Day Nine: The Water Village

Today we visted the Zhujiajiao Water Village about an hour or so out side of Shanghai, we like to call it a little Venice!

Zhujiajiao is a graceful and quiet ancient town. Walking on the zigzag stone pathway and the winding long lanes, you seem to watch an elegant and fresh painting: bridge over the river, houses built in Ming and Qing dynasties, black-top boats and willows on the bank. It’s a very pleasant picture. On the occasion of traditional programs, the people in the town like to carry out many folk activities, like dragon boat match, sailing contest, water lights and performances in the streets on the tour.

We had our lovely hosts Wee Siew Yen and her coworker Jenny that showed us around and explored the town with us. After negotiating and pushing our way to the front of the line we tried to all fit on to one boat, but they would not leave the dock with all eight of us in, so Ryan and Siew Yen hoped in another boat. We had a great time spending about an hour on the little waterways enjoying the scenery, etc. Ryan did say that the strangers that got in the boat with them said that stuff or something like this(meaning sitting in the same boat with a white person) had not happened to them in ten years. We still think it is funny how excited people get or the random photos they take.

After our lovely boat ride we wandered around looking for the perfect place for lunch. We ended up in a pagoda from the Ming Dynasty where officials used to meet, now a little restaurant with a wonderful view and a lot of history. It was the perfect lunch, just what we needed.

On our way to the shops, Ryan wanted to take his hand in shooting a toy plastic gun at a the balloons on the street, and we all got our turn!


The best part of the day was the shopping in the little streets of Zhujiajiao negotiating to get the best prices, sometimes good, sometimes definetly 4x the amount of what we should have paid, but it was fun nonetheless.

We all headed back to Frank and Nancy's for a wonderful dinner before heading out for a night on the town at the KTV Karaoke establishment, where we had our own private room. We found out we are quite a talented group and scored a 98 on Love Shack!! Megan didn't do so bad herself singing a Tina Turner song scoring a high 96!!! It was a blast, we tried to post a video, not sure if it will work for you, but best of luck, do let us know.






Frank took the lead with many of the slow meaningful songs. We were quite impressed with our hosts singning.



Here is a video of the evening activites, again, not sure if it is going to work, but we hope so, this will help sum up the evening.


While we were at KTV Amy was out on the town with her host "dad" Helmut enjoying Indian food as well as another massage from the Dragon Fly!!

*Sorry for the delay in the posting of this blog, we had a few technical difficulties!

Be sure to keep checking back, and even after we return when we have more time to dedicate to our thoughts about the trip and other adventures we weren't able to get to!!

Until next time!