The flight cost me $145, business class to the UK on Cathy Pacific, mind you it was a one-way ticket and I did use around 125,000 Flyer Points. Brisbane to Hong Kong and then Heathrow and no idea where I was going to end up. Well for the first month at least I had plans, but after that…
I stayed in London for a few days before picking up my hire car which I had for a month and then I’d see where the wind took me.
Ken and Linda have always been kind enough to let me stay at their place and this time Ken was on a Sabbatical and it was good to just chill for a while and spend some time together catching up on old times and wondering where the wind will blow us both. This continued until September or so and then I caught a one-way flight to China via Thailand. It was only after I arrived that things went to shit for a while. A friend, who shall remain nameless for now, promised me a teaching job and told me that they needed help setting up the new training centre. Weeks before leaving Glasgow I had wandered around book shops trying to find suitable material to take with me, I had a teacher friend accompany me too and this all turned out to be a complete and utter waste of time.
As I was going off to my bed that evening, in the dreadful accommodation that had been organised for me, it took all my willpower to not go completely ballistic. There was no school, nothing was in place, there was no need for me to be here yet, I could have still been travelling and ticking off a few more places on that every increasing bucket list. I was so angry that I just had to stay away from my friend and just about everyone else, mind you the latter was quite easy because I didn’t know anyone here yet.
After about 4 months and after my first visa run, things began to get better. I had picked up some work from Patrick, who ran a training centre and had given me work, managed to get me new accommodation and my life began to get better. Once more I was in a clean comfortable place and not some shitty old apartment.
Patrick had a finger in every pie it seemed and knew many people in Suzhou, I was at the centre of this universe for a time and it was great. I became a minor celebrity and no matter where I went, I seemed to be known. For a city of 11 million people, I just could not understand how and why. I was invited to many functions, day trips and all I really had to do in return was a bit of PR for Patrick or whoever else was organising an event. As a foreigner living in Suzhou, life was good.
I met Amy, she ran a travel agency and knew many foreigners. She would often set up an excursion and invite a bunch of us to give feedback on the proposed new adventure and in return we got a great day out. Amy was very influential as well and she had many extravagant day trip and I was also invited to a State Banquet one evening with a doctor friend from India. Life was mental and I had become a social butterfly.
The first two years my accommodation was always on a fragile status, I flitted from place to place and so it was magic when I returned in 2018 to meet Sissi. I booked one of her apartments for a few days after returning from my winter trip in Europe and Thailand. She was wanting to set up a more upmarket house in Suzhou centre and so I took one of the rooms. It was a four-bedroom apartment, she rented out the other two rooms to help pay the rent and for the most part it worked out, however every so often there would be a complete and utter cunt would come to stay and upset the ambience of the place. I did not enjoy this one bit and began to crave for solitude once more. I was caught between a rock and a hard place again and compromises were made, but it allowed me to have a fairly good lifestyle on a budget. Every 3 months I had to do a visa run and so I was able to explore many places. I went to Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Thailand, Italy, UK, Singapore, Malaysia, Burma and many parts of China when I returned.
In January 2020 I returned form my visa run, I’d gone to Singapore and Thailand this time and I retuned to Suzhou on the 8th January 2020. A week later we were in lockdown due to the Covid outbreak. The next 3 months were fairly intense. Suzhou turned into a ghost town. Sissi would not go outside because that’s what the government had told everyone. I went out every day and went to the park as usual in the morning and enjoyed the peace and quiet, I had finally got my solitude. Everywhere you went there was a QR code to be scanned and you worried each time it was scanned because if it turned any other colour than green then you might get dragged away. I had many confrontations on returning to the gated community I lived in when trumped up over zealous nutters tried to demand to see my passport or tried to refuse me entry. It got very heated in the first week of the lockdown until a friendly policeman told them to back off.
I left China on the 15th March 2020; it took a long time to find a flight that I could afford. I paid $1000 for a one-way flight and I did see some flights to Brisbane for close to $20,000 which was just obscene.
So now its July 2026 and it all seems like a dream and not a nightmare. It was an experience of a lifetime and I cannot imagine not having done it. I can still remember sitting outside having a bit of lunch in December 2015 and wondering where I could go with the Qantas points, I had and then I found this one-way flight for $145 and thought I have to have that and so I booked it and thought no further than that. I would go home for a holiday and then get a flight back at some point. Four years later I returned and I often wonder where I would be now if Covid had not come along and upset the apple cart.
Sometime in life you will come across a sign in some respect and you should take heed and think to yourself, maybe I should just do that and Just get oot there!
