv. then slept (duh).

day 2 (suzhou)
after the routine we got on the bus. the 6 ppl & 7 other ppl were there already. turned out the 6ppl missed the flight -.- 1half hours' bus trip to 朱家角. i love the architecture there! there's also a 放生桥. next to it was 一线街, a street which sold things. ate lunch at some villagers' restaurant. yummy :D

1hour's bus trip to 苏州耦园. it's a rich family's garden. big & cool! they love their daughters :D reserve the best rm for them! rooms include 轿子room, one for drinking tea & one where guys and girls talked separately. yeah, they were super 保守 last time. climbed lots of fake rocks & bridges. sat on a boat back to the main road.

4.30 got on the bus, went past 大运河. reached 寒山寺. the male tour guide told us the history of the temple. there was this person who was running away from some city. he stopped by at the temple & heard the bell ringing. haha then ended up writing a poem -.- oh and he said a lot of meaningful stuff. cherish your life before you regret it. no matter how much wealth you have, it will all be gone when you die. sth about health and wealth lah. a bit cliche, but it did seem true at that time.

sky darkened, the temple was so dark. we almost lost our way on the way back. ate dinner. there was this busker who played some weird weird instru & sang for us while we ate -.- visited some street which looked like nanjing rd. bought the storybk version of 宫! the lights on the street were amazing! neon :D

day 3 (wuxi)
this hotel that we stayed in is super weird. garden theme, with green lights at night. the path we cross to our rms very scary at night. anyway we went silk factory, saw the silkworms & machines which cleaned the silk & spinned the clothes etc. and saw how they 'tore' the silk into beds & clothes. then went silk shop. bedsheets, scarves, pillows, bags, decos. wow. $_$

stopped at 大运河. took some pics! ate lunch before going 三国城, the place they filmed 三国演义. very cold, but the scenery was uber nice :D went on a mini tram around the place. we sat on a real wooden ship they filmed during the show (: the wind was seriously strong on the 3rd level. we saw a show on 红楼梦. dad played a shooting game opp the chinese version of obstacle course. -.- wtf we went into a trap then people kept asking us to try on this mongolia princess costume. hahaha took stupid pics (: went to a horse stunt show. the part where 刘备，关宇&张飞fought 吕布. cool, fake 炮声 & qianbian stunts (:

紫砂博物馆 was next. teapots big & small. oh and the guide showed us a collection of this granny who was 88 years old. aww, it was so meaningful. the teapot had a bamboo as the handle, the side formed '人'. when u put the cups tgt, they form the shape of a 桃, which rep longevity. lid has a cicadea (知了）on top. the whole thing means '知足(竹)常乐'. cool eh! he also showed us 水上漂, a teapot which floated in water & 水上翻，one which flipped in water -.- there was one teapot which cost $10000RMB. O_O

got out at 5.30pm, went to shop. gosh i hate the roads in china. we almost got knocked down by a van when we walked the zebra crossing! serious lah, it missed us by one step. didn't even stop when it saw us. KNNB FTHE STUPID DRIVER LAH. HOPE HE GETS KNOCKED DOWN HIMSELF. :@ lol then my mum was paranoid so she didn't wanna cross anymore roads -.- but in the end we crossed two times for nothing. wtf. dad had this trend of buying jeans & pants in china. yeah he bought 4 in 9 days. saw everyone at macs.

checked in at hotel @ 9plus. ooh, this hotel was fit for a horror film. the corridors were so eerie, dim lights & narrow corridors. shivers.

day 4 (nanjing)
couldn't finish breakfast. set off at 8.30 for a pearl factory. diff types of pearls! pink, peach, white, golden, black :D was still quite stuffy & boring. nothing much what, just pry the super big clam open & take out some pearls (btw there were few pearls in one clam). then make into rings, necklaces, bracelets yeah. golden pearl was most ex.

gosh i vomitted on the bus. think was breakfast. 3hours' trip to 玄武湖. one word, cold. took pics under the willow tree. ate lunch. got to an even colder bridge. 长江大桥. was actually near a building. we took lift to 4th storey, then dad loved the bridge so much he started cam-whoring. -.- much much colder than the previous bridge.

dinner, no appetite. went shopping at 夫子庙. finally a gift shop selling souvenirs! picked the stuff like mad (: bought a luggage bag (slashed fm $100 to $50 RMB) went macs, saw everyone else again. returned to the SUPER COOL HOTEL! (: haha everything was brand new. loved the shower & table & tv! :D

that's all for now, day 5-8 another day! pics another day too!