The sun was shining today so I just had to get out and about and catch some rays. I went to my favourite wee restaurant that sells dumplings in a spicy soup.

These are a great wee snack and I like to have them at least once a week.  I’m trying to be rice free for the next few days so this is ideal. The restaurant sits on a busy road but there is a small bridge over the canal at the rear which leads to a quiet lane and I prefer to walk along the canal because you can see the daily life and also the beautiful maple trees that are a vibrant red colour at the moment.

I like to explore these narrow streets but then I have to join a main road and I came across a park which was full with people, mostly older folk. They had music and were dancing and there would have easily been a couple of hundred and they all seem to be taking it very seriously and why not because they were very good indeed and of course the sun was shining.

Across these gardens there was some musicians and an old guy in the middle belting his lungs out. I stopped to listen although his singing was pretty bad the musicians were very good playing traditional instruments.

I head on and out the other side of the park and head down another narrow street with a line of houses that don’t look very big at all. Outside some of the houses they have there singing birds,  mind you I’m not sure what they are.

I think he was a bit camera shy😆

I’ve been in Suzhou for nearly 3 months but I never tire of walking around exploring the narrow streets and to find a new place to eat. 

This restaurant is near Jiangmen Metro station and it is serves spicy Chongching noodles that make your mouth go numb. A great way to heat up the body in the middle of a sunny winter’s day. 

But I only have a picture of the really spicy dumplings. 

So I’ve booked my flights for Harbin and I have my accommodation but I have no idea how I’m going to cope with the temperature, it’s fuckin’ freezing even now and it will be worse when I go in January. I’m going to go to the Ice Festival

http://www.icefestivalharbin.com/

Click on the link to take to a winter wonderland

This is the temperature for today, but hey they make Harbin beer which is one of the tastiest beers too. I’m staying in an AIRBNB accommodation and apparently I am the first foreign guest they have had so it will be an interesting trip for all concerned. Looking forward to it!

No matter where you are in the world you can get nuisance calls, I’m I glad my phone is off most of the time. Today I switched it on and this is a list of the numbers that are either Foxtel or energy companies or some other wankers trying to sell you shit. In the last two weeks the amount of messages that have come through has increased substantially. I would answer them but it will only cost me money so instead I block them but they call from another number and so it continues…………..

Today I was lucky enough to go to Suzhou Botanical Gardens with Rita, she is a young friend that I met through the English club. Both her and her husband Dave have been good enough to take me out and about a few times in the last few weeks. 

Today in Suzhou the sun was shining but as we arrived at the gardens the temperature was a balmy 4c so I’m glad I wore my thermals. I’ve never worn them before, not in all the years I lived in Scotland, I guess I was a bit tougher then and not so much of a big Jessie.

This is my first proper winter in many years. I don’t know  the last time I was in the northern hemisphere at this time of the year.  Yesterday was so wet, so it was nice to see the sun and to be honest in the sun it was quite pleasant. Mind you when we stepped inside the first greenhouse it felt bloody marvelous. 

The first house had many plants I was familiar with, in fact I have many in my own garden. 

They even had a couple of Cockatoos.

We came across this lovely old bunch of birds, mind you a couple looked very pissed off or to be more precise they were like grumpy old men. I don’t know what they were complaining about, I mean it was lovely and warm and they had this big old place to themselves.If they were stuck oot in the cold it would have been a lot worse. 

We moved onto the next house which had succulents, cactus and drought tolerant plants.  I like these better, I’ve always wanted a cactus garden more so because it’s low maintenance but they can look great too. In this greenhouse they had many many different varieties and I thought to myself that it was just what I’ve always wanted. 

As we walked through the gardens you are  accompanied by pan pipe type music. You know the kind of thing if you go for an aromatherapy session.It’s not music that you would consciously put on to listen to but when you hear it you think that it’s sounds pretty good. It’s everywhere you go. The music is activated by a sensor because as you sneak up on one of the out door speakers it all of a sudden bursts into life. 

One really enjoyable thing about today was that the gardens were almost empty and it felt great to get away from the noise and chaos of the city and now and again you could hear the wild birds, although the only one that I saw that looked familiar was a Magpie.

Many of the trees had lost there leaves because it’s winter of course but I will definitely come back here in the spring when everything bursts into life once more. 

