Quadrupled
Well-Known Member
It looks like I'm likely heading west of Shanghai (to Suzhou) in a few weeks for work. Any travel advice, places to visit or avoid from those who've been? I expect to only have about one day to be a tourist.
Travel plans are finalizing. Did anybody bother with reviewing a language program before traveling in China - Ive previously liked the Pimsleur programs for German and Spanish. Although while working Ill be with people to translate and will be staying at international hotels Im wondering about the ability to communicate in the airport or while site seeing.
You'll be surprised at how many people you deal with can communicate in English. It's often pretty basic, but usually effective.
In/near Suzhou are some water villages a la Venice (but still Chinese level of course) and fresh water pearl markets.
You might want to consider spending an hour or two at the "fake" market. It's amazing what you can find there on the cheap.
Your best bet is to figure out where you want to go, have the people at the hotel write the address in Chinese and tell the cabbie where you're going. Most of the hotels will have a little card with something that basically says "take me back to this hotel" that you can show to a cabbie on the return.
Trip to Shanghai was pretty cool. One thing which perplexed me was that the planes flight path showed us having flown over North Korea.
Do you find that strange because of the route itself, or merely the fact that you would assume commercial airliners don't fly over NK?
Because with great circle flight patterns, the route itself makes sense.
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