Tai Hu

2nd October
Today we went to Lake Tai, although it was a bit of a mission to get there!! We asked one of the guys who worked at the hostel which bus we should take so he found a map and told us, and when we were leaving he shouted good luck so i thought it might not be the easiest place to get to. When we were walking to the bus stop there was an old lady stood at the side of the road stamping on a snakes head!
We found the bus stop and got on the right bus, but the bus went to the train station and everyone got off, so obv we should have got on the bus at the other side of the road. But we just got back on the bus, and (2 hours later!!) we arrived at the end of a huge island on lake tai. It was a bit of a sight-seeing journey because we got to see all of suzhou, which was really modern and i preffered the old part of the city where we were staying.
It was really pretty around the lake, there were loads of islads and huge hills and old buildings and temples. We saw a nice restaurant just by the lake so we thought we'd go there for lunch, but when we arrived the woman pointed at a boat so i assumed we could have lunch on there, but i was wrong. Instead we went on a boat ride around the island which was really good. We got to see loads more of the lake, its huuuuuuuuuuge.
When we got off the boat we went back to the restaurant to get some lunch but i didnt understand the menu - the only thing i could understand was tofu and obv i didnt want that so we asked for some chicken and rice, and we got a whole chicken which was floating in a bowl full of chicken stock. It was sooooooo yummy. But, in china when you order a whole chicken you do actually get a whole chicken! I was expecting the feet to be on it because everyone eats those, but I got a bit of a shock when i saw its head floating around the bowl.
We went into the big garden on the end of the island and had a walk up the hill to see the views which were really nice, although i made the mistake of wearing shorts and no insect repellant - i have soooo many bites. In the garden they had a budhist temple so we went into have a look and I gave the old lady 10yuan because we lit some of the insence and she gave me her orange which was quite random, but she seemed so pleased when i took it.
We went to get the bus back, but there was a huge queue so we had to wait for an hour. But when we got on the bus it was really quiet and we managed to get a seat, but when the bus was going back accross the lake loads more people were getting on. I didnt know it was possible to fit so many people on a bus. There were 40seats on the bus and it wasnt that big, but we worked out that there were at least 120 people on it. One girl stood next to me couldnt even stand up properly so i moved up and let her share my seat, and people kept getting trapped in the doors in the middle of the bus whenver they opened. It was mad.
When we got off the bus we went to get some tea before going back to the hostel, but we went into a restaurant that was owned by the scariest man ever. He just walked around shouting at everyone all the time, and when we were looking at the menu he came and sat by our table and he was pointing out things that he thought we would like, but they were also the most expensive things on the menu, The food was really nice tho. On the way back to the hostel, a guy who lived in one of the little houses by the cannal was hanging his washing out - he was hanging it on metal coat hangers onto an electricity cable - SAFE