My hostel, Minghantang, was outside the centre of town, but had a beautiful traditional Chinese appearance. The surrounding buildings looked old fashioned too, with wooden frames and red lanterns hanging outside. A canal flowed between them and a few wooden barges bobbed on its water. It was night when I first went to explore the area though, so I looked forward to seeing this all in daylight. The next morning however, I was outraged to find it cost 45rmb to visit between 7am to 9pm. Not wishing to pay for something that was probably built for tourists anyway, I wandered in the opposite direction and ended up in the real old town.

Dotted along the busy, narrow streets were stalls selling pastries. I recommend trying a few for your breakfast; they were delicious. A selection of warm, freshly baked fairy cakes, red bean paste pancakes and sweet potato and sesame buns later and you¡¯ll be set for a day¡¯s sightseeing. They count as something cultural too, since Suzhou is known for its pastries.

Suzhou is also known for its silk, so I headed over to the Silk Museum next. It's much smaller than it appears and in this case, less is not more. The enormous weaving machines hold some novelty value, as do the silk worms in various stages of life, but for the most part there are a lot of replicas or pictures instead of real artefacts, which aren't very engaging.

For lunch I gave the renowned De Yue Lou restaurant a go, because I wanted to try some traditional Suzhou cuisine. Amongst other things, I chose Suzhou marinated duck and Suzhou glutinous cakes, because they had Suzhou in their names. The duck was unexpectedly cold but pleasantly sweet, and the glutinous cakes had a flavourless jam in the centre and were a little too chewy, but overall the meal was appetizing.

A stroll around one of Suzhou's many gardens is a good follow up to lunch. I chose to go to the daftly named Garden for Lingering In, which cost 70rmb. Unfortunately, it wasn't somewhere I could particularly see myself Lingering In. There's nothing striking about the garden; it has too many boulders concreted together and not enough natural beauty. Sure, Chinese gardens are pretty similar, but even the Yuyuan Gardens in Shanghai have more charm than these ones. Although, the bonsai section is a worth a look, to see the little trees and rocks that look like cliffs, as if someone has shrunk a normal-sized scenic area.

When I tried to head home, the traffic was heavy, buses seemed confusing and taxis were hard to find, but the countless rickshaws came to my rescue. They proved to be fun and a fairly quick method of transport-so long as you didn't have to go too far. The first time I thought I'd communicated where I wanted to go and had agreed a price, I just got dumped at the end of the road. The second time things worked out much better-it turned out the place I wanted to go was at the end of the road.

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