Travelling day! Today is the first time I had to travel between cities in China but instead of the long distance bullet train or busses I’ll be using only the metro line. From Shanghai there was Line 11 metro which goes all the way west, last stop Houqiao Station and at that same station one could transit to Suzhou metro Line 11. So the two cities metro network actually meet up touching like fingers at the edge.
The ride was interesting if one had the time I suppose. The metro goes overhead hence one gets to see the outer city landscape of Shanghai which tourist usually wont have any view off. The people travelling the line was also different from those within downtown Shanghai. More solemn, knowing their journey home is a long one.
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| Xuanmiao Temple - Suzhou |
I stayed at MeetU International Hostel which was slightly dificulty to find as they were really really new. It was actually one of the best hostel I have ever stayed, top grade high end hostel. I was lucky in a sense as they just newly listed on booking.com with barely two reviews hence I got it for cheap at RMB 20 per night. Their usual price was around RMB 70. The hostel owner and staff helped me translate a few things I was unsure of in the ALIPAY app and gave me all the recommended things to do in Suzhou.
Walking all around Shanghai was really brutalizing my feet hence the motivation to get a bycycle to explore cities in China was really priority one. With some new info from the hostel I set out to unlock a bike. The first bike some random orrange colour one cant seam to work and I got frustrated and gave up deciding to walk to the night attraction area called Shantang St. Halfway walking and I cooldown my head and tried again looking for the more common blue bikes. Even used the inapp mini programe of ALIPAY to figure out how to find the bikes. Turns out there was a bike locater as well built in. Stupid me.
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| Hello Bike in China |
So the bikes I could use were only the blue ones under the brand HELLO which has a tie-in with ALIPAY. A few more tinkering with the app and I finally manage to unlocked the bike. When I say tinkering, well its cause the ALIPAY app is mainly in chinese. Although they have an in app translation tie in with google translate, it’s still not perfect so I keep doing screenshot and then using google lense to translate to get a better translation. Make sense ? Anyway somehow I managed it and now I could bike around China.
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| Cycling around Suzhou City |
I cycle to the attraction vanue and realized I could not just park the bike anywhere, checking the app again showed me the designated parking area. Not too bad I guess and parked the bike and manage to lock the bike clocking out without much issue. I wondered how much it was going to cost but so far there was no notification.
Shantang St
I had no idea about the night attraction at Shantang St. If I did not randomly ask the hostel owner of whats nice to explore in Suzhou, this would be a definate missed out. Back home, I would call it a night market, or rather a tourist night market, China style. Tourist night market in China are usually set in historical or scenic old towns that makes beautiful picturesque yet filled with food outlet, suviniours and many expensive local produce.
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| Shantang St - Suzhou |
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| Spice Shop at Shantang St - Suzhou |
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| Sweet shop at Shantang St - Suzhou |
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| Shantang main Canal - Suzhou |
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| Shantang St main Canal - Suzhou |
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| Underpass Mural - Shantang St |
The main cannal was really beautiful and vibrantly lighted up but just a turn down one parelel street and the old city become eeriely quiet and dark with most of the houses unoccupied. It was really a contrast that I could not explain.
After visiting Shantang St, I thought of biking back to the hostel. When I opened back the bike miniapp, there was a notification of RMB 1.5 pending to be paid. I tried to pay it ... multiple times but apparently the linked international credit card had a minimum payment requirement of RMB 0.1.
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| A little turn at Shantang St - Locals selling BBQ Skewers |
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| A little turn at Shantang St - Quiet Dark alleys in stark contrast from the brightly lighted up main street |
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| A little turn at Shantang St - Locals selling street food |
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| A little turn at Shantang St - Locals selling steam crabs |
The app stupidly gave me a discount for first time use of RMB1.49 so I only had to pay RMB 0.01 which was not possible. Trying to get rid of the discount was also perplexing yet somehow and I dont even know how I did it, closed and open again many times and viola, pay RMB1.5 and now I was allowed to grab a new ride.
After all that hard work tinkering with the miniapp to pay for the bike, I now realized while I could get the bike, there was a no parking zone where my hostel is. The hostel was in downtown Suzhou within the moat, and the whole downtown was no parking for HELLO bikes. I guess that answers a question of why I could not see any blue bikes near the hostels but there was plenty of those orrange ones. Business monopoly at it finest.
Traveled on: Nov 2023
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