China: June 9: Three Hill Island (Sanshan Island)

Tuesday was the start of a two-day adventure that, though I liked the sights, was one of the most unpleasant two days I've ever had in my life.

Di Yin took many pictures this day; they should be considered the primary reference point for this entry. The link points to the first picture from this day; please stop browsing when you see the last picture from this day (captioned "dinner with locally raised food"). The remaining pictures are from the next day's activities; I'll link to them in the following post.

I took only a few pictures, and those omit parts of the day's activities (that are described in text in this entry and also in photographs by Di Yin).

Di Yin told me we were going to meet friends of her parents to travel and stay with them at a their favorite retreat near Suzhou. Suzhou, a city a bit outside Shanghai, is famous for stone bridges and pretty gardens.

Little did I know, we weren't going to stay by Suzhou at all. Di Yin and I took the subway early in the morning to the train station, where we met Di Yin's parents' friends. From there, we took a 40 minute express train to Suzhou, boarded a bus and rode it for about an hour, arrived at docks, commissioned a boat and rode it for fifteen minutes, then, disembarking, hired a rickshaw to take us on the two minute trip to the house where we'd be staying (basically a bed-and-breakfast). Luckily, though it was raining on-and-off all day (mostly on), it wasn't raining when we were in the speedboat.

And thus, two hours after we boarded the train, we ended up on a sparsely populated island (Sanshan Island = Three Hill Island) on Lake Tai.

On the train, we had a breakfast of muffins & bananas brought by Di Yin's parents' friends.

Once at the B&B, we had a lunch prepared by the owners.

In spite of the rain, after lunch we walked and took a rickshaw around the island. The part of the island near our B&B is farm-like, with one-lane roads, and geese, chickens, and ducks wandering around. Di Yin's parents' friends picked a chicken to have killed so we could eat it for dinner.

Elsewhere on the island, Di Yin's parents' friends brought us to a temple, the old town, a hill (for us to hike up for the views), another old temple, and a boat ride along part of the shore. The boat was traditional: first the captain pushed it with a bamboo pole, then started the hand-cranked engine. We tried to ignore the rain during the ride, instead focusing on the distant statues and strange rock formulations to which boatmen gave imaginative interpretations.

We returned to the B&B. I was wet and unhappy and tired of being nice (I wrote that in my notes, but don't know what it means anymore) and sick of not being able to participate in conversations (because Di Yin's family friends don't speak English).

We had dinner: homey, decent/good. The pictures have details as always.

Tuesday night was hell. Damn the mosquitoes! I used a blanket to cover/hide, but it didn't entirely work and I ended up hot and sweating. I used my DEET insect repellent as much as I was willing to. (It's scary stuff, with very prominent warnings about not to apply to one's face or hands.) At the sound of a mosquito around my head, I'd wake up, slapping. Worse yet, I couldn't breathe through my nose due to my cat allergy. Sometime during the night, I sat up by the open window. That helped. After dawn, the mosquitoes left and I could sleep peacefully for an hour until breakfast, my only decent sleep of the night.

Though I knew I got bit a few times, I didn't yet itch the next morning. Nevertheless, even ignoring my lack of sleep, I didn't get off easy. (More details will come in later posts.)