Last weekend we made our first trip to a city called Suzhou, which is in the Jiangsu Province (traveling to a new province—yay!). Based on what I read in our LP guide book, which described Suzhou as a “town” with gardens and canals, I was really looking forward to wandering around and getting some fresh air.
Our first task was figuring out how to navigate the train system in China. After some online research I discovered where the train station was, so we just decided to check it out and go from there. We found the ticket office pretty easily and were pleasantly surprised to find automated ticket machines that had instructions in English (hallelujah!).
The train system in China is very efficient and one of the preferred methods of travel by the locals. There are several seating options when buying tickets including “hard seats” and “soft seats,” and “standing only.” I had read it’s best to take the soft seats since the hard seats can get pretty crowded, noisy, and smokey, but the soft seats on the next train were sold out. Since the next train with open soft seats wasn’t leaving for another two hours and it was already around noon, we decided to just go with the hard seats. If you can believe it, it was only 15 yuan for our one-way ticket, which equates to about $2.20. I believe that’s cheaper than the nyc subway these days! (more…)
