Tongli Watertown

At the beginning of June we spent the afternoon in Tongli. This little water town is a thirty minute drive from Suzhou. (You can also take the bus from Suzhou or Shanghai.) There is an admission fee of 90 Yuan (about 14.50 USD) which gets you into the town and most of the attractions.

 

We spent the day walking along the canals, wandering in gardens, stopping in museums and of course taking pictures. The museums were small and not all of them had English descriptions. I believe you can hire an English speaking tour guide, but I am not sure the cost of this.

We spent about 15 minutes getting lost wandering around trying to find a garden. We ended up on a dead end, upon turning around we were greeted by the group in the below picture. At least two of these girls had been following us for a while probably thinking we are crazy as we went in circles. (Yes, we did finally find the garden we were looking for.)

 

While we were in the garden we saw the woman in the picture below getting pictures taken. We had pasted a few photography shops where you could dress up and then take pictures around town. Think black and white western themed pictures, just Chinese style. We also saw a small pagoda and many very hungry koi!

 

We ended our day in Tongli with a boat ride around the canals. The boat ride is a separate fee not included in the original entrance ticket. This was neat, but probably my least favorite part of the day. I felt uneasy on the small boat (J assured me it was perfectly safe) but I felt like I was going to fall in the (icky) water (I'm not a fan of water when I can't see the bottom, just as my family) and halfway through our "captain" asked if we wanted to pay to see some birds fly around (I'm also not a fan of birds).