I like to wander through the local markets and see what you can find. The market near me sells just about everything you need when it comes to cooking and eating that is.You will find almost any type of food here dead or alive. Of course you have to get over the smells that exist and you really can’t pay too much attention to the local livestock, because if you do you will just get upset. Of course however sad it may be to see the chickens, pigeons,ducks and a variety of seafood splashing and flapping about, it does make sense to keep the food as fresh as possible.  Mind you I don’t condone these conditions and I  don’t like to watch when it’s time for one of the poor beast’s to meet its maker or the dinner plate for that matter.

7

Many years ago, in fact it was 1983, I started my driving career with Western SMT bus company.  The bus garage was about a mile from the house so the commute was good.  John Boyce was a good friend of mine and he used to drive these double decker buses like a fuckin’ lunatic, especially in the winter when the roads were icy.  I wanted to try this and so I got a job along side John. And I achieved this after about 6 months after I started. This gave me a few months to get the hang of throwing this beastie around. Being able to drift a double decker and giving it a bit of opposite lock was great fun. And the good thing about the winter months was that you could blame the weather whilst having a bit of fun. But my Volvo double decker could get its groove on and I could get it to drift in the wet also and when I drove through Kilbarchan up to the Wheatlands I could get the back end to twitch a little just near the Weavers Cottage. The whine of the supercharger as I had my foot planted firmly on the floor was great  You could hear a Volvo decker coming long before you it came into view. I even managed to leave some rubber on the ground and the mechanics used to tell me that there were only two drivers in the depot that could wear out the sides of the tyres, the was me and John. 

My Volvo could get up to 70mph and in the early 80’s the police did not bother us if we exceeded the speed limit,  in fact they would get out our way as we flew through suburbia. On my midnight run from Anderson bus garage to Milliken Park, which is a distance of about 15 miles and remember I have to pick up and drop off passengers along the way. Well I did this run in under 20mins one night which was a garage record and I had about 10 passengers on board. I was flying.  The Volvo handled a treat.  It’s just like big car, the engine is up the front and so the steering was very positive,but it was a little tail happy. 

One night I flew back from Glasgow and I was heading to Kilbarchan. I dropped off my last passenger at the terminus and then I flew back to the depot.  It’s late at night and there’s no one on board so I’m giving it wellie and the supercharger is screaming and the bus is jumping and bucking as I fly back to the depot. I fly though the gates and into the yard and then full lock and hit the dead man and the bus does a wonderful pirouette, in fact 360 degrees.  The bus rocks from side to side as it settles. Then all of a sudden I hear this almighty thud! I go upstairs to find this young girl looking rather pale and with fear in her eyes. It takes me all my time to not laugh at this poor girl. What must have been going through her head as she had this thrill of a lifetime in a bus. Some people would pay money for this kind of experience.

I did offer to run her home but she declined my offer 😆

So now you may ask, why are you telling me all this?  Well after being on few Chinese buses this week I can see that you can still drive like an absolute lunatic here and so I thought it would be fun to drive these big beastie’s once more. I was home recently and there are so many rules and regulations and speed cameras and gps monitoring systems that it would be almost impossible to drive these buses anywhere near the speeds that we used to all these years ago. Now I’m not saying that we should always drive around like loonies, because not everyone can drive one of these like many of us did, but I think that life is just not as exciting as it once was. We have been given too many rules to protect those of us that can’t.But that is life in general. So many more rules have been made to protect us that we now sue the establishment when possible. We are no longer responsible for our own actions so that when something goes wrong we can blame someone else. So when tourists come to a country like China they are no longer prepared to think on their feet or adapt and many land in trouble.Mind you China is pretty safe, apart from the driving. The country you have to be careful in is Vietnam and expecially Saigon, be very aware of your surroundings there. But you might just feel alive again and I think it’s a risk worth taking. Go to Vietnam on your next holiday. 

And so I will end my tale hear and remind you all to get outside your comfort zone once and a while and make sure that those dormant life skills are brought back to life before they die for good.

My trusty steed 

The other day I went for a wee wander to Tongli, it’s one of the many water towns in Jiangsu Province and only about 40 minutes on the bus from Suzhou. I’ve been to couple of towns but this one is well set out and quite picturesque. Up until a short time ago it had a Sex Museum which I would have gone to but alas it has shifted to the south of China somewhere. It did seem a bit strange to have a sex museum in the heart of a tiny town.

