I had planned on going to Hangzhou today, but as I couldn't get a train ticket I took a walk to the French Concession area of Shanghai this morning which is a pretty area with tree lined streets. Visited the Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Residance and Fuxing Park and then walked from here to Nanjing West Road to check out the International cinema. There were no English films showing so I headed back to the hostel stopping at the internet cafe on route to catch up with s...

I was feeling quite tired today and so decided to have an easy day around the city centre. I set off for a walk along the Bund and what should have taken me 10 minutes to walk to took me 2 hours of treking across building sites! I kept thinking I was going to get where I wanted to and only after an hour turned around and walked back to where I had started. The day didn't get better as when walking on the Bund, I got stopped by 2 women and a man who asked me to ta...

Got up early and went to the train station. Spent about an hour looking at the train track wondering how to get into the station, then got shouted at for entering via the staff entrance! Found it eventually and mamaged to get a ticket to Suzhou. The journey was just over half an hour and when I got there it was easy to negotiate around the town on foot. It was a pleasant town with lots of small canals running though it. If you forgot about the dual carrage ways r...

Arrived in Shanghai at 8 this morning after a few broken hours of sleep. Caught the metro out to Nanjing East and found my hostel after a short search. The room was not ready for me, so I dumped my stuff off and walked (in the wrong direction initially) to Yu Gardens. The gardens were pretty and I could imagine they would be lovely in the summer provided no other tourists were let in! There was a temple next door - The City God Temple - which was worth the 10...