Our Russian roommate....

So I'll bet you want to hear the end of the story about our roommates!! When I went up to the room, my friend (whose towel was taken and left wet!) told me during the night the Russian guy came in (around 1 a.m.) and knelt down by her bed to present her with a new towel saying he'd taken hers. She simply responded and said that wasn't a nice thing to do to a grandmother, and that she'd already gotten a new towel.  No drama! He proceeded to go to bed (with his girlfriend in the single bottom bunk, adding more draped cloth besides our room curtain!) In the morning we 3 came into the room to pack up our bags to move to another room (already schedule move to twin rooms - not because of this incident). The Russian guy had a towel spread the length of the middle of the room, was standing on his head with his legs in upside-down yoga position, and he was in his black BVDs!  Hairy legs and all!  It was hilarious! I'm only sorry I didn't grab my camera!  He stayed there, ignored us and continued yoga positions while we worked around him! Finally he got dressed and left the room. The other roommate on the top bunk, who happens to be from Yangzhou! (apparently this Russian guy is a student at Yangzhou University! and has been to US, friend said) took our picture in the room, we took a picture with him, we all laughed! We laughed during the day every time we thought about this whole incident! Took the metro to the big train station and were able to purchase our train tickets for tomorrow to Yangzhou. BUT turns out there was no train to Zhouzhuang a nearby "canal" city where we planned to spend the day. Told us we had to go by bus - 2 hours!!  After circling the station, going through tunnels, some students were finally able to help us. (we were ignored by two bus terminal attendants who were studiously clipping their nails and totally ignored us!!!)  Anyway, we found the long distance bus terminal, got our tickets and had 1/2 hour to wait. I had to use the WC so walked in and saw my first row of toilet stalls, no doors, each one filled with a woman squatted side-ways over a trough that ran the length of each side of the room, busy doing their business.  Pat said when she went in later, she even saw a young girl, squatting bare-bottomed, busy texting!!!  I went to the end of the row and there was one western toilet!! The bus ride to Z. was lovely through the countryside, lots of water and a huge lake, which had barges going along which I think is part of the Grand Canal system. Met a nice young man on the bus who was going to same town on business and he pointed us in the right direction when we arrived. We found a little hole in the wall for lunch and we each ordered something to share and had a lovely meal of noodle and veggie soup, pork and mushrooms, pork and green peppers and potato and green peppers. Specialty of the town was pig's hocks, I think it is, and each place we stopped tried to get us to order that but we resisted! Getting to the tourist town part of Z., we found 2 pedicabs who wanted to take us around. It kind of seemed like a town built for tourists to look at and shop rather than an old canal town that had originally been there. Not sure! We didn't have a lot of time, she (our driver) tried to get us to get out and pay Y100 to go in some area, but we said take us back to bridge and we walked to the bus. Of course, the bus station said no more tickets back to Shanghai (we had only one way) and no more buses that day!!! Finally after much negotiating, we were given 3 seats on the very back bench seat of the bus, but poor Joyce had to start off by sitting on a plastic stool in the aisle!! Eventually the entire aisle was filled with people sitting on these little stools! A lovely Chinese girl gave Joyce her regular seat so she didn't have to sit there the whole trip. We made it back to Shanghai by dark, ate a snack and found an Internet cafe where we were all FRUSTRATED trying to our airline reservations for 3 flights within China. Joyce has ended up with 2 sets of tickets for the same 2 flights, I have 2 reservations for one flight (because of Pay Pal screw-up!! trying to straighten that out with the help of my daughter and niece!!) So we gave up, all with headaches I think by 12:30 a.m. and went to bed in our lovely new accommodations! Another day, another adventure!!!  Bet no one wants to sign up to travel with ME!!!