The week from hell.
Hi guys, well I'm in Suzhou today - arrived about 5 hours ago, since my last update I've been up to a few things.. however it's all been tainted by sickness :(
So lets see... first of all I visited Putuoshan island, which is very small ... picturesque, and though renowned for it's seafood I didn't really enjoy it much (expensive, tasteless).. I've had better luck with the farmed fish from further inland.
On Putuoshan I got really sick - had a temperature, which turned into a fever - didn't break till my last day on the island. At this point I started counting how many days I'd gone without sleep (2).
Putuoshan Island did provide some priceless moments, such as monks with cellphones... angry monks getting anoyed with our copious luggage, old lady tourists pushing monks out of the way... the insanity of people pushing and shoving to get to their allocated seats.
After the island we headed to Shanghai - sickness and lack of sleep still reigning supreme... I felt exhausted all the time - getting sick when your on the move far far away from home really is the pits - and going into a chinese dispensary just makes it worse... buying unknown drugs with sign language *cough cough - points at throat, screw up eyes*
That night, despite my sickness I managed to get enough beers into me for a "second win" (a very bad idea in retrospect ;o) and went out to bar/club called "windows" that's a bit of a student hangout, partly to see desmond (my roomy) off - as he's leaving us in shanghai to stay with his sister for a couple of weeks.
With the cheapest drinks in all of shanghai I suspect (50 Yuan cover charge, then 5 yuan beers/10 yuan spirits) - most beers in Shanghai top out at around 25 to 35 yuan, all a bit painfull on the travellers wallet... we didn't leave till around 1:30am, then got a taxi back to the hotel (we'd taken the MTR there, but the trains shut down around midnight) - we stopped in at a bbq kebab place and had a bit of a nibble before crashing.
Desmond got up way to early the next day, and I still hadn't managed to get any sleep (3 days) so I was feeling like absoloute death... wandered round Shanghai with a couple of my fellow travellers, but was pretty much just a sheep - my throat started to get really sore that day (and still hasn't got any better).
Today we also met the 3 new additions to our intrepid group for the rest of the trip, and older couple from Aussie (Ian & Judith) and a old'ish lady (Also from aussie) called Daniella. Ian is a doctor, which is a good thing :)
That night I went and saw a movie, in an effort to not expend much energy... the only english movie on though was "National Treasure" ... it wasn't good, but it was mindless. I got a mountain dew at the theatre only to discover that in China it tastes a lot like green tea.
(Incidentally, almost every bottled drink in China is sickly sweet, it's fairly rare to actually find a natural juice drink that hasn't got half a tonne of added sugar).
That night I also got no sleep... the day after that we visited The shanghai museum and some rock gardens, which wasn't too bad - though I was pretty much a zombie for the entire experience.
I sat in a bath for an hour and finally managed to get about 6 hours sleep when I went to bed... I still felt exhausted, but at least my constant headache is subsiding...
Then we left Shanghai, and travelled by Bus to Zhouzhang - quite a quaint little village, where we stayed in a traditional chinese guesthouse... which was awesome, my room had an adjoining study full of 100+ year old furniture, which was pretty funky - though the old buildings are fairly cold, without the air conditioning cranked right up the room just ends up like a giant fridge.
And that leads us to today... where we took an hours ride on a boat from Zhouzhang to Tong Li, and from there we drove to Suzhou.. I've almst lost my voice, however I'm now armed with a fresh supply of drugs including some anti biotics that Ian helped me pick out - drugs are cheap and handed out without prescription in China, I think it cost me 9 Yuan for a course of 24 amoxycillin pills. Ian is unsure it'll help me (what I have is probably viral) but he recons it can't hurt to try, in case I have some kind of secondary infection to clear up.
At any rate, I'm feeling a bit better now then I was a week ago - but it hasn't been particularly fun, which is a real shame - there was a lot I could've seen and done in shanghai if I'd had the energy.
Tomorrow night we're doing another overnight train trip, ending up in Xi'an, the furthest west I'll end up travelling in China, which should be interesting. The train trips are always a bit of fun, if a little chaotic to get on/off.
Ciao!
- Alex
