Randall and I grabbed the express train to Suzhou, which was nice, but meant that we had no time to decide what we were going to do. I met a girl on the train named HeYan, who was also headed to Suzhou and she invited us to go with her to LouYuan. I had no idea what that was and we didn't have any other plans, so we followed her. After a brief stop to get train tickets - and by brief I mean long and exhausting task of waiting in a "line" - we grabbed a bus out to the other side of town, where the park is. The whole train station was a mobscene and under construction, which is unfortunate because it's normally a nice area with gardens are parks to wile away time in.
Lou Yuan turned out to mean "amusement park", a novelty in China, but an experience nonetheless. The park is built at the base of a small mountain with a lake in the middle. It wasn't terribly busy, being a Monday, so we didn't see the ferry move at all, but the power boats were running around the lake trying to scare their passengers. For about $1.50 each, we gave it a go. I have to say it was the only thing I did all day that made me feel nervous, but hey, the driver wasn't wearing a life jacket, so it must be safe... As a sidenote, most Chinese people do not know how to swim. I always found this interesting considering how inseparable I was from the water growing up in a "cold" country.
One of the first things we did was go on the Chinese version of Wonderland's Top Gun, which was the biggest ride in the park. I seemed a little longer than the Canadian version but it didn't go as fast or have long drops. HeYan was pretty excited, I think. This picture is taken just outside that ride. HeYan is watching me try to figure out what the water wheel does. After much experimentation, I discovered that the waterwheel actually does nothing.
Randall and me outside the waterfall...
This is a picture of me riding an ant in Carrot Village... I should mention Carrot Village is designed for three year olds, so I will not post the pictures of me getting stuck in the tunnel network because I refused to obey the recommended age limit. I imagine, however, you'll find them on Randall's blog in the near future.
Following this we went on several more rides, all of which had no lines at all, surprisingly enough. Bumper cars was fun. Apparently, the Chinese are slightly confused about when it is acceptable to hit other people with your car... Then we took a cable car up the mountain. These are some nice views of the area and the park.
Randall stitched together this panorama of the park...
We then opted not to take the easy way down and took this parasail dealy thing down. This was actually far less terrifyingly dangerous than it looks. Thankfully. They took a picture of us and laminated into a car for HeYan. After that we were a little tired and totally starving, so we headed back to town to find a small restaurant to have some local dishes. That was one of the better meals I've had, with some awesome spicy baked tofu, sweet and sour fish, smoked fish, soy shrimp and yummy vegetables. No pictures of that meal though.
From there we headed back to the mess of a train station and tried to hire a motorcycle cab to take us around to see some interesting things near the station, but they wanted too much money cause they thought we were idiot tourists, so we gave up and grabbed some ice cream in KFC. Not a great conclusion, but I got to practice my Chinese with HeYan. We grabbed the train back and headed home.
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