When I got off the bus there was an old Jewish couple having trouble communicating with the locals, they were trying to get directions to the town from the bus station. Luckily I speak enough Chinese to make it a bit easier for me. So I help the old couple and we head off to the wee electric bus that will take us to the town. What I didn’t realise was that you had to pay to get into the town itself, it was 100 rmb, I was quite happy to just stroll around and soak up the atmosphere. Afterall the temples and the buildings that you visit of the course of your journey all seem to take on the same look and design, it’s only if it is a bit more outstanding now, that I will  pay to go and have a look. But I had come this far so I reluctantly paid and wandered in. The Jewish couple, I can not remember their names, wanted to get on one of the boats that would go around the canals. It was 90 rmb for the boat and so I cadged a ride and I did pay my fair. I mean what do you expect, a Scotsman and a couple of Jews on a boat, there was no escaping it really .
It was a pleasant way to see the town from the perspective of the boat. The woman pushing he boat through the water tried to make a few extra yuan from us but we should have told her that she really had no chance with these nationalities on her boat. First possible stop was to see the Cormorants diving for fish, I’ve seen this before but to be honest the poor birds were quite happy sunning themselves, I’m sure the water was frozen.

We punted a long so to speak and went round a few bends and then we were asked if we wanted to stop at one of the may restaurants along the canals edge, but once again she backed a loser. You could see she wasn’t very happy, but hey 90 rmb for about 20 mins was quite expensive and I’m not sure how much she got but we were giving her something.

When we returned to the wee jetty we had a few pleasantries and then went our separate ways. It was interesting to chat to them for 20 mins or so but our worlds are so far apart and I would only end up arguing with the woman’s primitive views of the world, oh I forgot to say she left America to live in Israel. Not a discussion I wanted to get into about the politics of that part of the world.

So off I wander and I just take in the atmosphere and enjoy the town and maybe spend about an hour and a half before I realise it’s time for food. So some dumplings it is before I head back to the bus for home.

If you come here I would certainly recommend going to have a look and if you are over 60 years old you get in for free. One thing the old couple told me was that they had got into many places for free because of their age. So China seems to be old friendly which is good to know.

At the entrance to my palatial estate there is a small security hut. There are 5 guards that I see on regular basis, but you know they all look the same to me apart from one. And do you know why?  because he has a smile on his face and he says hello to you, even me the foreigner.

The rest of them are a miserable bunch of soor faced bastards. They look like your typical communist party members,  with their wee uniforms and fake looking badges that make them look very important indeed and maybe all they’re doing is playing the role of the uniform.  Maybe when they take the uniform off they just become the hen pecked little man of the house.  And when you see just how fired up some of these Chinese ladies become I’m not surprised that they make the most of the uniform. 

The weather is becoming colder by the day but the other night it really did get chilly.  In fact I went out today and bought some thermals. Anyway getting back to our wee guys.  The office door was closed but you could see the red glow coming from the Hut through the fog inside, no doubt the heater was on full.As  I got closer I noticed that there was 3 guys inside puffing on their  ciggies and sucking on them like their lives depended on each draw, but as a bonus they were also getting all that second hand smoke. I wanted to stop and just look in as if I was at the zoo so I could watch these animals in their wee cage. I find them fascinating and like any creatures or things that fascinate me, I like to watch ☺☺ Mind you I was glad that the happy wee security guard was not in with them as I’ve always thought he looked a bit smarter than the average bear. 

I’ve invested heavily in a pair of slippers for my feet and now they are very happy indeed.  The weather has turned cold and I fear that winter is just around the corner.  The beanie, scarf and North Face jacket are all being worn regularly and it’s not really cold yet.  I hear the figure of -10c being banded about and to be honest I find this quite terrifying. It’s been many years since I have experienced such cold and such misery 😣

Ah only kidding. …..I’m looking forward to complaining everyday about how fucking cold it is.😆

I also bought a new quilt as the summer one I had was not as effective anymore, plus the fact my fat reserves are getting used up rapidly. Which is OK but I’ll soon have to buy new breeks as well at this rate.  As me Ma would say ” they’re hangin’ half way doon ma arse”

So anyway ma new quilt is made from Camel hair, but not sure why is says sheep on the box.  Maybe they are one and the same here. 

But whatever it’s made of it kept me very warm last night, or it could have been the 3 glasses of Spanish red wine.  But I’m sure my sheepycamel was a good investment. 

Haven’t seen it in years but it’s still a great movie…..