ACE, ACE, Baby!:P: China Trip Pt 10: A wonderful lunch at Tongli (Suzhou)

Previously, we stopped at "a hungry boy is an angry boy.." and just when we were about to give up hope of ever finding a decent place to eat, we saw in a distance.. a quirky and rather modern looking building!

It has lots of modern elements in terms of design and display and the fires of hope in our hearts lit up for a second... When we went near it, we discovered that it is a hostel cum restaurant.. it is called "楼家" and the boss is also a botak..

We found a cute little dog (whom we later discovered is called Ben Ben) sitting there and Ace asked me, "Mummy, why is there a dog here?" The boss just happened to walk to the door at that time and he answered Ace in English.. "Because he is waiting for you.. would you like to come in?"

For some reason, at tat moment, we walked away from the invittion..

3 steps later, we looked at the place again and decided that we probably cannot find something else just like this!! So we went right in and made ourselves at home.. hahahaha

For guess what, the owner, Steven, is Shanghainese and he is a HR consultant who has travelled widely. He is 52 this year and has just set this up 4 months ago even though he has bought this place 10 years ago by chance.. when he bought it,he envisioned this to be his retirement plan.. a nice homestay place which is also his home and a small little restaurant where he can pick and choose his customers... he only works 4 days a week (mon to wed rest) and does only 2-3 tables each meal time..

He has been to Singapore... He went there for 3 months to stay and settle before starting work for one day and quit right after one day! Cos he said in his words, "Singapore is a place where the rich gets richer and the poor gets poorer.. after one day at work, I noticed that this is no place for me.. it is not a place where I can work and make it even though i am a nobody... So I left.."

Hahahahaahah.. now you see WHY he is a consultant:)

This is Steven's living room and check out the interesting fixtures and lightings!

I so love this fish pond.. it says 9 fish garden on the outside and if you look closely, only two of the fishes are real.. the rest are painted on! So cool right!?

Max is super happy cos got beer..

And then Steven came to take our order.. we told him we are vegeterian and we take eggs but not seafood or meat and then he started rattling off... "Ok, so I will do a stir fried long beans for you.. and a egg fried with leek... and I will also fry another veggie which is a local vegetable.. you cant get it anywhere else... and also a broad bean fried with lightly seasoned mei cai..."

"And what else you have.. maybe we can see what else we want.." Max asked him..

"Sorry, here, I DECIDE what you eat as long as you tell me roughly what you want..." Steven replied..

Tadah! These are what we had for lunch. It is nicely fried and tasted light and good to us.. not oily.. kind of really feels like home cooked food! Hehehehehe..

I was telling Max tat if like tat can.. then I think I can also start homestay and homecooked food when I grow old:) hahahahaha.. To our surprise, even though we saw some women walking in and out and they seemed to be staff as well, Steven told us later that he was our chef! He is the homestay guardian, waiter and chef all rolled into one! Amazing... (I overheard him speaking excellent Japanese to his jap customers too)

Ace got something extra.. it is a local dessert.. lotus root steamed with glutinous rice and sweetened with sugary water... But he din really like it so I got to enjoy most of it:)

After lunch, we entertained ourselves with taking pics of Ben Ben:)

Anyway, I attached Steven's namecard in case one day, you would like to go to his homestay too:)

Once you are full hor, somehow the sights start to look better and more beautiful:)

This street is called NARROW street and it is really very narrow.. they built this hundreds of years ago with slabs of stones and there are holes between the stones.. so this is their drainage system!

I wouldnt mind living in a bungalow nearby the village:) looks nice.. i wish Dubai had nicer spring...

We cannot understand this hen... who was trying to eat her own shit..gives a whole new meaning to the phrase "吃屎"..

Went to the touristy part of the town and they were selling paintings, toys, etc... we found Ace's fav xi yang yang toys and even saw the franchise of this CD company we saw in Lijiang here! They are everywhere I tell you (I even saw them in a pasar malam in Hangzhou). This shop specializes in selling internet or locally produced music but leh, is they burn themselves from their computers after compiling and sell you at 20RMB per CD.. go figure how much they can earn...

Saw a pub and reminded me of our clubbing time in Lijiang.. hahahaha

When we came to this stretch, I took a pic and realized that there are two other photogs taking photo.. so leh, I COPY THEM.. stand behind them at the same angle and took the below photo:)

Marikita below:) Hahahahahah.. Remember, Tongli Village has inhabitants who lead their lives there...

The above are these birds that are put on poles to fish. They will catch the fish and spit it out for you! Amazing right? It is actually a traditional way of fishing here.. But now one paid for him to demo so no pics about that.. The actual phrase for that is COMORAN FISHING.. you can google for it if you are interested to see videos about that..

As in everywhere else in China, there are alot of those dress up places that offer you a chance to dress up in chinese clothes and take pictures....

This little girl is so cute.. she kept closing her eyes when they were trying to take pics of her.. hahahaha

Saw this interesting crescent shaped doorway and asked Ace to go pose there.. he ended up going there to DANCE!

We have been searching on our map for places to visit.. and to allow Ace to feed fish, we have gone to all the buildings tat seem to have ponds in them... finally finished visiting most of the places and only one temple to go.. it is on an island and seems to have a huge pond and so we tried to walk all the way to the jetty to take a boat to go over..

Saw lots of interesting sights on the way there too:) The above is Zhuang Yuan Ti.. which means "Top Scholar Trotters". I am not so sure why it is called that.. maybe they were made in celebration for someone who won TOP Scholar...:)