Labour Day Golden Week Holiday Images

As the final Golden Week Holiday for 2005 is approaching fast, I thought it was about time I wrote something about the last Golden Week Holiday that occurred back in May. This laziness, combined with my failure to learn flash movies, and competitive "I can do that" resolution after reading Linda's great Sichuan Holiday documentation efforts, I thought it was about time I posted this little story. Its only been written for about 3 months!

I've finally got around to writing a post about ALL the digital photos and movies that Linda and I took during our holiday back in May. Some of you may have noticed these images up for a long time, but hey, I'm a busy lad.

There's two albums to check out. The first album contains various photos and movies taken around Shanghai during this week. Primarily, we spent the bulk of our time walking around the city, exploring the sights, and well, just bumming around. It had been such a long time since I had a true break from some kind of work or responsibility, so I embraced the sloth within. Linda worked pretty hard to get me out of the door on occasions, and in hindsight, I don't have too much too complain about. There's only so many DVD's you can watch in one sitting. This album has scenes from the central Shanghai city area during Labour Day Holiday (delayed 1 day as May 1st fell on a Sunday this year). There's a few snaps of our walk to the central CBD area of Puxi, Nanjing Dong Lu. This place is perhaps the biggest pedestrian and shopping mall area that I could imagine. And, not surprisingly, it was packed full of people. Have a good look at AVI movie look at the Flash movie I recorded detailing the sea of people Linda and I observed that day (Note: its 3Mb, so it will take some time to download over modem lines The Flash Movie is a little dodgy, but you get the drift, its about 700Kb).

There's also a few images from our Thursday trip down to the Shanghai 'Old Town' area (commonly known as Nan shi - South City) to visit a Fabric market where I had some new shorts made in time for summer, and some alterations to other clothes performed. Later that day we went off to Yuyuan Gardens and Bazaar - a true tourist destination within Shanghai. It was once home to rich merchants, but now is home to rich merchants and a whole lot of tourists. While we didn't visit the Gardens, we spent a lot of time wandering around playing 'name that smell'. Nine out of ten times it was the stinky tofu on sale. We had a fantastic tea ceremony while we were there. We did not have tea at the famous Mid-Lake Pavilion Teahouse (with its 9-point bridge), but at a well-hidden roof-top tea house. It was a pretty good day.

The second album details our 2 day, overnight stay in Suzhou. Suzhou is a smaller city located 100km west of Shanghai. It was once a central location on the old Silk Road, known for its artisans and textiles, in particular silk. Hence, it was also a rich city. Having squillions of Yuan to spend, many of the richer merchants and administrators created elaborate gardens in various styles - and luckily many are still present today! There's a heap of garden photos - so grab your Mum and let her check it out. I think it would be perfect place to send Mum for Mother's Day. Maybe next year? Suzhou still has a thriving manufacturing and arts centre, and is definitely the place I would hunt around looking for souvenirs and clothing.

Hope you enjoy it!

Technorati Tags: China, culture, Nanjing Xi Lu, Puxi, Shanghai, Suzhou, Yuyuan Gardens